Speeding Up Your Website
Getting your site faster isn’t an easy task especially regarding Web Vitals. It can take a few weeks of testing over and over to find just the right balance for your site. In some cases, it can take months to overcome website speed issues.
Speeding Up Your Website

Guide to Improving Your Site Speed
While there are many aspects to speeding up pages, here are four key things to look at to improve page load time. Web Site Speed is critical now with the release and requirements for Core Web Vitals.
ThePixel has always been on the cutting edge regarding strategies and can help you pass and qualify your site for compliance in preparation for Googles Core algorithm (Core Web Vitals). Some of the elements of Web Vitas are latency, TTFB (Time to first byte), LCP, FID, CLS, first contextual paint, and overall load times.
Getting your site faster isn’t an easy task especially regarding Web Vitals. It can take a few weeks of testing over and over to find just the right balance for your site. In some cases, it can take months to overcome website speed issues.
Optimize Images
The most optimized format you can convert your images to in this day and age is Webp. Multiple WordPress plugins can do this for all your images, with some of the best ones being premium plugins that you have to pay for. One paid plugin to try on WordPress is Smush Pro. Smush Pro can go through all your files and compress them as well as compress new images. You can also use a free web tool at Compressor.io.
While there are other plugins and ways to compress your images without Webp, you won’t see the same compression ratio while keeping your images the same high quality. If you can’t use Webp, we recommend using JPGs for photos and PNGs for files where you don’t want to lose any quality when compressing them.
One of the easiest ways to optimize images is to resize them to the width they will be displayed on the page. If, for example, an image will be shown at 800px, don’t use a 2000px image file, resize it down to 800px. Fixing image size and compression can be done in Adobe Photoshop or other image editing programs such as GIMP, which is free.
Minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Websites typically load a myriad of Javascript and CSS files that can bloat the web browser. To achieve faster speeds, there are WordPress plugins that can do the job of minifying your code for you. This results in faster load times because things like long variable and function names are reduced.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDNs are a great way to speed up your site. They store copies of files from your website on servers across the globe so that when a user requests a file or images. The image or data is delivered from the closest server to their location. Our choice is Cloudflare. Cloudflare gives you the best bang for the buck and also includes a WAF (web application firewall) to help mitigate bad bots and hacking attempts, especially the dreaded DDoS attacks. To get set up, you’ll need to change your DNS to use CloudFlare’s DNS, so have your domain registrar ready.
Use Browser Caching
Browser caching can be a great tool, but sometimes it’s a double-edged sword. If configured correctly, the user can view pages on your site without having to re-download all the files. However, by allowing data to be cached on the user’s computer, sometimes an older version of a file can be served.
If you are using WordPress, you can easily enable caching using the plugin W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket (our choose). Just navigate to Page Cache under General Settings to enable it. If you are not using WordPress, you can enable caching in your .htaccess file if you are using Apache. Caching can speed up performance by up to 10x.
Why Does Site Speed Matter to SEO?
Not all ranking factors are aspects of your site that you can control. For example, you can’t control how many backlinks you have. It’s up to the owners of websites if they want to give you a link. However, page speed is a factor that you have complete control over.
It’s up to you if you want to compress images, use a CDN, cache files, and minify resources so that your site loads faster. Having a fast loading site benefits you in multiple ways. First off, people are less likely to bounce if your website comes up right away. If it takes too long to load, people will leave before they even see the content on your site.
And the worst part is Google and other search engines, actively measure your page’s bounce rate. So, if you can improve your load times, you’ll be doing a favor for your company not just in that more people will engage with your site, but that your search engine rankings will improve.
If you don’t think you can tackle all the aspects of a fast loading site on your own, don’t worry. We’re here to help. Test our website out to see how skilled we are at improving page speed. We have top ranks on all the testing tools out there. Contact us today to receive a free quote on how we can help you improve your site’s speed.
Page Speed is a Ranking Factor
Page speed is a significant factor for search engines such as Google. If your site takes too long to load, users will abandon your site and search engines look at that. Web site speed is the case for both mobile and desktop versions of your website. Both formats need to load quickly with an emphasis on mobile.
When too many people abandon your site, search engines will adjust your ranks accordingly. They look at it as users not being able to find what’s on your page regardless of if the information is there. If people leave before they can see the content because your site loads too slow, you know you need to fix those issues on your website.
How Poor Load Speed Affects Your Bottom Line
Users expect a website to load in no longer than two seconds or less. If it takes three seconds, they tend to start abandoning the pages. Furthermore, when your site takes too long to load, shoppers say they won’t return to make a purchase later, and nearly half of shoppers say they would share that experience with a friend.
Research from Akamai reveals that a two-second delay in page load time increases the bounce rate by more than 100%. A one-second delay in page speed could cost you 7% in sales.
How to Check Your Page Speed
Want to see how your website performs? Here are a few tools to help you.
With these four PageSpeed tools, you’ll have a better idea of how well you’re doing and what areas you can improve your page speed in. The slower your page loads, the more frustrated your users will be, and the less likely you will be able to achieve a high rank. Follow the advice presented by the tools and rerun the tests until you get a good grade.
Why Page Speed Matters for Local Search
With Google ranking local sites higher to showcase local businesses lately, what better time to work on page speed then when you are so close to being in the number one position for local results? You may think, why do I need to work on page speed when Google is already placing my site in a higher position for local searches? The answer is that you’d be missing out on an excellent opportunity for even more business.
Page speed is something you have full control of, so why not take advantage of your chance to stand out and get more revenue? With a fast site on both mobile and desktop, your users are more likely to make a purchase.
How to Increase Your Page Speed for Your Mobile Site
Increasing your mobile page speed is similar to increasing your desktop page speed, but there are several changes you can implement to ensure a fast load time:
Utilize HTTP/2. HTTP/2 is becoming the new standard, thanks to more efficient compression, prioritization, and loading of data. HTTP/2 loads data faster and more efficiently. With HTTP/2, everything is loaded at once. That’s crucial when you consider the short amount of patience people have when using a mobile. Note that HTTP/3 is on the way and will be released shortly. HTTP/3 will dramatically increase load times that will be faster than HTTP/2
Offer a different experience for mobile than your desktop site. Responsive design means more than merely having content on your website resized. Your site should offer a different experience for the mobile user. This may include a hamburger menu that expands when clicked on instead of taking up valuable space showing the whole menu. A site that is simply a scaled-down version of the desktop site doesn’t offer the user the type of experience that will have them stay on your website and possibly make a purchase.
Mobile users know what they’re looking for when they visit a site. And that does not include overwhelming ads and images that take up the whole screen. Get your content loading correctly for mobile users, and you will see an increase in engagement and ranks.
Other Recommendations for Improving Page Speed
ThePixel is a website design, seo and digital marketing company located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Our website designs are custom designed for your unique brand and online presence. Since 2008, ThePixel has worked with hundreds of businesses to design, develop and launch their perfect website that lasts for years.
All Pixel websites are backed with a powerful content management system, search engine optimization and a modern mobile-friendly design. Let’s start building the website of your dreams – one that generates traffic, leads and conversions. Contact ThePixel and one of our representatives will guide you through the website phases and how the process works either by a Zoom Meeting or phone.