TTFB, short for time to first byte, is a very important metric for reducing the loading time of a web page, more generally of an online project. This is because TTFB indicates the ability of a web server to respond to requests. Both from the browser and from Google’s crawler.
Those who work in the fields of SEO and web marketing know that the choice of hosting is crucial to having a reliable but also fast website. We often reason in terms of technical features and a performing hosting should be equipped with SSD disks, HTTP/2, HTTP keep alive, updated PHP version. But it is clear that all these represent only the technical tool.
These are the means to achieve one goal: to offer a faster and faster website. This is also done through this metric, TTFB, time to the first byte. What do we know with respect to this topic? And how can we optimize this factor that is still too underestimated by webmasters?
What is TTFB, definition and explanation
TTFB (Italian for time to first byte) is the metric that measures how long the user’s browser or search engine spider has to wait before receiving signal from the web server.
How to evaluate this metric? The shorter the wait time, the more likely the page will load quickly. With a clear advantage in terms of User Experience and SEO. Time to first byte is one of the factors to take care of in order to have a web page, and more generally a portal, fast and responsive.
To read: improve image crawl speed.
How do you measure time to first byte?
By evaluating three latencies and delays that affect the final parameter: the request made to the server, the processing of the machine, and the sending to the browser or Google bot that visits the website.
This is a mechanism that must also take into consideration aspects that cannot be directly influenced by those optimizing the website. Such as the latency that can be applied in case of excessive geographical distance between browser and server.
Not forgetting slow connections or poorly performing Wi-Fi. All this should not distract from the goal: finding the solution to optimize TTFB. To do this, you must find a way to measure it.
Why it is important to optimize TTFB
It could be said that it is simply one of many elements that make up the ultimate result of a web performer’s work, namely a fast website. The proof also comes from Mountain View:
“Slow server response times affect performance (…). Users dislike when pages take a long time to load. Slow server response times are one possible cause for long page loads” – web.dev/time-to-first-byte
The official Google resource points out this: slow server response times affect performance, and it is wrong to downplay the importance of this parameter also reported by Lighthouse and Pagespeed Insight. Users avoid pages that take a long time to show up on the browser.
So server performance is one of the possible causes of too slow loads. But that is not the only reason why you should take TTFB seriously. As you can also see from the image below, Google’s crawler is also affected by our first byte response time.
In the Search Console crawl statistics report you can relate crawl requests, kilobytes downloaded, and average response times. The goal of the optimizer, of course, is to make life easier for the crawler-the Google spider-so as to reduce the number of Kb.
So as to simplify content crawling. In the overall balance to achieve this goal, part of the work is also done by the server’s reaction time in returning the response.
How to improve server response time
What are common ways to improve TTFB? It starts with code optimization, continues with adding a caching system, and ends with server optimization.
Clearly, with respect to this last point, you can conclude by simply arguing that it is important to buy a quality service: for sure, cheap hosting will not give you the best.
This is the first piece of advice for reducing TTFB: buy fast hosting, with significant performance. But that’s not enough; here are tips for lowering TTFB and reducing processing time.
Use a CDN in some cases
This is one of the tips to make the most of when you want to optimize TTLB and reduce the loading time of a web page. You need to use a CDN, that is, the content delivery network needed to best distribute content to users without putting servers out of business.
Why does this detail dramatically reduce TTFB and speed up your WordPress website? CDN allows you to improve the timing of websites with international targets-eliminating that latency problem between server and browser presence-and with a large amount of high-definition images.
Pay attention to WordPress themes and plugins
Extensions help add features to your website, and the theme is essential to present a look and feel. But also to perform certain applications. However, these solutions add code that can slow you down in terms of time to first byte. Update everything you can and if possible remove unnecessary features. At the same time disable plugins that you do not use.
Use an updated PHP version
You already know that PHP is the language used by the WordPress CSM to perform various functions. There are several versions, and new updates are usually published.A good tip for improving TTFB is to abandon an outdated version and update the PHP version.
Which will be faster and more secure. Another important aspect: updating PHP from your hosting’s cPanel dashboard is an extremely simple action. And in some cases even necessary since it is WordPress itself that indicates, through the home page, any need to make the update.
Improve website caching
The CDN framework is not enough. You need to focus on different aspects such as the presence of a caching system of your website. This is an easy solution to activate since you can get good results using one of the many available plugins.This way you reduce the loading time of the portal.
This is because with a caching plugin you generate a version of the HTML pages to send directly to the browser and avoid the server workload. A load that it has to deal with without caching instead.