If you have read our beginner guide on search engine optimization (SEO) , you are probably aware of how important it is that your website has a good load time to be able to get good rankings in the search engines. In this article, we therefore share 5 ways to improve your charging time.



Why charging time is important

As we mentioned in the introduction, you are probably aware of why the charging time is important if you have read our previous guides. If, on the other hand, you do not know about this before, we thought we would start by sorting out just this.

Page Speed

Surveys that have been done show that internet users really think it is important to have a fast loading time on the websites you visit. Due to this, "Page Speed" has been used as a ranking factor by Google for some time. Which in short means that the faster it takes for your web page to load, the better it is for your rankings in search results.

However, this ranking factor has mainly focused on searches that have been done via computers, which will now change. Last week , Google announced that from July, it will also implement this ranking factor for searches made via mobile:

"People want to be able to find answers to their questions as quickly as possible - studies show that people really care about the speed of a page. Although speed has been used as a ranking signal for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches. Today we announce that the charging speed in July 2018 will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. "

Something that will place even higher demands on companies' websites and the design of these. However, this update is not the only thing that makes it more important to optimize the load time on your website…

Mobile First Index

A couple of months ago, they started rolling out their Mobile First Index , which in short means that the mobile website will now be the primary version that Google indexes.

This update is one of the biggest changes that has taken place in many years and also means a shifted focus for companies and us who actively work with SEO. However, it is worth pointing out that this rollout is taking place gradually, but to be at the forefront, it is important to start adapting already now!

Optimize the loading time of your website

Now that you have a better understanding of why a good loading time on your website is important, we thought we would show you 5 methods that you can use to optimize the loading time on your website.

Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP)

One of the things you can do to optimize the loading time of your web pages is to create so-called Accelerated Mobile Pages , also known as AMP pages. In practice, this means that an AMP page is stripped of knick-knacks. The various elements of the page are instead adapted to the AMP format.

At present, this means, among other things, that the images are AMP-adapted with clear dimensions and special endings. The same goes for fonts, videos and slide shows. This is what makes the pages take much less time to load.

The format is particularly suitable for news because speed is extra important for that type of content. Both for the writer who posts the news but also for the reader who wants to be able to read it quickly on the bus without taking up too much time or mobile data. Early tests showed that AMP pages loaded four times faster and used eight times less mobile data than other mobile-friendly pages.


Limit the comments

Regardless of the type of website you run, you probably have a comment field where your visitors have the opportunity to comment on a blog post or other content. Something that is incredibly important to start a conversation and create engagement among your visitors.

However, if you have hundreds of comments on a web page, this can slow down the loading time. To fix this, I would recommend that you limit the comments by introducing pagination. Something that in short means that with a certain number of comments, they are broken down into different pages.

If you use WordPress as a CMS, you can easily do this by going to Settings> Discussion> under "comments" and check the box that says "break comments to pages".

Install WP Rocket

If you use WordPress, you can install WP Rocket or another equivalent extension that automatically minimizes HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It also enables caching, which means that a copy of your website is saved in your visitors' browsers. This way, the page will load very quickly the next time they visit it.



Compress images

Something that really slows down your loading time is too much and too large media files such as pictures and videos. Therefore, make sure to use images and videos in a smart way, and compress them before you publish them on your website.

Something that is briefly described means that you reduce the size of the file, which means that it loads faster. You can easily do this via various tools online. Below you can see how I used TinyJPG to compress an image into this post. As you can see, the file size was 69% smaller than before.



Delete unused media files

Another simple method that can be used to improve the loading time of your website is to delete unused media files. Many times it happens that you delete images from the website, but they still remain on the server. By removing these, you free up more space, while your charging time can be improved.

If you use WordPress, you can easily do this by going to Media> Library> Not Attached and deleting them.



Test your speed

Not sure how fast your website is? You can easily test it through various tools such as:

We now hope that you have good inspiration for implementing the above methods and speeding up the upload time on your website. Hopefully this will also lead to one or two placement improvements in the search results!