Does Your Site Load Fast? No! Know What to Do?
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011Google included, long back, the loading speed of websites among the website ranking factors. It is significant because Google distributes ranking to websites according to their loading speed. Site speed is among the usability metrics that help rank webpages. Good loading speed of websites assures of huge customer satisfaction and increases the number of conversions. Websites that load very fast are search engine friendly.
How important is the loading time of a website? It is a vital question from SEO viewpoint. An improvement in the site’s loading speed is sure to enhance the user’s experience. It influences the SEO of sites as well. Pages that take time to load lose their search engine relevancy. Poor loading time a website affects the volume of queries for the site. Slow loading of sites is the despair of many users whereas Google has introduced instant search service to help the users save time.
Reduced the number of HTTP requests – If the number of HTTP requests is as small as possible, webpages will load as fast as possible. Websites that wait for many HTTP requests take a considerable time to load. It is better, if the number of scripts, images and style sheets is reduced.
Combine all CSS – Combine all of the CSS in an external file. Link to the file from the head section of each webpage without loading it in HTML. The external page gets cached and loads faster. Like CSS, JavaScript needs to be handled.
Use CSS sprites – Using CSS sprites to combine all images in the background into only one image helps make webpages load faster. It minimizes the volume of HTTP requests.
Optimize images for the web – If you use Photoshop, you can simply click ‘save for web’ to optimize the formats of images for the web. Images with optimized format make a small file size. Websites with smaller file sizes are fast in loading.
Use Gzip to compress the page content – Many sites use Gzip to compress the pages and their contents in order to reduce the size of files by up to 70%. Browsers uncompress the pages and display their content for the users.
Minimize 301 redirects – If possible, it is better not to use 301 redirects. 301 redirects direct browsers to new URLs. Browsers wait for the comeback of HTTP requests and take time to load those pages.
Using server side caching and a content delivery network is another good way to make webpages load faster.


