Your site’s load time is now a decent weight in the ability for your site to rank highly. Major search engines, like Google, acknowledge this as fact now. Why would a search engine care how quickly your site loads? Search engines want to provide searchers with the best and most accurate search experience. Not only do they want to provide accurate search results, but they also want to include a pleasant experience with the sites that the search engines recommend. Part of that experience involves getting users the results they want immediately, or as quick as possible. Your site’s load time plays part a in that quick search experience.
If you are running a static site you should minimize the amount of html and table data that is within your site’s files.
- Avoid excessive, unnecessary pages or content
If you are using a CMS (Content Management System), there are usually a few options to increase your site load time nowaday.
- Add or enable a caching module or plugin
Caching modules for CMS’s take a “snapshot” of your site’s pages and archive them. This allows your site to serve the already stored archive much quicker than trying to generate a new, dynamic page. Usually, pages are pretty consistent and their content does not change regularly, other than maybe a home page. With a caching module this allows your CMS to archive any and all pages so that it can load that previously stored “snapshot” much quicker. To your visitor, it makes no difference at all. Most CMS’s will also automaticaly update the cache of any page any time it detects that its content has been updated. If your CMS does not, or you are unsure, simple ask your us and we can typically research your CMS’s setup immediately.