Organic Website Speed Optimization Tips to Improve Your Site

When browsing online, few things are more frustrating than visiting a website that takes forever to load. Chances are, you’ve found yourself clicking away and moving on to another site because of a website’s slow loading times. The last thing you want is for slow website speed to cause your own visitors to do the same.

Fortunately, while there are many issues that can slow down your site, fixing your website’s speed can be more straightforward than you might expect.

Why Website Speed Matters

There are many contributing factors that can affect your site speed, including some that you can’t directly control (like server issues, downtime, etc). Unfortunately, in an era when we find ourselves spoiled with high-speed internet and the ability to make transactions within the blink of an eye, your visitors demand a seamless user experience. Speed is crucial to this. The time it takes to load your website will impact whether visitors stick around or not.

A one-second delay in page load time yields:

• 11% fewer page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 7% loss in conversions

And that’s just one second! A site with load times of more than five seconds has a significantly higher bounce rate than its faster counterparts, which can also hurt your organic search results.

Tips to Improve Website Speed

At Site Rockstar, we understands the many hidden variables behind website performance and do our best to keep page speed issues from impacting your performance. However, it is still  important for you to be proactive about your web page performance. Even non-tech savvy website owners can follow straightforward optimization best practices to improve load times for a better user experience.

1. Choose a Hosting Plan That Fits Your Needs

Ever heard the saying that you get what you pay for? Depending on the size of your site and its core functions (i.e. eCommerce, dedicated blog, portfolio, etc), going cheaper may not always be the best option. A cheap hosting option may not be able to keep up with the amount of traffic your site gets or the number of static files you host. Too much traffic can increase load times, which will significantly reduce conversion rates as customers bounce to another site.

Because of this, you need a hosting package that offers you the load speed, memory and other necessary resources that will help your website function properly and seamlessly. Quality hosts optimize their content delivery network for speed optimization and uptime, even at times with heavy traffic from desktop and mobile users.

2. Reduce the Size of Your Site’s Media Assets

One of the biggest threats to your load times is the size of images and other media. The bigger the size of the files being served by your website, the longer the load times will be — regardless of the end user’s internet speed. No matter how good your web hosting provider is, it’s a good practice to imagine that all of your visitors have slower internet connections, and optimize file sizes accordingly.

To do this, you can compress the size of the images on your website with basic image optimization tools and reduce the number of self-hosted videos by using embedded YouTube links instead. You might also need a cumulative layout shift to improve your website speed and reliability.  Keeping your site’s pages as streamlined as possible by deleting unnecessary page content (especially media files) can help keep everything concise for faster response times and an improved user experience.

3. Keep the Total Number of Active Plugins Low

Plugins are an effective, convenient, and very useful way to jumpstart your WordPress website with extra functionality. However, when it comes to website speed optimization, those plugins can be a double-edged sword. Having too many active plugins will increase the number of requests a visitor’s browser makes when loading your website. This will inevitably make your website take longer to load, so try to minimize the overall number of active plugins.

In some cases, you may be able to consolidate tools so you have fewer total plugins using your website resources. You should also regularly evaluate existing plugins and check for out-of-date tools that haven’t been updated in a while, as these can also hurt site performance and speed. Keeping plugins up to date will improve overall performance metrics, enable faster load times, and keep your site secure.

Optimize Web Page Speed For Better Results

You can’t control everything that affects site speed — like a visitor’s outdated browser or slow internet connection. But this doesn’t diminish the importance of website speed. Faster websites that load quickly keep visitors engaged for the long haul. Your site’s speed affects how many people stick around, and how it will perform in Google search results.

If you’re not sure where to start with fixing a website that loads slowly, use Google PageSpeed Insights. Using tools like this can help you see how quickly a page loads and get initial insights to improve website performance.

At Site Rockstar, we understand the ins and outs of speed and performance and work diligently to help your website load faster. Don’t lose business or valuable leads because your website is taking too long to load — take care of your site, and it will start taking care of you. Contact us today to learn more about how our maintenance plans will help keep your website running efficiently for every visitor.