How To Improve GTmetrix Score

Improving one’s website speed can help improve a website’s overall performance, whether to gain traffic or conversions. GTmetrix is a great tool for pinpointing areas on your website that need improvement.

GTmetrix lets you track the speed of your website through formulas, so you do not have to guess what needs to be worked on to improve site speed.

In the article below, you will learn how to improve your GTmtrix score, which will help your website’s performance!

What is GTmetrix Score?

The GTmetrix score is a test that represents your visitor page load experience. It tests both how well it’s built and the actual performance.

It is a simple formula which is based on a 70/30 split. The split is categorized by performance(70) and structure(30).

The performance score is your hardware specifications and Analysis Options(Adblock, Connection Speeds, etc.).

GTmetrix score tells you how well your page scores from a user perspective.

The structure score tells you how well your page is built and optimized for performance.

Improving one structure score can improve page performance overall. Addressing the structure of a website can improve load speeds quickly.

Why Is Website Speed Important

Website speed is essential because it affects the rankings and traffic of the website.

In 2021, Google rolled out an algorithm update that places more emphasis on site speed, especially with mobile phones. Four years ago, mobile devices accounted for over half of website traffic. That is over 55% of users using cell phones to browse websites!

Both desktop and mobile are essential, though, since both are prioritized for how fast they can load.

Looking at the speed of your website can help you gain traffic and conversions.

Why Is My Website Slow?

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There are many ways your website could not be running optimized. This causes the speed of your website to suffer and thus creates longer load times.

Below is a list of why your website could be loading slow and not optimized:

Not Compressed CSS and JavaScript files
No Image Reducing
Not removing unused plugins
Not removing unused coding
Not validating CSS and HTML

5 Ways To Improve GTmetrix Score

Optimize Images

Posting an image is accessible on a website, but optimizing a picture is more straightforward! We all know that larger images take longer to load.

You may have high-quality images that are large in size and increase the load time of web pages. This makes it frustrating for visitors trying to visit the page since it’s loading too slow.

The key to optimizing images is to find the perfect balance between the smallest file size and acceptable image quality to improve performance.

There are many great ways to optimize images to ensure fast load speeds and to increase the GTmetrix score. Choosing the correct image file format, compressing the images, and image dimensions are some examples you can try out to improve speed scores!

Use Content Delivery Network

A CDN is a group of geographically dispersed servers that deliver parts of your website to your visitor’s device, depending on where the visitor is located.

The primary purpose of a CDN is to deliver any digital content efficiently and securely to visitors no matter where they reside in the world.

Using a CDN will significantly increase your GTmetrix score. It is a must for businesses with much traffic. It helps distribute the load across servers instead of sending it to one server. This is an efficient way to increase page speed and user engagement.

Few Plugins

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Plugins are amazing features to add to any website as they can make things easier and more efficient. However, having many plugins can slow down a website’s response time and hinder overall performance.

It is essential to consider whether or not you need that extra plugin. A large number of plugins can cause problems such as Crashes, Lack of Reliability, Security Threats, and slow site speed.

Plugins can be great, but consider using less or coding them in manually for best results. Having less can significantly improve GTmetrix scores.

Leverage Browser Caching

Browser caching means placing something in storage. When visiting a website, your browser can take pieces of a page and store them on your computer’s hard drive.

The website determines how long this information is stored on a person’s computer. Some information is removed in a few days, while others can remain for up to a year.

Page load times can be improved by asking visitors to save and reuse files stored in their computers from past visits. Setting up browser caching can dramatically help improve GTmtrix scores.

A good rule of thumb is one year for static content and everything else one week for caching.

Optimizing CSS and Delivery

Having optimized CSS can help a website speed. There are many ways to optimise CSS, but here are a few to get you started:

Using fewer declarations and operations
Use lightweight and compact code
Load CSS inside the head and JavaScript body
Remove unused CSS
Reduce redirects

These bullet points should give you a great start on optimizing CSS codes to improve GTmetrix scores!

Final Words

Improving one’s score on GTmetrix is a great place to gain traffic and conversions.

GTmetrix can help you look at aspects on your website that you need to improve on and what could be done overall to the structure to gain a better score.

Regarding website speed these days, it is crucial that we do not make the users wait for slow load times.

Look at it like this. Would you be pleased to go to a fast-food restaurant and it takes 40 minutes to get your food? You go to a fast food restaurant to get fast food and not wait 40 minutes.

Bring that example to an online version now. You do not go to a website to wait for it to load for a few minutes. You go to a website with the intent to buy right away.

The website speed allows users to load in quickly and buy the items they are looking for. This will allow them to move on with their day as well!

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