Do you know page speed is more important than ever before? It can have a huge impact on the way in which you rank in Google. The faster your site, the better you rank and the more visitors will stay on your website. That’s right, when you have a slow site, people leave in droves. In fact, Google has recently claimed that over half of users will leave a site that takes more then three seconds to load.

If you want to improve your page speed, this is the guide for you.

How to Improve Page Speed on the Front-end

Everyone sees the front-end of your website. It is the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that make up the way the site looks and works. Making it load quicker here is all about improving design elements.

1. Optimize fonts and images

You use fonts and images to make your site look awesome. But did you know they could also be slowing your website down, too?

You’ll need to look at both if you want to make your website as fast as possible. With fonts, try to use standard fonts where possible. These should be embedded as an inline SVG or they should be Google Web Fonts. These are universal fonts that load faster than any others.

With images these should be as small as possible. The bigger the file size, the longer it takes to load. So shrink the as much as possible without sacrificing quality.

2. Minify your JavaScript and CSS

You may also want to shrink your code as well as your images. This should only be done if you are a web developer as it can make your code hard to read. But minifying both your CSS, JavaScript and HTML can make your site load much, much faster.

3. Choose a content delivery network

A content delivery network is a system that stores a cached version of your website on servers located across the globe. Rather than load your website fresh everytime, CDNs will instantly load up a saved version of your website. This is perfect if you don’t change your site much.

How to Improve Your Page Speed On The Back-end

You can improve site speed on the back-end of your website, too. This is more technical, however, and should only be done by an expert.

1. Set up a reverse proxy and HTTP headers

A Reverse proxy and HTTP headers work in a similar way to CDNs in that they cahe pages and serve up saved versions to visitors. The benefit of reverse proxies is that you, unlike CDNs, you keep everything on your server.

2. Prolong the TTL of your cache

Did you know that caches aren’t stored forever? After a set amount of time they are wiped and need to be loaded again. If this happens often it can take a lot of time. You can increase the Time To Live (TTL) of your pages so that this happens less often.

For more information on increasing site speed, get in touch with our team today.