Speaking of WPO (Web Performance Optimization) refers to the optimization of the loading speed of a website. The importance of optimizing our website, in various ways, lies in achieving a good positioning in search engines.
As an SEO strategy is developed, improvements should be implemented to optimize web performance, through a correct CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and WPO. Since this will guarantee us better results in our organic positioning.
While CRO, we could include it as a strategy within the company’s marketing plan. The WPO is more task-oriented to the technical and development team of the web. Because as we anticipate, it is about improving the loading time of a Web page.
How Do We Get a Good WPO?
WPO was born as a result of Google announcing the importance that the loading speed of a website acquires in its positioning. Therefore, it will be in charge of analyzing and proposing changes that reduce the time in which users can fully view a page. Thus improving their user experience.
In the words of Steve Souders, head of the WPO team at Google: “ WPO is similar to SEO in terms of optimizing load time generating more traffic to your website. However, WPO doesn’t end there. There is clear evidence that WPO also improves the user experience, increases profits, and reduces operating costs ”.
To achieve a good WPO, it will be necessary to optimize the website at the client level and the server level. Inefficient source codes, a bad database configuration. Or an incorrect server configuration are factors that influence a poor WPO, making a website slow and with 7% less conversion.
Tips for Optimizing Loading Speed
Some ” Good Practices” that we can use to improve the WPO of our website are the following:
Correct server configuration
We must consider certain technical aspects of the server that will significantly influence the loading time of the web page, such as:
Storage capacity: Avoid having a minimal disk capacity since we may run out of space, preventing our website’s loading from being fast and optimal.
RAM capacity: Low RAM means slower and inefficient loading processes.
Avoid server overload: Having a saturated hosting avoids an optimal TTFB (Time To First Byte).
Optimize server behavior: For this, we can choose the following:
- Use comprehensions: Compressing the documents on our website to the Gzip format, will make their weightless, thus improving the loading speed.
- Use the browser cache: This will prevent that in successive visits to our website by the same user, fewer requests are made to the server, thus reducing the access time and loading of the website.
- Reduce the number of calls to the server: It is optimal that a page does not have more than 50-60 downloads when loaded, since usually a browser does not support the management of more than five calls in parallel, leaving the rest queued waiting for a response.
- Host multimedia content in external services: Generally, audio files, presentations, and videos are multimedia content that takes up a lot of space. An effective measure is to host them in external services to reduce the load on our server.
TTFB control
It will be necessary to optimize the database, reduce latency, and keep, as we have seen, the server slightly overloaded.
Combine CSS and JS files
When we develop a website, it is normal to have many JavaScript files (js) for defining styles ( CSS ), which causes many requests to the server (one per file). We can avoid this if we combine the content of all those that make up our website in a single file. Taking into account the importance of loading the CSS and js in the proper order so that the page is displayed correctly.
Place CSS at the beginning of the document
Placing the CSS files inside the header of the HTML code of the page will allow an improvement in the user experience by loading the web style as soon as possible.
Place the JS at the end of the document
When the browser finds a JavaScript file, it stops the loading process while it is being downloaded. And then executes it and continues loading. If we place these files at the end of the HTML document, we will improve the user experience. Since the user will be able to use the page even though not all the js have been loaded.
Optimize the loading speed of all your pages, not just the home page
Sometimes we focus on improving our home page’s loading speed without taking into account the rest of the “secondary” pages that make up our site. To obtain an optimal WPO, it will be necessary to improve the loading speed of all the pages of our site.
Use a tool to measure the loading speed of your page
There are many tools, both free and paid, that allow us to measure our website’s loading speed.
Final Thoughts
These are some of the measures that we can adopt to improve our website’s SEO strategy from a technical point of view by optimizing the loading speed.
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