This continues our discussion about “page speed” and what’s needed to stay competitive in organic search rankings. If you missed first blog, go here.
Though Google said that it expects fewer than 1% of search queries to change as a result of incorporating site speed ranking to their algorithms, many site owners want to improve page speed now. Here’s three simple, straightforward ways you can.
Optimize Your Images
If your images are not optimized, they can significantly increase page load times. The problem comes when images are scaled down to fit the application rather than physically being resized. What this does is require the browser to load the full high-resolution image, when it only needs a fraction. Several free file size calculators can help you do this.
Optimize Your Files
Having clean HTML, CSS and other files can speed up your site load time. A good idea is to remove extraneous and old code from your files.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Trimming the number of components on a page can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to render a page—and in turn, shorten your page load times. Combining files using CSS Sprites is an additional way to improve page speeds.
All of the ideas above are good, but the most important strategy to keep your users and Google happy is continuing to deliver relevant content. Relevancy will always be a priority to Google; site speed a bonus.