Speed Up Your Website to Increase Traffic
Published October 06, 2008
Would you like to bring more traffic to your website? Most webmasters underestimate the power of speed. While following search engine optimization guidelines and providing information-rich content is key to gaining traffic, most people won't bother staying on a page with longer load times. In fact, waiting longer than 10 seconds for a page to load will make their mouses fervently click the back button.
According to a study conducted by Akamai Technologies, consumers are only willing to wait a maximum of four seconds for a website to load. Websites that exceeded that time limit were ranked poor by most consumers, and subsequently received less business. Further evidence also indicates this ADD-trend is here to stay, including a informal study conducted by Google. According to Marissa Mayer of Google.com, lowering the size of its map-related website, Google Maps, by just 20% resulted in 10% more traffic within the first week. This test also revealed consumers explored more sections with the increased loading time. Another study conducted by Zona Research also reveals a startling trend: one third of consumers who waited eight seconds or longer for a page to load simply visited another site. The message is clear with all three studies -- speed matters. Not only will you gain a bigger customer base, but you will also gain more traffic to other areas of your website.
Sound surprising? Not to SEO experts. SEO experts have known these facts for years, and they know the attention span of the average web browsing addict is painfully short. According to SEO experts, getting information quickly is the consumer's motto, and if a web site can't provide speedy access to the information they need, it's time to say goodbye to any potential traffic. As harsh as this reality sounds, webmasters need to keep up with these demands in order to increase their traffic -- and to keep that traffic coming back.
Because of this fact alone, decreasing the page size of your website -- and thus increasing the load time speed -- is essential if you want to increase traffic to your website. Here are some simple ways to decrease the loading time of your website.
Three Basic Ways to Lower Website Loading Time
Beyond minimizing the size of images and staying away from Flash animations (which can dramatically increase website loading time), webmasters have a number of tools for readily decreasing their site's loading time. Three useful methods include utilizing HTTP compression, making good use of website caching, and properly optimizing the HTML setup of your website.
HTTP Compression
An excellent way to speed up loading times is through HTTP Compression, a process which shortens the transfer rate between a web server and a browser. When a website goes through the HTTP Compression process, the information used to load the website is compressed into a smaller format, enabling browsers and servers to connect quickly, resulting in a quicker loading time. The web server takes less time to communicate with the web browser, which uses less bandwidth and speeds up loading time. Nearly all browsers support HTTP compression capabilities.
Websites that feature too many images or other media files unfortunately will not benefit from this, as these files are already compressed, making HTTP compression useless. Formats not yet compressed, such as HTML, CSS, and plain text can be compressed to increase loading time. Websites that feature an abundance of these elements should seek HTTP compression as an easy way to speed up loading time significantly. According to experts, you can speed up loading time by as high as 80%.
The most popular method of HTTP Compression is gzip, a software application designed to replace Unix's original compression program. This is available for all platforms and is available for free on its website. Learn more about using this compression program through gzip.
To fully implement this compression process into your website, you will need to configure your server to correctly use the file. To learn more about how to get your server to correctly download the compressed files for proper display on your website, visit Interactive HTML’s guide about implementing it with your server tools, including the importance of obgzhandler.
Website Caching
For those that cannot reduce the size of images and other non-HTML widgets on their website, caching is a wonderful alternative with plenty of advantages. You may be familiar with browser caching, the process where a website forces browsers to create temporary files of commonly used website documents. This is not the only way caching can be implemented.
There are two types of caching, browser side and server side caching; webmasters should focus on server side caching methods to increase the loading time of your website. Server side caching ensures that web pages are updated less frequently, lessening the load on the server and allowing websites to load faster. Jpcache is one example of a server side caching system. Jpcache, a caching system for PHP, generates pages less frequently from the server, lessening server load. It speeds up loading time by up to 80%. With jpcache, it only caches the output of website pages, instead of referencing and loading the php-page. Jpcache also uses gzip, which will benefit webmasters who already use HTTP Compression to save bandwidth.
By caching, the loading process is sped up considerably for your returning visitors. Even if you don't use jpcache (or any other server side caching methods), you can still use caching to your benefit. The websites below provide more information about this process.
Optimizing the HTML Setup of Your Website
The simplest way to speed up your website's loading time is by optimizing the actual HTML content of your website. If you run your own website, this is a practical solution. Optimizing HTML in a nutshell is simple: simply go through your HTML spreadsheet (the file where HTML is inserted to create your website – it should have a .html extension) and eliminate any duplicate content. The goal is to use as little HTML as possible so that the web server needs to load less code when accessed. Here are some other areas to look for:
Redundant use of font and design-related tags. Using HTML to modify the look of your website is useless and adds too much code, and the same effects can be created by using CSS. CSS is different from HTML and directly impacts the look of a website (including font, how it displays links, etc.) with one code instead of several.
Insert Javascript files into separate files instead. If you're inserting actual Javascript code into your HTML spreadsheet, it's time to end this practice. This severely decreases how fast your website loads due to the amount of code used – using the same code on every page isn't needed and can be reduced. Instead of putting it into your HTML spreadsheet, save it in a different file and reference that file when compiling your HTML spreadsheet. These directions on managing external javascript files give an in-depth explanation on how you can implement this on your website.
Change how you save images. Some webmasters don't consider the image's size when designing a website, but images tend to take up over half of a website's actual size. Decrease the size by decreasing the colors used in the image (you will need an image editing program to edit this), decreasing the dimensions, and saving in .jpeg format instead of .png or other formats.
As you can see, loading times are crucial to gaining traffic and keeping visitors on your site. According to industry experts, a faster loading website equals more traffic, and all it takes is simply implementing three methods into your website.
HTTP Compression is one effective way to reduce the loading time, and paired with website caching, dramatically speeds up how fast your website loads – hopefully to the four second threshold to gain more traffic. Webmasters can also utilize simple tools, such as limiting the amount of HTML and image size, for a quick way to speed up loading times. Implement all three of these tools to quicken the loading time of your website and to increase traffic permanently.
To gain access to the most up-to-date SEO strategies, fill out the form below to sign up for our newsletter. This newsletter will help you know what Google's up to as well as how you can get your website ranking higher without raising any red flags.
Read Related Articles About On Page SEO
- How to Build Relationships and Your Brand With the New Google Images
It?s virtually impossible to say ?SEO? without thinking ?Google.? Google has always been THE search engine to figure out in the world of internet marketing. If you can utilize the free tools they offer, your SEO campaign will be dramatically better than a campaign which does not. - What We Know: a Guide to "The New SEO"
We can't know everything ? especially after the latest algorithm re-haul. After extensive testing and trial-and-error, though, we've been able to determine a framework for getting real results on the search engine positions. - Taking a "Value First, SEO Second" Approach to Internet Marketing
SEO is, by far, the top strategy used by internet marketers and online business owners. It's easy to see why ? with SEO, you open the floodgates to thousands of unique and "targeted" visitors. These people are searching for a website in your niche, so naturally, once they find it, they?ll be likely to buy your product/service. - Three Examples of a Solid Keyword Strategy
It's not that NONE of the old SEO strategies work ? it's just that SEO is in a near constant state of evolution. The best internet marketers realize this and plan ahead with their SEO strategies. When Google makes a change to their algorithm, savvy internet marketers make changes to their SEO campaigns, ensuring their websites stay on page #1 regardless of what Google's doing. - Five Ways to Make Your SEO Process More Organic to Users and Search Engines
Most marketers know that they need to make their SEO and content creation process more organic. If your link building or your content creation appears unnatural or ?spammy,? you can end up setting yourself back weeks or even months in your endeavor to achieve favorable search engine rankings. - Where the Duplicate Content Rule Came from And How it Really Impacts Your SEO
If you have been spending a lot of money on creating hundreds of unique articles or spinning articles in order to create enough unique content for your article submissions, this might be one of the most important things you?ve read in a long time. Contrary to what many have come to believe, content duplication is something which you can use in your content marketing strategy, and if you do it right, it won?t hurt your SEO. - Five Creative Ways to Add Value and Credibility to Your Website
Value and credibility are the two most important factors when it comes to growing your website. Although they are synergistic (meaning when you focus on one, the other one also improves), you should always be putting yourself in the position of your viewers when building a website. - When Seconds Count: The Importance of Fast Loading Times
Search engines are becoming more conscious of loading times when it comes to determining the rank of your website and also PPC quality scores. However, just how important is page load time the owner of the website? Does it really make that big of a difference when it comes to the bottom line goal for your website to generate qualified traffic and to achieve conversions? In this article, we'll be looking at some spastics which might surprise you about the difference which your page load time makes. - How to Create Well Optimized and Natural Sounding Content
When it comes to creating content for your website or articles for building links back, it can be difficult to create something which is well optimized with your target keywords but which also looks smooth and natural to your human readers. Optimized, keyword rich content often sounds mechanical and even grammatically incorrect, especially when it comes to optimizing for long tail keywords. - SEO Site Structure Principles
Learn the important guidelines for properly structuring your site for search engines. - Using Silo Structure or Maximum On Page SEO Effectiveness
A common problem for on page optimization is keeping the content within your website organized so that the search engines can make a clear distinction as to the theme or your pages. - Five Simple Things You Can Do to Increase Conversions On Your Website
The ultimate goal of having a website is to generate more business for your organization. This is true whether your objective is to generate more leads for off-line services, sell shippable products, sell memberships or sell downloadable products. Of course, one way to do this is to achieve a higher ranking with the search engines and to thus attract more traffic to your site. - How to Optimize Your Meta-titles, Descriptions and Keywords
The term "meta data" is used to describe information within the coding of your site that the search engines use to index your site. The search engine companies send programs called "spiders" out to gather information about your site and determine how to display it in the search results page. - How to Use Effective Meta Tags
Learn how to effectively use meta-tags to increase your search engine visibilty and referral traffic. - How Do Outbound Links Affect SEO?
Find out the impact of outbound linking on your site's SEO and the best strategies for building outbound links. - Alt Tags and Other Image Optimization Tools
Having an attractive site is important for making a good first impression on your visitors. This is why it's crucial that you use great looking images to accompany your site copy and to communicate the overall "personality" of your company. - Traffic Conversion Strategies
Learn several great strategies for improving conversions on your website. - How Analytics Tools Can Guide Your SEO Efforts
Learn how and which analytics tools can improve your SEO efforts. - Split Testing to Improve Your Site's Performance
Learn how split testing can greatly improve conversions and user behaviors on your site. - Are Doorway Pages an Effective SEO Technique?
Learn about doorway pages, how they work, and if they are an effective SEO technique. - How to Optimize Your PPC Landing Page for the Google Quality Score
Pay per click (PPC) marketing can prove to be an effective tool for driving traffic to your site and testing variables to optimize your traffic conversion. However, succeeding at PPC marketing takes more than just placing a bid per click that will get you in the top position. It’s also important that your website’s “quality score” is up to par. Without a great quality score,
All Categories:
- Basic SEO (19 articles)
- Online Marketing Tips (18 articles)
- Off Page SEO (13 articles)
- Social Media Marketing (12 articles)
- Seo Product Reviews (4 articles)
- SEO News (6 articles)
- SEO Content Creation (14 articles)
- SEO Programming Topics (14 articles)
- How to Avoid SEO Pitfalls (9 articles)
- SEO Outsourcing (6 articles)
- How to Get More Traffic (10 articles)
- Advanced SEO Strategies (2 articles)
Warning: file_get_contents(https://graph.facebook.com/comments/?ids=http://www.seositecheckup.com/articles/4) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 500 Internal Server Error in /home/jjoczpw/public_html/article.php on line 184