Compression and Pagespeed

When you visit a website, your browser has to download a lot of files to display the page. This includes your HTML code, CSS, and JavaScript. All of these files take up space, and the more space they take, the longer it takes for your page to load.

Website compression is a way of shrinking these files before they are sent to a visitor’s browser. It’s like zipping a large file on your computer to make it smaller. This is a very simple and effective way to reduce the amount of data your server has to send, which results in faster download times and a better user experience.

How Does Compression Work?

Your web server compresses a file before it sends it to a user’s browser. The user’s browser then uncompresses the file and displays the page. This process happens very quickly, so the user doesn’t even notice. This is a much faster process than sending an uncompressed, larger file.

The Two Main Types of Compression

There are two main types of compression that you should be aware of:

• Gzip: This is the most common type of compression. It is supported by almost all web servers and browsers.
• Brotli: This is a newer type of compression that is more powerful than Gzip. It is supported by all modern browsers.

Most websites use Gzip, but if you have a web server that supports Brotli, you should use it.

Why Is Compression So Important for SEO?

Website compression is a key part of your technical SEO. It directly impacts your website’s pagespeed, which is a ranking factor. A faster website will rank higher in search results and will also provide a better user experience.

If your website is slow, visitors are more likely to leave. This can increase your bounce rate and lower your time on page, which are both signals to Google that your website is not high-quality. By compressing your files, you are ensuring that your website is as fast as it can be, which is a great way to improve your SEO.

Our platform can help you with your pagespeed issues. Clickrank can analyze your website for compression issues and give you a prioritized list of tasks to fix them.

How to Enable Compression on Your Server

Enabling compression is a simple task that a developer can do. It is usually done by adding a few lines of code to your server’s configuration files.

Enabling Compression on Apache

If you are using an Apache server, you can enable compression by adding the following code to your .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript

  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

</IfModule>

Enabling Compression on Nginx

If you are using an Nginx server, you can enable compression by adding the following code to your nginx.conf file:

gzip on;

gzip_disable “MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)”;

gzip_vary on;

gzip_comp_level 6;

gzip_proxied any;

gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;