Is your website running slow? Do you think it could be impacting conversions or impacting your rankings? Well, it probably is.
Site speed and load times have a significant impact on how Google scores a website, and as part of their Core Web Vitals, if you don’t fall in line with a particular score then you’ll ultimately see pages slip down the rankings. There is tons of information about this available online, particularly from those within the website building industry.
Duda has a really useful blog, for example that delves into great detail around Core Web Vitals, load times and site speed, and typically if your site is running slow it’s usually down to a number of common denominators.
We’ve highlighted five of the most common reasons that your site might be running slow, and exactly how you fix them…
Unoptimized Imagery
One of the most common reasons is that your site has images that haven’t been optimized. High resolution images can be big files and take up a lot of load time, especially if you do have a large number on them.
If you have any imagery on your site in which the file size is more than 1MB then it’s a good idea to rectify that. Firstly, look at the image type. If you’re using a PNG or GIF file then it may be worth converting them to JPEGs which offer just as much quality but are a smaller file size. This could well be the problem and will rectify it pretty quickly.
A Large Volume of HTTP Requests
What you may find is that having a large number of files across the likes of JavaScript, CSS and image files can lead to an awful lot of HTTP requests in order for your site to fully load. This can reduce page load speed dramatically, which is one of the key ranking factors within Google’s Core Web Vitals.
The best option is to remove any unnecessary files from the page and limit the number of HTTP requests that the user has to make to see your site. Using Sprites can be a good way to reduce the number of HTTP requests you use and make the pages on your site more efficient.
Untidy Coding
Alongside large image files, coding of the page can be a big problem when it comes to loading a page. More specifically, untidy coding. When building a website, elements such as excessive white spaces, unnecessary comments, empty new lines can all add to timing increases in your site being read and then displayed.
Ultimately, you need to compress the code and make it as minimal as possible to get the look and feel of the site you want. It’s a process known as minifying and is one of the most important tasks to undertake if you are suffering with a slow site.
A Bad Host
Bad load time speed may not actually be your fault, and it isn’t completely worth ruling out. If you have built your site with best practices in mind but still can’t figure out why your pages are loading slowly, it could be to do with your web hosting service provider.
This will have a major impact on site speed, and while most hosting services are fantastic, you may well have ended up with a dud. If there are no on-site issues you can see, get in touch with your host to see if there’s anything you can do, or potentially even consider finding a new one.
