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Why Fast Loading of Website is Important to Rank in Google Search?

The prime purpose that a website serves is to generate information quicker and faster than other existing mediums. Fast loading time for a website is as important as having the website. With new breed of impatient users coming up a slow website will not hold much importance in the long run. Increase in mobile users has heightened the importance of fast and accurate user interface. Website performance significantly influences business.

Some facts based on Accumulated data that prove the Importance of Page Speed:

 

(I) A general overview suggests that most web users expect web pages to load within a span of 2 seconds. Whenever there is a 3 second lapse 40% users are expected to give up on the search entirely.

(II) During 2011 Presidential Campaign carried out by Obama’s lobby it was found that there was a substantial rise in web traffic generating $34 million. This was due to pacing up the load time of the website from 5 seconds to a faster 2 seconds.

(III) With importance of mobile users gaining breathtakingly it has been observed that 85% of mobile users expect websites to load faster than on desktops and laptops.

(IV) Google has labelled websites as ‘slow’ in their search results which came as a warning for users that certain website was unacceptable slow.

(V) Google is reportedly known to include the speed of websites in its search result ranking algorithm.

Tips to Load Faster Web Pages

We cannot continue having a slow loading website as gaining a foothold in rankings and search results is all that matters. Here are a few tips that will come in handy for you in working up the loading time for your website:

• Image Optimisation – Images form an integral part of page downloads so they must be optimised. This will be a big boost for loading time. Number of images along with efficient image formats (such as JPEG, GIF or PNG-8.) must be limited. Efficient image compression settings must be followed that will attain good load time.

• Web Hosting – This should be taken care of. A quality web hosting must be performed. Cost effective solutions are important but that can be pricey if thousands of websites are hosted on a single server.

• Optimise the database – This is a vital step as it requires for you to upgrade database queries. Only the necessary indexes must be included in the database. Heavy queries having large results and numerous queries must be avoided. Important database queries must be cached.

• Caching is very important – Caching your data is important no matter how much fear you face in losing control of your content. By having HTTP headers for caching headache of losing control might be erased because browsers and proxies will cache the web pages. Having Apache module mod_expires on your server will be of great help. Enabling caching of static resources across servers will speed up the user experience of returning visitors.

• Content Compression – Unnecessary content such as comments, codes and white spaces must be removed. JavaScript and CSS must be minified taking the help from ‘YUI Compressor’ and ‘CSS Compressor’ respectively. File size reduction will lead to boost in website performance. Minifying HTML with ‘HTML Compress’ and optimizing HTML codes using ‘PageSpeed Insights Chrome Extension’ will be effective in overall increase in website speed.

• Use External Files – Browser caches JavaScript and CSS files so using external files will help web pages to load faster. Moving the JavaScript elements to the bottom of the page and CSS based pages using CSS in the header will allow the page to load faster.

Fast loading of a website is important as it takes persistent efforts. Steps like checking and removing redundant information is important. Changing and updating of website technicalities will help build an efficient website.

Now that you have a better understanding of the terms, if you are not happy with your website’s page load time… then talk to us or contact at http://www.radikal-labs.com/contact