## Lets dive deeper

Try following some of these more advanced tips for speeding up your website. Remember to keep testing thoroughly using [GTmetrix](https://gtmetrix.com) – However, also it’s really important to remember that achieving a 100% score is almost impossible without it having a detrimental effect on your website. Try to aim high, but be sensible.

---

## Leverage browser caching

For the more advanced users, you can set a rule to specify how long your visitors browsers should cache your files. As you can see in the code below, you should set rules for images, CSS, Javascript & Flash. Just copy & paste the below code into your `.htaccess` file & set whatever dates you require.

```apacheconf
    <IfModule mod_expires.c>
    ExpiresActive On
    ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
    ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
    ExpiresDefault "access 2 days"
    </IfModule>
```

---

## Minification

Although we aren’t sure if this word is in the dictionary yet, it is an essential element which will contribute to your website load-speed. It almost speaks for itself in that it minify’s your website HTML, CSS & JS into smaller files, sometimes even combining the files to prevent further requests & resources. You will see minification pop up a lot on the speed test tools we suggested previously, just follow their steps to minify the files they suggest. Alternatively, you can use [this online tool](https://cssminifier.com/) to do the job for you.

---

## Enable gzip compression

We have all compressed files using our operating system for many years, Gzip Compression works in a very similar way for your website content. It compresses the content to minimise the size of the data being transferred from server to browser, therefore bringing the load time down drastically.

To enable this essential feature, try copy & pasting the below code into your `.htaccess` file. You can then check if you have inserted correctly using this tool. If you wish to enable Gzip compression just add this piece of code to your `.htaccess` file:

```apacheconf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
```

---

## Use a CDN

If you have never heard of a content delivery network (CDN) as briefly touched upon in our previous post, you should definitely consider it if your website gets a lot of traffic, especially if it gets consistent relevant traffic from multiple countries.

A CDN will keep a copy of your website on multiple servers dotted around the world, so when a visitor accesses your site it is loaded faster from the closest location. That & a CDN such as [Cloudflare](https://cloudflare.com) offers a vast array of benefits mainly to do with site security which are essential if you are running a fast-paced website. For more information on CDN’s & advice for which will best suit your requirements just [get in touch](/contact).

Tutorials

Part 2 – Optimise your website for speed

## Intro

It is key to set targets and strategise a good quality SEO plan before launching a website. For details on how your general website performance can effect your search rank, start here. Over the coming months, we will be posting various blog posts regarding the complicated yet essential topic; SEO.

On this blog post, we introduce SEO as a concept to those less in the know, while offering a brief insight into some best practices when planning your businesses strategy. Take advantage of our expertise & experience by implementing some of these small tips. If you need any further assistance developing a sound SEO strategy, you should [contact our team](/contact).

Performance is all important in 2017. Forget the trends when you notice them actually effecting the performance on your website. Google would much rather serve up a high-speed, fast-loading website with relevant content than an outstandingly designed yet slow loading website. Take a moment to consider the connections your users may be viewing from – Some visitors may still search using ancient connections, and if your website is over 3 or 4 megabytes in size it may take longer than they might like to load. In turn, this could cause a missed conversion in the form of a call, lead, email or sale when they decide to navigate away from your page & find another similar service, probably with a competitor. To avoid this, try following these simple rules:

---

## Images – The main culprit!

Compress your images for web. Make sure the dimensions & resolution aren’t too high. As a simple rule of thumb if you don’t know what any of this is, aim to keep the image width & height under 1500px, and the overall file size under 500kb. Ideally smaller.

Your website images will probably be the largest pieces of content, and although essential they can really be chopped down in size through saving properly.

Test your images using a tool such as [GTmetrix](https://gtmetrix.com) where you can see how long each resource takes to load on the waterfall section.

---

## Reduce clutter

We often get asked to redevelop websites with years of clutter in the backend which slows it down significantly. Through proper organisation of your website structure, you can easily prevent it getting cluttered with content over time. Consider the following:

- Store old content away properly by categorising blog posts into useful categories rather than having them all load on one page.
- Remove old image content & prevent hot-linking through use of [Cloudflare](https://cloudflare.com) which is free to an extent. Hot-linking is where other website users use an image or similar directly from your website, so whenever someone loads that link from their site, it actually loads from your server. This could slow down your server response time by increasing the CPU usage over time.
- Streamline your content into easy to understand section & add links to good relevant pages where possible.

---

## Enable a caching solution

You may have seen on your browser that you can clear search history. Sometimes you may have needed to do that if a page isn’t loading correctly or something along those lines. There are different levels of caching including on your browser, server & others also stored within the websites server. These are meant for faster loading as the data is stored in each area ready to quickly serve to the end user. For example, Brian visits the Web & Roll homepage on Monday using the Google Chrome browser. Because he has never visited this site before it takes a couple of seconds to load. The website is then stored in Brian’s browser in case he wants to visit the website again. This saves on both load time, and resources for Brian’s internet connection. This is all hypothetical of course, we actually utilise a CDN (content delivery network) which serves our website up at light speed around the world. If you want to know about this more advanced technology, speak to our team Multiple caching solutions are available for each content management system, or you can even have your web developer create some custom rules for your website. If using WordPress, we recommend W3 Total Cache, just install the basic rules & you should notice your load time improve dramatically.

Part 1 – Optimise your website for speed

## Google Core Update

Google constantly run-updates to the search engine to ensure that the results being displayed are accurate to that of what the user has searched. The latest update to the algorithm came in July 2021 and was known as the Core Algorithm update. Any subsequent changes you may have seen in rankings for your business will more than likely be as a result of this. Google SearchLiaison announced on 13/07/21, that the July 2021 core update roll-out is now effectively complete.

## Why was the update required?

Google has published a [post by Danny Sullivan](https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-update-search-improve-results/) on the company blog explaining the latest update process. Google is trying to be more transparent with its latest updates to help ensure websites who are negatively impacted by the changes are given fair warning and a reasonable explanation as to why the changes were not only made, but necessary.

## How can I help my website comply?

Google uses approximately 200 factors that can impact website ranking. Some of the these include:

- Mobile-friendliness.
- Offering a safe browsing experience.
- Presenting the web-page through HTTPS.
- Elimination of intrusive pop-ups.
- Maintain short and clean website code.
- Get rid of any third-party scripts that slow down your website.
- Improve site responsiveness with the help of a browser cache.

## Looking for help to improve your website rankings?

We offer a range of services undertaken by our team of skilled web design & digital marketing experts that can help to improve your website rankings and conversions. Speak to a member of our team and see how we can help you.

SEO

Blog category

Part 2 – Optimise your website for speed

Part 1 – Optimise your website for speed

Have your Google rankings changed?