Built For Speed. How to Optimize Your Performance.
#cdn #caching #optimization
Introduction
If you want your website to be fast and easy for visitors to use, then optimizing it is an essential step. There are many ways that can help you make sure your site loads quickly, such as using caching, minimizing HTTP requests, and reducing the size of media files. In this article we’ll look at some of these optimization techniques in detail!
Check your loading speeds.
Use Pingdom and GTMetrix.com to check your loading speed.
If you have a slow load time, there are many things you can do to improve it!
Get web hosting on a fast server.
There are many hosting companies out there and it’s possible for you to host your website on several different servers, but if we had to choose just one we would recommend Hostgator. This is because their servers are fast and reliable with great uptime, meaning that your site will be up all the time! Plus, they are well-known and well-regarded in the industry.
Improve your page speed.
- Use a CDN
- Use a cache plugin
- Reduce the number of plugins you use. If you have too many plugins on your site, it can slow down your speed. You should also try to use lightweight themes and plugins like those from Twenty Nineteen or Underscores.
- Change your theme
Minimize HTTP requests for higher SEO rankings.
Maximize performance with fewer HTTP requests. The fewer files you have to download, the faster your site will load. This is especially important on mobile devices where users are likely to have slower data connections and slower CPUs than laptops or desktops.
The fewer files you have to download, the less chance there is for 404 errors. Whenever a user visits a page on your site that doesn’t exist (or has been moved), it’s considered a 404 error and can be frustrating for both users and search engines alike. You want as few of these as possible so people don’t get frustrated trying to find what they’re looking for and potential customers aren’t dissuaded from buying from you because they can’t find what they’re looking for when visiting certain pages on your site.
Use caching to improve speed and SEO.
Caching is a feature that stores files on the server. This can be used to speed up your website, as well as improve SEO by reducing the number of requests to load pages. Caching comes in two types: automatic and manual (or “in-depth”).
Automatic caching is done with plugins, which allow you to cache files automatically without any extra effort from you or your web developer. Manual/in-depth caching requires more work from both parties, but can result in even faster speeds than automatic methods can provide—as long as there are no issues with server hardware or software related to the way that these types of caches work together behind the scenes!
Use a CDN to boost SEO and load times.
CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) can be used to boost your website’s load time and SEO. A CDN is a network of servers spread out across multiple locations that host your site’s content, and serve it up to visitors from the closest server. This has two main advantages: one, it reduces the distance between the visitor and your site, which means they can get to pages like yours faster; two, it gives you more options for what kind of hosting you want to use—bigger companies might sell dedicated servers with better speeds or reliability than shared hosting plans like those offered by most web hosts.
If you’re already using a CDN for images or videos hosted on other sites (like YouTube or Flickr), then all you need to do is put in place some code so your server knows where those resources are located so it can pull them down as needed. You’ll also want to choose which files are served via the CDN based on their size/type so they don’t take up too much bandwidth from other users who may be trying to access them at the same time—the more people who try accessing these resources simultaneously with others whose requests aren’t being met by another server request, then things start slowing down for everyone involved since there isn’t enough bandwidth available overall!
Reduce the number of plugins you use on your site, or replace them with lighter alternatives.
- Use plugins only when necessary.
- Use lightweight plugins that don’t add too much code to your site, especially if they’re used by many other sites that may also use the same plugin.
- Plugins are great tools for improving website speed, but if you don’t need a particular feature and it’s slowing down your site then consider using an alternative instead (or replacing one plugin with another).
Limit the size and load time of media files on your site.
The size and load time of your media files are important factors in how quickly a page loads. If they’re too large, they can slow down the loading of your website. In some cases, this delay may be brief—for example, it takes longer for a video to start playing than it does for an image or text file. However, if you include lots of videos on your site (such as YouTube embeds), they could cause the page to load very slowly.
To optimize media files:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service to host them so that users will have access to them no matter where they are located in the world. This is especially important if your website attracts visitors from many countries around the globe; using one place for storage will speed up access for people who don’t live close by servers hosting those files directly on their own computers or mobile devices. A good example is Amazon Cloudfront.
Follow these tips to optimize your website for search engines as well as user experience!
You might be surprised to learn that search engine optimization (SEO) is not just about making your website look better in Google’s eyes. It’s also about making sure users can find the information they need and complete the tasks they want to do on your site.
But what if you’re more interested in optimizing for user experience than SEO? That’s totally fine—we have tips for both, so keep reading!
Conclusion
The key takeaway here is that you should focus on three main factors: loading speed, page speed and the number of HTTP requests. For example, if you have a lot of images or videos on your website, you should try to optimize them so they don’t slow down your site. And if there’s something that can be improved by using caching or a CDN service like Cloudflare - do it!