Page Speed and SEO

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Lesson 9 of 12
4m read.
Beginner

When it comes to page speed, nobody ever complained or said that “a page was too fast.”

A fast-loading website greatly impacts user experience. It is therefore imperative for every website to have good loading speeds.

In this guide, we’ll review some ways to improve page speeds. These are the topics we’ll be covering:

  1. Measuring page speed
  2. Getting a good host
  3. Plugins that help your WordPress site load faster

1. Measure Load Time

Importance of a fast page
Importance of a fast page

Having great content on your pages is essential. But, if your pages are slow, they will never reflect the effort you have invested in your website. And sadly, it will affect your website ranking since search engines use page speed as a ranking factor.

The most typical mistake people make regarding website speed is focusing on page performance scores. This is a vanity metric.

Your users don’t care about page scores. They care more about the time your page takes to load.  So, it is what you should focus on at this moment. Aim for a page load speed of fewer than 3 seconds.

How to measure page speed

Nobody ever cares when a page loads fast, but users will always notice when your pages are slow. But how do you know your page speed?

Measuring your Load time Speed
Measuring your Load time Speed

GTmetrix – This tool provides you with different performance metrics based on site speed. These can be analysed and optimised to improve the performance of your site. On the GTmetrix homepage, simply enter your site URL, and click “test your site” to run the test. Find more about how to use GTmetrix from the lesson material.

Page Speed Insights – With this tool, paste your URL in and see your website’s page speed insights. What you should focus on is the loading time in seconds. Anything above 3 seconds is considered slow for some users. Learn more about Google’s PageSpeed Insights from the lesson material.

Common causes of slow page loading

  • Poor hosting service
  • Location of server
  • Image sizes
  • A large number of plugins
  • Inadequate caching techniques
  • Bulky site code

2. The Right Web Host

Having the right hosting platform is one of the most important aspects of any web page. The right host should be fast, secure, stable, and with good support.

There is no sense in having free hosting for your site but experiencing terrible page load speeds, poor support, etc. You’ll get your money’s worth investing in a premium hosting service that knows WordPress.

Our recommendations for good web hosting providers

Managed WordPress web host providers
Managed WordPress web host providers

WP-Engine

At MRK, our hosting provider of choice is WP-Engine. This is a managed WordPress hosting platform. In other words, it is a service that comes with multiple features and support, enabling sites to run efficiently, securely, and at high load speeds, saving time, technical workforce expense, and much better site performance.

Here is our recent review on WP Engine.

Kinsta

Kinsta is another managed WordPress hosting provider. It runs on Google cloud servers, making it exceptionally fast with built-in redundancy.

Kinsta has a variety of package plans that one can choose from, as seen on the official website.

3. Plugins that help your WordPress site load faster

Here are some tools that can help improve your page load speed.

WordPress Plugins to Boost Page Speed.

I. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is one of the most popular caching plugins for WordPress that will improve your website’s performance. It has many speed-boosting features such as page cache, Image lazy loading, CDN integration, etc.

Learn more on how you can install and set up WP Rocket in WordPress from the lesson material.

II. WP Smush.

Smushing reduces the file size of your images so that they load faster on the website. When you smush an image, you reduce its size without compromising the quality. It is essential because smaller image files load faster. Hence, improving your website’s speed and performance.

To start using WP Smush, you must install and activate the Plugin in WordPress. Then, it will automatically smush all your images.