In an online world where ranking as high as you possibly can in Google is paramount, the one determining factor that commonly gets ignored is website speed.
Most tech companies throw website speed on the back burner behind other SEO strategies such as keyword research, blogging and link building, but site speed is an important part of Google’s ranking algorithm AND it’ll give you an advantage over your slowpoke competitors in the search results.
Put on your running shoes…let’s get started.
1. Optimize image size
Many B2B technology companies mistakenly upload the biggest image they have thinking higher resolution is better. But did you know that images are usually the largest resource on a web page in terms of file size?
By compressing images and removing metadata, you can reduce an image’s file size significantly. An optimized image requires less server space, which requires less bandwidth to load, which results in a faster page load time. Zoom.
DIY Solution: We love WP Smush to compress and optimize images on WordPress websites.
2. Leverage browser caching
Browser caching is a way for a website to tell a browser (like Chrome or Firefox) to cache images, CSS and JavaScript files locally on their system. Since a browser can pull resources more quickly from the computer it’s running on—rather than a remote web server—it’ll load pages much faster.
DIY Solution: add browser caching code to your HTAccess file.
3. Pass on cheap hosting
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. So don't be fooled into thinking GoDaddy's $5.99/month package is a great value for a professional website.
Cheap hosting usually means your site will be on the same server as hundreds—maybe even thousands—of other websites. This can cause slow load times and frequent server crashes, especially if your website neighbors aren't keeping up-to-date with security best practices. In addition, cheap hosting usually means you’ll have very limited server resources, such as storage, RAM and bandwidth.
DIY Solution: We’d recommend using WP Engine for mid-sized B2B tech companies.
4. Use a content delivery network (CDN)
For the typical (non-geeky) marketer, a CDN is…
“a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server. This service is effective in speeding the delivery of content of websites with high traffic and websites that have global reach. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered to the user.” Vangie Beal, Webopedia (follow her on Twitter)
In short, CDNs take the load off the web server by handling the loading of static resources (images, CSS, JavaScript). Users will receive those static resources from the closest server in the CDN network, greatly increasing page load speeds.
DIY Solution: Amazon CloudFront is hands down the best CDN.
5. Minify Javascript and CSS
Minifying JavaScript and CSS removes all the extra space developers add to make code easily readable, as well as any developer comments in the code. This decreases the file size, which allows your site to load more quickly.
DIY Solution: We love using UglifyJS to minify JavaScript and cssnano to minify CSS.
Before you make any changes, use GTmetrix to see your site's performance score. After you (or your developer) implement the changes above, run the test again.
How much did your score go up?
Our score has increased by 33% since making the changes above. We hope that you’ll see similar results!
