SEO Part 3
SEO and Speed
Is your website fast? You may think it is, but have you ever actually measured it? Most people haven’t given their website speed much thought, but it does matter. Statistically, if a website takes more than 4 seconds to load 1 in 4 visitors will abandon it. That’s 25% of your traffic gone because your website took too long to load. In this digital age, milliseconds make millions.
Why does speed matter to Google?
This all comes back to user experience. Google wants to give the best experience to the user. If your website is slow, then it won’t provide a good user experience and Google will rank it lower.
What slows down your website?
All sorts of things. Excess code, bulky images, you name it. There are loads of different factors. The biggest ones are usually images. Many people don’t think about the types and sizes of images they upload. Bulky images in a PNG format can seriously drag a website down.
What about plug-ins?
If you’re a WordPress user then you know what plug-ins are. Plug-ins are segments of code that usually help your website to accomplish a specific task. There are literally thousands of plug-ins that accomplish a huge array of different tasks. Many people wantonly download these plug-ins without a second thought. This creates what is known as code-bloat. Code-bloat is when a website has so much code attached to it that it slows it down. To solve this issue get rid of the plug-ins that you don’t use.
Try out these suggestions, and see if they manage to help speed up your website. Stay tuned for tips and tricks to help increase your SEO!