What is Page Speed? And How to Improve Page Loading Speed in 2023

Nicholas Amundson

August 19, 2021
12 min read

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When it comes to the performance of your website, page speed is essential.

So, you may find it impossible to improve until you know how this metric works and the factors that drive it.

Your website pages must load quickly and efficiently to lower the bounce rate and boost visitor engagement.

A website optimized for page speed not only improves the user experience (UX) but may also help you rank higher in search engines.

In this blog, we’ll explain what page speed is, why it’s essential, and show you how to measure it. Then we’ll give you nine fast ways to improve website page loading speed.

What is Page Speed?

Page speed generally refers to how the content loads when anyone visits a page on your website. Page speed is not to be misunderstood with website speed; it indicates the time it takes for a given page to load.

Many things can affect page speed. We have tried to cover the most important are:

Exactly, how many images, video files, and other types of media assets are on the page?
What themes and plugins do you have installed on your website?
Coding and server-side scripts for your website and individual pages.
Your website hosting and server response times.

All these factors can affect page loading speed and, as a result, the user experience of your website. Visitors despise slow-loading pages and thus are more likely to leave them.

Why is Page Speed Critical?

Every second matters when it comes to website page load speed. According to Google research, increasing loading times from one to 3 seconds increases the chance of a bounce. The visitor leaving straight away by 32%.

If the page takes 5 seconds to load, the chance of a bounce increases by 90%:

To put it another way, if your pages don’t load within a few seconds, users are more likely to abandon your site. But, if your web pages are slow, you will be less able to drive conversions and sales.

Page speed is critical in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That is because Google has so many factors when determining how to rank web pages on search results.

But speed is an essential ranking factor, including both desktop and mobile searches.

The other possible explanation page speed is critical. It might impact c customer’s feel about your brand unless your pages take a very long time to load.

Or if something goes wrong throughout the process, you will appear unprofessional. As a result, your website will be untrustworthy.

To drive an effective website, you should focus on page speed optimization. The very first step is to determine how your web pages are currently doing.

How to Measure Page Speed

Before actually performing any improvements on your website, you should analyze the performance of your web pages.

There are several free tools available to test and analyze page speed. Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test. And GTmetrix is the most popular and straightforward tool option to use.

If you are a newbie, we recommend starting with Google PageSpeed Insights. It is a quick and easy tool for measuring and testing the performance of your web pages.

You can test your performance results on both desktop and mobile devices.

Also, It’s a Google-supported tool. Thus, it may assist you in ensuring that you are meeting the performance steps necessary for top search result rankings.

For using PageSpeed Insights, enter the URL of the web page you wanted to try into the text field. And then click the Analyze button:

PageSpeed Insights will analyze the web content and score it on a scale from 0 to 100. Underneath this result, you’ll find several recommendations for improving page loading speed:

It’s important to note that you’ll receive a different score. And set of recommendations for your site’s desktop and mobile versions.

Still, this data provides a strong starting point for determining how quick and efficient your web pages are. As well as concrete activities you can take to reduce page loading speeds.

9 Simple Strategies to Improve Page Loading Speed

So now you understand the significance of page speed. And how to analyze the website performance. It’s time to improve this important measure.

Here are nine simple strategies to help your websites load faster with all that in mind.

1. Choose a performance-optimized hosting solution.

The hosting service you choose has a significant impact on the management. And the performance of your website.

It also includes the website page speed. Using poor hosting in return for a low monthly charge is one of the biggest failures you can make.

Cheap hosting is often correlated with poor performance. That might signify sharing infrastructure amongst many websites on an overburdened server. That can sometimes result in slower page loading times.

But, some performance-focused web hosting options are available. That offers a robust platform with high performance for speed. Besides, these hosting companies often do not provide shared hosting.

So, you would never have to worry about other sites reducing your pool of potential resources.

2. Compress and optimize your images.

Images improve the look and feel of your web pages and the effectiveness of your content. So, large images could cause delays in loading times.

As a result, one of the simplest methods to improve page loading speeds is, thus, to compress and optimize your images. These may include changing image formats.

Activating lazy loading and reducing images using lossy and lossless compression.

By reducing the file sizes of your images, you can reduce their “weight,” helping your pages load faster. WP Smush is one image optimization plugin that you can use to optimize your images.

Install and activate the plugin on your website. It resizes and compresses all your posts and page images without losing quality. It has options for lossless compression, slow loading, and bulk image optimization.

If you aren’t using WordPress as your CMS, you may need to use tinypng or Attrock. It can compress image sizes by up to 80% without losing quality. You can also use Squoosh, one of the best free web applications.

3. Reduce your redirects.

A website with too many redirects can affect page load times. For example, every time a page redirects to another location. As a result, the HTTP request and response process are prolonged.

After all, redirects may be essential in certain situations, such as moving to a new domain. But, removing unwanted redirects from your site often results in far better page loading times.

There are several methods for reducing redirection in WordPress. One is to avoid making ones that aren’t essential while building internal links and menus.

Another consideration is that your top-level domain (TLD) wants to resolve with no more than one redirection.

If you need help discovering configured redirects on your site. Then, you can try the Patrick Sexton Redirect mapper tool:

It will show you whether there are any duplicate redirects. You may also use a tool like Screaming Frog to detect all your site’s redirections and where they link.

It should make it simpler to see redirects that aren’t doing anything useful. Then, using your site’s.htaccess file, remove the ones you may not need.

4. Cache your web pages.

Caching is the most effective method for increasing the speed of your web pages. That is because caching preserves copies of your site’s files.

And reducing the work required for the server to create, maintain, and serve a page to a visitor’s browser.

Caching existing web pages can benefit reduce that. The Time to First Byte (TTFB) is reduced by enabling the server to spend fewer resources loading a page.

There are many ways of caching your web pages. It is something you could do at the server level, which means your host will manage it for you.

Another alternative is installing a caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin that facilitates fast caching of your web pages.

When you’ve installed and activated it, go to General Settings, Page Cache, and check the Enable option.

5. Enable browser caching.

One more type of caching that you may use to increase page loading speeds is browser caching. Such a solution allows the browser to save a set of information. Such as JavaScript files, images, and stylesheets. So that the page does not have to be reloaded each time the user accesses it.

WP Rocket is an excellent caching plugin for your WordPress site. That works similarly to W3 Total Cache. It uses page caching and cache preloading to improve the performance of your pages. And provide lightning-fast loading speeds.

It is essential to mention that WP Rocket is not a free plugin. It’s a premium plugin that comes with different pricing plans to choose from.

6. Use asynchronous and delayed loading for your CSS and JavaScript files.

CSS and JavaScript are used to build your website. These scripts can be loaded in either synchronous or asynchronous mode.

Synchronously signifies that the files load simultaneously, in the order that they appear on the website.

So, when a browser encounters a script using this approach, it will halt loading other content on the page until a specific file is fully loaded first.

But asynchronous loading allows many files to load almost simultaneously. That can help in improving page performance. It thus requires the elimination of render-blocking resources.

Using WordPress. You can do this task using the Autoptimize and Async JavaScript plugins.

7. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.

Optimizing the way your files load can boost page loading speed. Minifying your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code can help you achieve the same result.

But it requires eliminating unwanted spaces, text, and comments. And other elements to reduce file size.

Reducing the size of your files also makes them easier to merge. As a result, the code is cleaner, and the web pages are lighter and load faster.

After all, looking over every line of code for every file on your site is inefficient.

Instead, use Autoptimize, a free plugin, to minify your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. This powerful plugin makes it simple to combine and minify your scripts and styles:

Configuring this plugin might be intimidating at first due to the large number of functions and options it provides.

Check out this article on how to set up Autoptimize on your website and make your work easier. On your website and make your job easier.

8. Leverage a content delivery network (CDN).

A Content Delivery Network (CDN), also known as a ‘content distribution network,’ is a network of servers that can aid in the speed of page loading.

It does all that by hosting and distributing replicas of your site’s static content across servers placed all over the globe.

A CDN works with your host rather than replacing it. Apart from the server that serves your main site. You may use a CDN to distribute copies of your website’s files across selected data centers.

It can improve performance by shortening the distance. That data requests must traverse thru browsers and your host’s servers. A CDN reduces network latency.

And it provides minimal TTFBs by loading content for a web page from a server nearby to every visitor.

You have several best CDN alternatives to choose from, and one of them is to select a host that offers a CDN that you can enable from your dashboard.

9. Remove unnecessary plugins.

All the plugins are not made the same. If you are using too many plugins on your website, it can slow down your website.

Moreover, out-of-date or poorly maintained plugins can create a security risk. And introduce compatibility issues that degrade performance.

As a result, it’s an excellent option to limit the number of plugins you install and activate on your WordPress site.

After all, one of the simplest and most effective ways to achieve this is. That is to disable and delete any plugins you aren’t using.

We also encourage you to go over the plugins you’ve installed to see whether they’re essential. Some tools may have overlapping features and functionalities.

At the same time, others may no longer be important to your requirements.

Many plugins can cause your site to load slower than others. However, you may try each plugin one by one to find any slowing of your page speed.

First, disable all your plugins, and it’s best to do something on a staging website:

Then, one by one, re-activate them. After each plugin activation, use a performance testing tool like PageSpeed Insights.

To determine whether your scoring and duration have been affected.

These plugins can boost your page speed by a small percentage. Although, if you notice a sharp increase, it could be time to look for a different solution.

That performs the same function but is much more optimized.

Conclusion

Decreasing page loading speed helps your website’s complete performance, user experience, and SEO. Thankfully, there are various strategies you may apply to reduce your loading times.

On the other hand, use a CDN and cache your pages. You can leverage plugins to optimize your images prolong script loading. And minify your site’s files.

Using a performance-optimized hosting service will also significantly impact your website’s speed.

But, keep in mind that almost every second your web pages take to load. It increases the chances that your visitors will leave.

So how long can you keep running your business even though you are losing leads?