It’s always been the case that a fast loading homepage is important – nobody likes to wait an age for content to load.
First impressions count too. If you’re waiting more than a few seconds for a website to load you’re likely to give up and look elsewhere. And as we reported back in 2017 Google doesn’t like slow websites either, so it affects your SEO as well as potentially driving away those that do find your website. Don’t forget, your website is your 24/7 shop window!
We closely monitor all websites we build and host, regularly testing to ensure optimal performance. More recently though this has become that bit more difficult, specifically since Google introduced its new Web Vitals update. This changes the way website performance is measured and crucially, how it effects your search engine rankings.
It doesn’t hit until May 2021 but it’s good to be prepared and get your website speed and performance up to scratch before then. In our case, with around 80 websites under our belt, we’ve been busy fine tuning to get ahead of the game.
Server caching versus performance plugins
We’ve implemented a new caching system on our web servers which really does make a difference. With careful configuration and lots of testing, we’ve been able to noticeably improve website load speeds which in turn improves their SEO. In our testing we’ve found this new server-based caching system beats performance plugins every time.
Each website is configured individually – there is no ‘one size fits all’ shortcut here. One setting may greatly improve one site but break another.
We’ve got some handy tricks up our sleeve, and because we built all these sites and host them on a decent UK-based setup, we know each site’s intricacies inside out. We also know how and why Google is changing its metrics, and what can be done to get you better scores on Google Pagespeed Insights, Google Lighthouse, GTMetrix and Pingdom (to name but a few measurement tools).
How to speed up a slow website
There are a lot of things that can be done to fix a slow or underperforming website. Themed WordPress sites are commonly a problem as they load in so much unneeded code, but we can help configure these for optimal performance.
If your website is slow, or if you’re concerned about losing search engine rankings this spring/summer then give us a call. Depending on your website platform and hosting environment, we can almost certainly help you. We’ve been through the pain and head scratching already, so why not let us take the strain?
We also offer various website hosting packages, all speedy, secure and robust – talk to us to find out more.
