If you own a small or medium business, your website could be one of the most potent tools for showcasing your products and services, inviting customers to your doorstep, and driving sales. However, if your website is slow, you may lose valuable visitors before they see what you offer. Your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy should prioritize increasing website page speed.

Unfortunately, many business owners unknowingly commit mistakes that end up hurting their website’s page speed. In this article, you’ll learn about common website optimization errors and how to fix them to ensure your site runs as fast as possible.

Website page speed and user experience

So why does page speed matter? It’s because people do not like waiting for unnecessarily long periods. Think of how impatient people can get while waiting for a traffic light to change or how quickly they switch lanes on a fast-moving highway.

The same goes for internet browsing. Users often correlate speed with the quality of their experience—the faster a web page loads, the better.

In general, website visitors expect your pages to load within three seconds. Any longer, and they’d move on to comparable but faster alternatives, which are likely your competitors. But even if they stay, making them wait can affect other key metrics. For one, a single second of extra wait time can decrease your conversions by 7%.

Furthermore, Google introduced page speed as a ranking factor for desktop and mobile searches in 2010 and 2018, respectively. Thus, increasing your website’s page speed can make it more visible and discoverable to potential customers.

Website optimization errors that affect page speed

Without knowing it, you could be committing mistakes that negatively impact your website page speed. These are the errors you should avoid and technical SEO tips to resolve them:

Leaving large images uncompressed

High-quality visuals are essential for a great user experience and make your site more attractive. However, large, unoptimized images take longer to load, so using them can significantly slow down your website.

When uploading images to your website, compress them using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim. This reduces their size but not their quality. You should also consider using modern formats like WebP, which are smaller in size than traditional formats like JPEG and PNG.

Ignoring browser caching

When users visit your website, their browser downloads files like images, stylesheets, and scripts from your servers to display them. Browser caching stores these elements on the user’s device so that they don’t need to be re-downloaded the next time that user returns to your site, expediting loading times.

There are several ways to set up browser caching. One of these is to use plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache if you’re running a site with WordPress. You can also take advantage of content delivery network (CDN) services that offer browser caching, such as Cloudflare and Akamai.

Overusing plugins and widgets

Too much of anything is never good, and that’s true for plugins on your WordPress website. While they can be incredibly helpful for adding useful features that enhance user experience, using more than necessary can bog down your website. Similarly, too many widgets, like pop-ups and embedded social media feeds, can slow down your pages as well.

To prevent excess and unnecessary plugins and widgets from weighing down your site, audit your plugins and widgets regularly. Remove outdated ones and those you don’t use or need, and try to find lightweight alternatives for those that significantly increase your website’s loading times.

Neglecting mobile optimization

With most web traffic nowadays coming from mobile devices, failing to optimize your website for mobile can be a costly mistake. More than half of mobile users will abandon your website if it doesn’t finish loading after three seconds. Also, 70% of them won’t be inclined to return after leaving.

Use Google’s website speed test, also known as PageSpeed Insights, to assess your site’s mobile performance. This test also provides recommendations on how to improve your website’s mobile speed, such as optimizing images and reducing server response times.

If you are creating a new website or redesigning your current one, it’s helpful to use a mobile-first approach to development. This strategy focuses on optimizing your site’s design and functionality for mobile devices before considering desktop users. It covers tactics like implementing simple navigation and a mobile-responsive design.

Avoiding using a CDN

A CDN can help speed up your website in more ways than enabling browser caching. It distributes your website’s assets to servers across different geographical areas. When a visitor visits your website, their browser downloads your site’s assets from the server closest to their location. This reduces the data transfer distance, which affects loading times.

Implementing a CDN is especially helpful if your website has visitors worldwide. It also reduces the load on your server, helping it to run faster and smoother.

Forgetting to minify code

Your website is powered by code, such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Unnecessary characters, spaces, and comments in this code can make your site’s files larger, which takes longer to download. Minifying your code removes these unnecessary elements, making your website faster.

You can use tools like UglifyJS and CSSNano to minify Javascript and CSS, respectively. WordPress also has plugins that automatically minify your website’s HTML, CSS, and Javascript files.

Skipping regular speed tests

The issues impacting page speeds aren’t always readily apparent, and finding them early means you can fix them before they cause any significant negative impact on your site. Use tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom, or Google’s PageSpeed Insights to conduct regular website speed tests.

Using cheap or shared hosting

Your hosting provider plays a crucial role in your site’s performance. Cheap or shared hosting services may seem like a good deal, but they often come with limited resources. This can lead to slow loading times and even crash your website during high-traffic periods. Consider investing in a reliable hosting service or upgrading your current plan to ensure your website has ample resources to handle traffic.

A fast-loading website isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have if you want to market your business effectively to potential customers online. By avoiding the above mistakes, you can ensure that your website is optimized for speed, providing a positive user experience and improving your search engine rankings.

If you don’t know where to start, consider hiring a professional technical SEO agency. They can assess your site’s speed and performance, identify issues, and provide recommendations on optimizing it for maximum efficiency. Don’t let slow loading times hold back the success of your website—partner with an SEO agency today and improve your website’s speed!

“Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.”

You’ve probably encountered this infamous quote by Sun Tzu and its many iterations in various popular media, a notable example being 1974’s The Godfather: Part II. Although its original context is up for debate, it’s commonly interpreted as emphasizing the importance of understanding your opponent or rival to stay ahead.

Search engine optimization (SEO) may be the last thing that comes to mind when quoting Sun Tzu. However, incredibly enough, the principle still applies. In digital marketing, knowing your competitors is invaluable to boosting your website’s SEO performance.

What can you learn from competitors?

The best way to understand your rivals is by conducting a competitor analysis. It examines your competitor’s site, delivering valuable insights into their online presence and how you can improve your own website’s SEO performance. Here are some of the areas where competitor analysis can be extremely helpful:

Keyword research. Your competitors’ websites likely have similar content and target the same audience as yours. You can examine the search phrases they’re ranking for to identify new keyword opportunities and gaps in your own strategy.

Backlink profile. An analysis can tell you which websites are linking to your competitors. You can then contact those websites to request a backlink or explore opportunities for content collaboration or guest posting.

Content strategy. Take note of the types of content your competitors publish and the frequency and performance of their posts. Use this information to improve your own content and strategy.

On-page optimization. Examine your competitors’ title tags, meta descriptions, and URL structure for pointers on improving your website’s SEO elements. These details are easily overlooked but can significantly impact your SEO performance.

User experience (UX). A look at your competitor’s website can reveal what design, navigation, and other functional elements you can incorporate to improve your site’s overall UX. User experience is one of the factors search engines consider when ranking websites.

Analyzing your competitors can also tell you what not to do. For instance, publishing spammy content and following questionable strategies can result in severe search engine penalties that can hamper your search ranking.

How can you analyze your competitors?

Analyzing your competitors requires a multi-step process called an SEO audit. This site audit for SEO purposes examines a website’s performance and all the elements that can affect it. An audit is such a crucial process that if you want to get the most SEO benefits in 2025 and beyond, you should consider conducting it regularly on your own website.

Here are the steps involved in conducting an SEO audit for competitor analysis:

Identify your competitors

Start by taking note of your competitors. These are businesses in your niche or location with websites ranking for the same keywords as you are. You can perform local Google searches, look on social media, and use tools like SEMrush to ensure you’re not missing any potential rivals.

Analyze their keywords

Input your competitors’ website URLs into SEMrush or Ahrefs to uncover which keywords they rank for and how well they perform. Among the keywords they dominate, note which ones have the highest search volumes and lowest competition. These are the keywords you should be targeting.

Additionally, identify keywords they rank for that you don’t. Creating content using these keywords can open opportunities to attract new traffic to your website.

Evaluate their content strategy

Analyze your competitor’s blog posts, landing pages, and other types of content. Check which pieces of content are performing the best using tools like BuzzSumo. Make a note of the topics they cover, length, tone, quality, and publication schedule.

This step will help you identify effective content-related tactics to incorporate into your strategy. It also tells you which topics your competitors have not yet covered, allowing you to write about them before your competitors do.

Analyze their on-page SEO

A site audit for SEO shows you on-page elements that search engines use to determine your website’s quality and relevance. In particular, you should pay attention to:

Title tags and meta descriptions

URL structure

Content optimization

User experience

These elements can provide valuable insights into what your competitors are doing right and whether you can incorporate their tactics into your own on-page optimization.

Check their backlink profile

Building a backlink profile consisting of high-quality, relevant websites is critical to getting the best SEO benefits in 2025 and the years to come. When auditing your competitor’s website, check the number and quality of their backlinks, including the authoritative sites linking to their content.

Compare their backlink profile with yours. This will reveal websites you could reach out to for backlinks and show how much work you need to do to catch up.

Examine the site’s user engagement

User engagement metrics gauge how visitors behave when they land on a website. They include the following:

Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only a single page. A high bounce rate indicates that website visitors do not find relevant information or have a poor user experience.

Time on site refers to the amount of time a visitor spends on your website. Longer sessions suggest your visitors find your content engaging, relevant, and valuable.

Click-through rate measures how many visitors click on a specific link or item. A higher CTR indicates your website’s content is compelling and relevant to users.

By examining your competitors’ user engagement metrics, you can see which areas of their website are performing well and which ones need improvement. You can use this information to enhance your own website’s user experience and attract and retain visitors.

Look into technical SEO

A website’s technical configuration significantly impacts its ability to provide the best experience to visitors. Understanding your competitor’s site structure, mobile responsiveness, page loading speed, and other technical factors can give you ideas on how to get an edge. For example, if your competitor’s website loads faster, you can look into using a similar hosting provider or optimizing your images and code.

Keeping a close eye on your rivals’ websites through an SEO audit is a crucial SEO strategy that can help you stay ahead in search rankings. It gives you pointers on what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to continuously improve your website’s performance. Of course, you should also regularly conduct audits on your site to ensure that it performs well or better than your competitors.

Analyzing your competitors and optimizing your website are tasks you can do yourself, but they require time and some technical know-how, even with the right tools at your disposal. This is why many small and medium business owners hire professional agencies offering the best SEO services.

Partnering with an agency gives you access to experts who can help you conduct SEO audits, analyze your competitors in-depth, and implement effective strategies to boost your website’s performance. They can offer the best SEO services your business needs to stay competitive and thrive.

Work with a reputable agency today and ensure your website ranks well in search engine results for 2025 and beyond.

Tag: site audit

Common Page Speed Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Website