Leave a request
For one of the projects, an order was placed to optimize a corporate website in the field of services. The site has been operating for two years, but its traffic without contextual advertising was only 5-10 people per day. At the same time, the subject of the site is quite competitive, and the cost of contextual advertising can reach 1000-2000 rubles per click. One of the main problems of the site was the high speed of loading pages, and in this material we will tell you how this problem was solved.
The main goal is to reduce site loading time.
The first step was to analyze the site.
- A general SEO audit turned out to be a good tool for analysis. It includes checking SEO metrics, validation errors, and loading speed data using various tools.
- Google PageSpeed is one of the most popular tools for assessing loading speed. However, it is worth noting that recently it has stopped giving out ratings in points.
- We also used analysis tools from other services, including viewing http headers, checking server status, and other diagnostic data.
- To monitor site availability, we have connected a specialized service. It allowed real-time monitoring of site availability and server response time. Notifications about possible failures and reports on monitoring results were also configured.
- Yandex.Metrica helped analyze various site loading parameters, such as time until the page is completely rendered and other indicators.
Improving site loading speed not only benefits SEO, but also increases user trust and improves conversions. Google's guidelines say: "Optimize loading speed. Fast websites improve the user experience and prevent frustration, especially if they have a slow connection.”
During the analysis, the following problems were identified:
- Page loading times ranged from 7 to 15 seconds.
- The site often became inaccessible to users, which affected its positions in search results.
- Using an outdated version of PHP.
- Incorrect configuration of the server environment.
- Unoptimized files and scripts.
- Large image size.
- And many other factors affecting download speed.
Here's what was done to speed up the site:
- The site was moved to a new server with SSD drives, increased RAM and server power. This allowed for improved performance, which is especially important given the planned advertising campaign. The difference in hosting cost was only 600 rubles, but it paid for itself many times over by reducing customer losses.
- The server software was updated and configured.
- Caching is configured.
- Page redirection has been adjusted.
- Some images have been merged into sprites, and some images that do not require background transparency have been converted to other formats.
- Images have been optimized to reduce their size without losing quality.
- Checked Expires and Cache-Control settings.
- Enabled gzip compression for all files where possible.
- Scripts have been optimized and files have been compressed to speed up loading.
- Some changes were made at the hosting level, others through the site administration panel or .htaccess file.
- In accordance with Google recommendations, some scripts have been moved to the bottom of the page.
- To reduce the load, time limits were set for “bad” bots so that they do not overload the server.
- A stress test was carried out with 3000 visits in a short period of time. The result showed that the site successfully copes with this load.
What wasn't done:
- We have not configured caching for scripts of external services, as this could affect the convenience of updating these services.
- There was no compression of images and files, which, according to Google calculations, can save only 1-2 KB. This was not considered critical at this stage, and such compression often degrades image quality.
- There is little use of graphics on the site, so it was decided not to put it on a separate subdomain.
- Since the site is aimed at a Russian audience, tests were not carried out on loading speed from other countries.
Optimizing site loading speed led to improved behavioral factors:
- Reducing the number of failures;
- Increase in the number of pages viewed;
And other positive changes in indicators.
If you have any questions about SEO optimization or website acceleration, write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" at info@seo.computer, and we will definitely help you optimize your website!
ID 9225
