What Is the Loading Speed Exactly?
As its name indicates, it is the time taken to load a website page. Fortunately, huge improvements were done and the wait time is way shorter than before. It is now nearly instantaneous! Do you remember when you had to wait a minute to have access to a page? Now, search engines can penalize you if they consider your loading speed too slow since they see it as an obstacle. But what is considered too slow? Google thinks that it is all website loading speed longer than 2.5 seconds. This may seem short as wait time but how do you feel when you need to wait a few seconds to have access to what you are looking for? Today’s users are less patient than before. Furthermore, many studies have shown that the conversion rate of an online shop decreases the more the loading speed is slow.
Where Can I Find This Data?
There are many places where you can find what your website loading speed is but Google created its free tool: Test My Site. Enter your domain name and in a few seconds, you will have access to the results. You can also enter all the pages of your website to see if some have specific issues. Do not panic if your website is considered slow by search engines. It is only one of the many data they check when they index your website. Therefore, you should not be sent to the last pages of results if you respect most other SEO norms.
Just for your information, WebSelf works hard to optimize the websites made with our editor so you can always be competitive. For example, we use a technology that allows your loading speed to remain the same wherever a person will consult your website in the world. Moreover, any pictures downloaded on WebSelf will then be compressed in many different sizes to take less bandwidth. Finally, we use GZIP to compress users' requests.
A Few Tips on How to Improve the Loading Speed of Your Website
If your website loading speed is too slow, you can take a few actions to try to improve it. First, are all the elements you added on your website necessary? It is certainly important to have quality content to be well indexed on search engines; however, do you have pages that could be too long? Why not take this opportunity to clean your website? You could gather some pages together or create new ones that could relieve the main pages. Do not forget that your home page is often the first page your visitors see. It must then be attractive so they want to visit the other pages. Do not hesitate to test your new pages with Google’s free tool to monitor your modifications. Moreover, you can create a lighter version of your website for mobiles too.
On another note, how many pictures and videos do you have on your website pages? Were your pictures compressed before you added them? It is indeed important to choose beautiful visual elements to make your website more attractive or dynamic; however, you do not need to have 100 different pictures on the same page! Remember that each element you add on your website has a visual weight. You must make sure the final result stays balanced. There are many online compressors like TinyPNG if you think some of your selected images are too heavy. Also, PNG files are often heavier than JPEG files. Keep only the elements that bring something to your website. Therefore, we confirm that animated GIFs that were used so much on websites made in early 2000 are no longer relevant.
In conclusion, it is very important to keep your website up to date if you want to stay competitive on search engine results. You should then take the time to analyze your website loading speed. Is your WebSelf website needing some cleaning? Do you have any outdated content? Remember that the more a website is fast, up to date, and attractive, the more your visitors will take the time to visit the other pages of your website. It will then lower the bounce rate of your website. This is the basis of SEO!