It’s official that Google now counts your website’s speed as a ranking factor. Though this might not mean much for broadband internet users, there are still a lot people out there using dial up and this would be a welcome new for them too.
So what are some of the things that website owners can do to improve the speed of their websites? We have listed a few of them below. If you designed your site yourself, then implementing some of these would not be a problem. Else you can get your website designer to implement these suggestions for you.
- If your site uses tables or nested tables for layout, then you should consider Using CSS instead as this will eventually make it load a lot faster.
- If you find that a particular script is repeated across several web pages on your website, then you ought to replace them with a single external script and link all the necessary pages to the single script file.
- Put your website on a diet and remove anything that you don’t really need. In terms of web design/development less usually means more… not to mention that it will make your website look more professional!
- Instead of having one lengthy page with loads of information crammed into it, consider instead breaking up that single page into several short pages as this will eventually make your site load faster and look more professional.
- Keep your code clean and remove a lot of unnecessary code that just bloat the weight of your page.
- They say a ‘picture is worth a thousand words’ and this is true. But please do not overdo it by placing several pictures on your web page as this would only slow down your website.
- Reduce the file size of your pictures using graphic design softwares like photoshop etc before using them on your website.
Now a lot of businesses need to redesign their existing websites and ensure that their website’s speed is now a key factor in the design and development. If you need help to redesign your existing website or develop a new website from scratch contact us and we would be glad to help!
