7 Effective Methods to Increase Website Speed and Improve Google Ranking

In today's digital world, website loading speed is one of the most important factors for online success. Users expect web pages to load in less than a few seconds, and search engines rank faster websites higher in their results.

Why is Website Speed Important?

Website loading speed directly affects the following:

• User Experience (UX): Users quickly leave slow websites
• Conversion Rate: Faster websites have higher conversion rates
• SEO Ranking: Google considers site speed as an important ranking factor
• Server Costs: Optimized websites consume fewer server resources

7 Essential Strategies to Increase Website Speed

1. Image Optimization

Images typically constitute the largest volume of a webpage. By optimizing them, you can significantly increase loading speed:

• Use appropriate formats: JPEG for real photos, PNG for images with transparent backgrounds, and WebP as a modern format with high compression
• Adjust image sizes according to actual needs
• Use lossless image compression
• Enable lazy loading for images lower on the page

"Image optimization alone can increase page loading speed by up to 50%."

2. Using CDN

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) copy your site's static files to multiple servers worldwide so users can receive them from the nearest server:

• Reduced server response time
• Traffic load distribution
• Protection against DDoS attacks

3. Enable Compression

Compression like GZIP or Brotli can reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files by up to 70%:

# Sample code for enabling GZIP in .htaccess file
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/javascript application/json
</IfModule>

4. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

Minification means removing unnecessary characters such as whitespace, comments, and line breaks, which reduces file size:

• Use online minification tools
• Use readable versions in development environment and minified versions in production environment

5. Reduce HTTP Requests

Each HTTP request requires additional loading time. Increase your site speed by reducing the number of requests:

• Combine CSS and JavaScript files
• Use CSS Sprites for icons
• Remove unnecessary plugins and scripts

6. Use Browser Caching

By setting appropriate HTTP headers, you can tell users' browsers to store static files so they don't need to be downloaded again on subsequent visits:

# Sample browser cache code in .htaccess
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>

7. Database Optimization

For database-driven websites, optimizing queries and database structure has a significant impact on speed:

• Proper table indexing
• Query optimization
• Use caching systems like Redis or Memcached
• Remove old and unnecessary data

How to Measure Your Website Speed?

To evaluate your website speed, you can use the following tools:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Speed analysis and improvement suggestions
• GTmetrix: Comprehensive site performance analysis
• Pingdom: Speed testing from different locations worldwide
• Uptime Plus: Continuous speed monitoring from within Iran and around the world

Sample PageSpeed Insights Results:

Continuous Monitoring of Website Speed

Speed optimization is an ongoing process. Various changes such as adding new content, changing templates, or adding plugins can affect site speed. For this reason, continuous monitoring of site speed is particularly important.

The Uptime Plus service with its advanced speed monitoring tools helps you to:

• Continuously monitor the loading speed of your site pages
• Be quickly notified of unusual site slowness
• Identify trends and patterns in speed changes
• See your site's performance from users' perspectives in different geographical locations