How can server response time affect technical SEO? 

As Google’s mobile search engine is catching up to the desktop, it has become clear that website speed is an important factor in determining how well a website ranks. This is why Google is making it easier than ever for websites to test their page load speeds using its PageSpeed Insights tool. 

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How Can Server Response Time Affect Technical SEO? 

There are a few ways that your server can affect your website’s technical SEO, including how long it takes to display a web page. This is called server response time, or TTFB (Time to First Byte) in Google parlance. 

TTFB is measured in milliseconds and indicates how long it takes for a website’s first file to load from the server onto the user’s device. This includes images, JS and CSS files, and other resources that are used to display the content of a web page. 

Reducing the Size of Your Images.

Image optimization is one of the most important steps that you can take to reduce your server response time. In general, your images should be no more than 100 kb in size to ensure that they load quickly. However, if your images are larger than that, you may need to consider compressing them using a tool such as Kraken, which can reduce their size by up to 70% without compromising quality. 

Optimizing Your Mediafiles.

Oversized media files can cause your server to take longer to load a web page because they use more storage space and bandwidth than necessary. You can reduce this by compressing media files to a reasonable size and storing unused media in a separate location. 

Reducing Server Requests.

As the number of visitors to your website increases, so does the amount of traffic to your server. This can be a huge issue for your server’s performance and lead to slow website load times. If your website is receiving thousands of requests each day, it can eat up your server’s resources and make it take longer to load pages. 

A good way to combat this is by deploying a real-time bot management solution, such as DataDome, that can detect and block malicious traffic as it comes in. In turn, this can significantly improve your website’s response times and optimize for legitimate visitors. 

Optimizing Your Database.

Having too many queries for your database is another common issue that can increase the amount of time it takes to load pages from your database. This can cause your site to load slower and decrease the overall user experience. 

In addition, a slow website can impact your search engine rankings because search engines like Google want to deliver the most relevant results to their users as quickly as possible. This means that if your site is taking too long to load, you might be losing out on potential customers. 

While there are a few different ways to improve your website’s technical SEO, most of them involve changing the way you configure your web server software or hosting. These changes can be difficult to implement, but they’re well worth the effort. If you can get your server response time under 200 milliseconds, you can expect to see a significant difference in your site’s performance and traffic.