Page speed is an important factor in supporting your website’s long-term success. If you’ve been struggling with a slow page speed, your site can suffer from a poor user experience that affects your search rankings. It’s crucial to make sure that your website is optimized for fast page speed. This blog will answer some frequently asked questions about page speed, and outline simple steps you can take to improve your website’s performance.
What Is Page Speed?
Simply put, page speed can be defined as a measure of how quickly the content on your website loads. It is an important factor in user experience, search engine rankings, and overall website performance. There are multiple ways your page speed is measured, including how quickly a page initially loads and how quickly it becomes interactive. If you’re looking to improve your site’s performance, it’s important to run a speed check, inspect the size of your page’s images, and consider changing your web host.
When users come to your website, page speed can have a significant effect on their experience. By focusing on improving your page speed, you’ll inevitably receive higher conversions and lower bounce rates.
Run A Lighthouse Audit
The first step in improving your page speed is to run an initial speed check. This will help you understand where there’s room for improvement. Lighthouse is a free and automated tool on Google Chrome that you can use to run an overall speed check of your website. To run a Lighthouse audit, right-click on your website and navigate to the inspect tool. After choosing the Lighthouse option, you will be able to analyze your site’s performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO. Each audit is accompanied by a score that acts as a starting point for your improvement.
While Lighthouse is a great tool, there are various other services you can access to run a performance report. The scores in these reports can be used as a general performance-benchmark. Once you understand the metrics, it will be easier to improve them.
Compress Your Images
One of the primary reasons that websites suffer from poor page speed is because of image size. Large image files can largely slow down your site. Compressing images is a very simple and effective process that can be aided by online tools. Applications like TinyPNG are designed to effectively compress files across pages. It’s important to note that optimizing your images won’t sacrifice their quality, rather just improve your site speed.
Consider Changing Your Web Host
Another effective way to improve your site’s page speed is by changing your website host. Hosting services can offer different levels of performance that can significantly impact your page speed. While a slow host can hurt the speed of your website, a faster host can provide a much better user experience for your online visitors. While changing your host may not be the best option in terms of cost-effectiveness, the benefits will outweigh the costs if you’ve tried all other options.
Remember, aim to keep your page speed less than 2 seconds to ensure your site functions optimally. By running an audit, compressing your images, and changing your web host, you can greatly enhance user experience and overall performance.
Contact Boston Web Marketing Today
At Boston Web Marketing, we can help you improve your website’s page speed. Take action to benefit user experience, increase conversions, and boost your search rankings. Our team of SEO specialists are experienced in running performance audits and compressing images to ensure your site is up to speed! Contact us today to get started at 857-526-0096 or sales@getfoundquick.com.