Some people never realize how much website speed matters for your SEO. Let us see some stats before starting our discussion.
For a single second delay in your page load, you will:
- Get 11% fewer page views
- 16% fewer visitors will be satisfied
- Get 7% decreased conversions
And if you are able to recover even a fraction of seconds in your web speed, it will have a huge impact on your website results. Google recently announced that web speed is not just a moral factor; rather, we will consider it as a crucial factor in SEO.
So, if your website is slow, it will not only receive fewer conversions but will also get a lower SEO score. To monitor and manage your website speed, there are several tools. We will discuss here the common most tool, i.e. GTMetrix.
GTMetrix is a simple yet efficient tool to use and optimize your web speed. You will enter the domain name of your site in the tool and allow it several seconds before getting a performance report. It has breakdown all crucial points and will show you what factors are slowing down your website.
There is a “YSlow” tab that will show all the points that are slowing your website. You can work on them to increase your site speed. Let us look at 10 best ways to improve GTMetrix web speed.
Add Expires Headers
At GTMetrix, this is one of the high priority factors. The Expires header has the date and time in it after which any response is regarded stale. When you have Expires headers, it will reduce HTTP requests which in turn will reduce the time to load the page. Old users will be able to reuse their cache files and load the page faster.
Make Fewer HTTP Requests
You can combine different files and CSS sprites to reduce the number of HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests a site make, the slower it will load. Hence, GTMetrix considers it one of the highest priority factor. When your page makes fewer HTTP requests, it will load faster and save time for your user.
Compress Components
You should compress as many resources as possible on your site. It will not only save time but will also reduce the use of the internet. It is a high priority factor in GTMetrix and will reduce the size of your HTTP response. As a result, the page will load faster.
Reduce JavaScript and CSS
You should minify the use of coding. It will remove any useless characters from a file and will reduce the size of your file. Thus, a smaller file will load faster than before. When you minify a file, you must know that it will remove any comments, useless white space, and other stuff that we don’t need. After all these efforts, the file size reduces, and the webpage loads faster.
Use a CDN
A content delivery network has a greater impact on your site if the content on your site is global. This network will disperse your content around the globe on multiple servers, so each of your users will get a faster response time from their local servers whenever they open your site. Thus, waiting time will reduce for users.
Avoid URL Redirects
Some people use URL redirects on their website, which kills the speed of the site. When you make URL redirects, the browser will go to another location. Your site won’t load unless the HTML document arrives back. It reduces the speed of your site because it is dependent on another site.
Remove Duplicate Coding
If there are any duplicate JavaScript and CSS, you must remove them asap. The reason is that duplicate coding cause the browser to generate two separate requests. More HTTP requests mean more time for it to return and open the webpage. As a result, your response time reduces.
It creates a greater problem in Internet Explorer. Even in Firefox, it wastes time because the browser is reading the same script twice or thrice. As a result, it is wasting time on something that has no benefit.
Avoid HTTP 404 Error
Nothing wastes server resources and user experience more than an HTTP 404 error. It means that the webpage is either wrong, removed, has no content, and is still showing. A user will more likely cross the page and start looking for the same information anywhere else.
A 404 error will block all parallel downloads, and the browser will try to parse as if there was some code here. As a result, it wastes server resources.
Reduce Cookie Size
Websites use cookies for a variety of purposes. They identify users to show personalized content as well as to authenticate users. However, you must keep the size of the cookies as small as possible.
Web servers and browsers exchange info about cookies in the HTTP headers. The smaller the cookie size, the faster it will load and vice versa. You can also display static content from different cookie-free domains that will reduce your page load times.
Reduce DNS Lookups
The DNS maps hostnames to IP addresses. It works like when we physically map people’s names to their phone numbers in our phonebooks. So, the more DNS lookups for a site, the slower it will load.
It is a low priority factor in GTMetrix as it only takes 20 to 120 milliseconds for DNS to look for all the IP addresses against a hostname. However, the browser can’t download anything unless this process is complete. So, more lookups will impact your site speed.
Final Words
GTMetrix is one of the best tools that will allow you to monitor your site speed and will also recommend ways to improve the speed. It has simple options, so can easily understand. When you follow all the instructions, you will make sure that your site loads faster, and more users retain to your site. Hence, more traffic and fast site speed lead to high SEO.
If you would like to discuss Ways on how to Improve GTMetrix Web Speed in more detail feel free to get in touch with us. We are a London web design agency delivering stunning, functional websites and apps that resonate with the people interacting with them – your clients.
