Nederlands
One of the biggest annoyances for visitors is a slow website. If a visitor has to wait too long before the website loads, the visitor can drop out and go to another website.
The loading speed is one of the factors that Google looks at when determining your ranking in the search results. Reason enough to pay attention to this. Read below 5 tips to increase the loading speed of your website.
1. Optimize your images
Poorly optimized image can affect the loading speed of your website. It is always nice to show that you are creative and that you have a beautiful design, but it should not be at the expense of your visitors. Always use text where possible instead of an image. For example, if you create links to other pages, always use text. The use of image makes your page “heavier” and is also bad for your SEO. Reduce and optimize your image. This can be done very easily with the free PIXResizer program. Avoid shrinking using HTML. For example, if your image is 900 by 600 pixels and you need an image of 450 by 300 pixels, reduce it in advance and not via HTML. Place all your images in a folder on your server and avoid duplicate images. Also, make sure that the same image is not with different names on the server.
2. Take good hosting
Cheap is expensive, that can certainly apply to hosting. A cheap hosting package often means a lot of websites on a server and for a long time that the server and the website is not online. Always invest in good hosting.
3. Optimize the code of your website
Poorly written HTML, with tables, for example, will result in a slow loading website. Make sure that the code of your website is well written. You can check this with the W3C validator. Use CSS instead of layout in your HTML and place CSS and Javascript in external files. Load the CSS in the top (in the head of your page) and Javascript in the bottom of your page.
4. Optimize video
Adding video to your website can significantly lower your website speed. If you really need to stream your videos on your website, optimize them. Provide small video files. A much better option is to put the videos on YouTube and embed them on your website. Embed you place a reference to the video on YouTube on your website. It will not cost your website loading time. Moreover, it is good for your SEO to place your videos on YouTube.
5. Use a cache system
If your website uses a database to retrieve content, you can think of caching your pages. Instead of every time a visitor comes to a page, the data is retrieved from the database, this only needs to be done once. You can set yourself when the page should be refreshed in the cache (for example if you have adjusted the page). WordPress has a nice plugin for this, WP Super Cache.
6. Avoid beautiful scripts with no added value
Nice to show the weather for the next day on your website. But is it really of added value for your visitors? If it is not directly relevant to your website, delete it! What about the loading speed of your website? Do you already apply these tips? Do you have any good tips yourself? Then let us know in the comment field below. Do not forget to share this article on Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Thank you for reading!
Increase loading speed of your website
If you require any assistance in the above mentioned, or if you would like to rank higher in Google, please contact us today! At FML Marketing, we support our customers in The Netherlands, Marbella, and Estepona with Web Design, Search Engine Optimization and more!
