What are the best ways to reduce the size of my webpages to speed up page load?
Google takes page speed into account when assigning a PageRank and ranking pages in search results. I would like to speed up my pages as webmaster tools reports that my site is fairly slow. I'm not sure what I can do to make my pages faster.
Are there specific things that everyone can do to speed up their website?
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I am a software developer, serial entrepreneur and bestselling author of programming, development, eCommerce and marketing books.
I love solving complex problems and bringing cool solutions to market. I have a cum laude science degree (double major in applied mathematics and mathematics), and 15 years of Web development, programming and online business experience.
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Website optimization is a custom job
Optimizing any website is really a custom job. It depends on where the performance bottlenecks occur in your specific setup. With that said, there are a number of things that most people miss when trying to speed up their website.
Speeding up a website is not only about reducing the size of webpages. It is also about:
Basically, you want as simple a webpage as possible (with as few HTML elements) that uses one aggregated CSS file, and one aggregated JS file (if you need JS). 3rd party widgets should load asynchronously, or be deferred til after page load.
If you are using images in your design, consider removing them in favor of CSS3! This article entitled How CSS3 can improve SEO and maximize conversions will show you how.
I should also point out that your host may be a limiting factor. If you are using cheap or free hosting, then bandwidth limitations may be contributing to your site's poor performance. Network latency is another big factor for poor hosting services.
Check out this list of the top hosting services for small business to find a high quality hosting service with a package to suit your needs.
I would recommend using Google PageSpeed insights tool as a rough guide to optimizing your webpages. But be warned, that proper optimization really requires an expert human because tools can't make decisions about what is and isn't crucial for the proper functioning of your site.