Google has been suggesting that the server response time of a website should be less than 200ms in order to ensure that your website loads quickly.
Here are some important reasons why your website should load fast:
The page loading speed of a WordPress website is reduced when the third-party resources are enabled. Along with this, there are many other reasons why the website loads slowly. It is not wrong for the WordPress users to think that their website should load in just a few seconds and it should secure an impressive rank in the Google search engine results.
Although it is a good idea to have a fast-loading template, but it is also very important to take into consideration that the server response time is also one of the most crucial factors that affects website speed.
What is server response time?
The server response time (SRT) is the amount of time required by the web server to respond to a particular browser request. In simple words, SRT is the total time taken by the server to load the HTML files so that the page can be accessed by the visitors.
Server response time (SRT) is also known as Time to First Byte (TTFB) that denotes the network latency between the server and the user.
Average TTFB values:
- 100 milliseconds – excellent speed
- 200-500 milliseconds – ideal speed
- 500 – 1 second – speed is ok
- More than 1 – bad speed (needs improvement)
If your hosting server takes a long time to load the HTML files, then the server response time will also be high and this can be a major hurdle for your website.
Why is it important to have a low server response time?
Convenient For Readers/Visitors
With a lower server response time, your website will load faster. A quick loading website is a great way to impress the new visitors and ensure loyalty from the old ones. If your website always loads quickly and the visitors/readers/customers are able to do what they want on your website quickly, they will always prefer to use your website instead of any other alternative. It is important to note that the server response time of your website has a significant impact on the user experience and the bounce rate of your website.
To Secure High Search Engine Rankings
It is possible to have an impact on your website’s search engine rankings with a quick loading website. Google also does not favor a very slow loading website and it might not index the website pages that load at tortoise speed. So before you plan online marketing strategies to secure good rankings, it is important to pay attention to the basic aspect of your website and that is website speed.
To Secure High Conversions
A fast loading website will also help in securing high amount of conversions. If you are earning through your website and if your website loads slowly, it is important to fix the low server response time issue quickly otherwise a slow loading website will hamper your reputation and your existing customers/visitors will also leave.
If you work on improving the server response time, you will be able to secure good search engine rankings, have a loyal customer/reader base and there will be improvement in your website performance as well.
How to reduce server response time? 5 useful ways:
Initially, it is important for you to know about the factors that affect the server response time, they are mentioned below:
- A web hosting platform that is unreliable
- Traffic spikes
- Poor server and cache configuration
- Old PHP version
- Bloated pages
- Lot of WordPress plugins installed
- Images not compressed or optimized
Along with the factors mentioned above, there are many other aspects that can affect the server response time.
5 useful ways in which you can improve the server response time (SRT) of your website:
#1 Get A Steadfast And Reliable Hosting
When a visitor or customer makes a request on your website, the server downloads the files and resources and ideally it should give an instant response to the request. If a lot of time is taken by the server in responding to the user request, it will have an adverse effect on the website loading speed and on the complete website performance as well. Therefore it is extremely important to opt for a strong, steady and reliable WordPress hosting platform.
If you opt for any of the managed WordPress hosting packages offered by MilesWeb, you can be sure of getting the best attributes like server level caching, fast SSD servers and storage, automatic WordPress upgrades, website backups, CDN service, server side optimizations and caching. All these are important factors in making sure that the server response time of your website is fast, the traffic spikes are taken care of and your website loads quickly through which you can ensure a great user experience. There is no need for the website owner to have any technical knowledge about maintaining the server side functions as round the clock assistance is provided by MilesWeb.
It is important to ensure that your web hosting server is capable of managing and executing the requests that are generated on your website.
#2 Optimize The WordPress Database
Optimizing the WordPress database is one of the most easy and useful ways to achieve a better server response time. The MySQL database of your WordPress website stores all the data of your website in a table format. If your website is new, then you don’t have to optimize this database. However, if your website has been operating for many years, then the WordPress database might contain of a lot of information. Because there is a huge amount of data stored in the database, the server takes a longer time to process the user’s request.
You can optimize the WordPress database with the use of plugins like WP-SWEEP, WP-OPTIMIZE, WP CLEAN UP OPTIMIZER, WP DBMANAGER etc. However, make sure to take a backup of your WordPress website before you start optimizing the WordPress database. It is also recommended to optimize the WordPress queries because the slow executing queries are responsible for the slow server speed.
# 3 Make Use Of A Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN is a content distribution network that makes use of many servers present in multiple geographical locations for ensuring that the user requests are served quickly, for ensuring high uptime and better website performance. All the WordPress hosting packages provided by MilesWeb comprise of an integrated CDN service. The CDN works on improvising on the loading time of the website. Moreover, CDN uses the gzip compression technique for reducing the data size, for reducing the cost of bandwidth and for ensuring high-availability.
#4 Limit The Number Of Scripts
Another way to ensure that your website pages load quickly is optimization of the home page scripts for improving the server response. The internal and external scripts of a WordPress website can help in reducing the loading speed of the entire website. The web page scripts comprise of CSS files, JavaScript files and many other third party plugins like widgets, live chat application, Facebook like button and YouTube embedded video players that work on specific scripts that might reduce the speed of your website. Excluding the scripts that are embedded to your web pages can help in improving the page load speed and this will result in an increase in the number of visits to your blog.
#5 Optimize The Images
It is true that images make the blog look beautiful and more visually appealing, but it is also true that if the images are not optimized, they can reduce the loading speed of your website. It is important to compress and optimize the images that are posted on your website. In WordPress, various plugins are available for optimizing the images like WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, CW Image Optimizer, Imsanity etc. You can use any of the plugin and easily optimize the images on the website. Plugins like WP Smush and EWWW Image Optimizer scan the complete website and reduce the large and unoptimized images posted on your website to a loadable size. These plugins also ensure that loading the size of the image does not hamper the image quality.
Conclusion
There is a lot of competition out there and ensuring that your website loads quickly is the basic necessity. Also, you have put in a lot of efforts in getting your website to where it is today and you don’t want to spoil your website’s reputation by not paying attention to its loading time. It is true that the search engines penalize the websites that load slowly and the server response time is one of the most important factors that affect the loading speed of the website. A fast loading website will not just achieve good search engine rankings but it will also ensure a great user experience.
