When you click on a website, you are often greeted by that blank white screen... You wait, wait, and wait. Even if it only lasts for 3 seconds, it feels like a lifetime, doesn't it? Most likely, at the end of that 3rd second, you hit the back button and move on to another site.
That is exactly what your visitors are doing too.
There can be many reasons why your website opens slowly (large images, poor coding, etc.), but the most critical culprit that is often overlooked is technically called TTFB (Time to First Byte).
In this guide, we will explain the concept of TTFB—the heartbeat of website speed—in its simplest form, examine why it is vital for your Google rankings, and show you how you can reduce this time to milliseconds with Hostider technologies.
Technically defined, TTFB is the time elapsed between the moment a user's browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.) sends a request to your web server and the moment the first byte (the first piece of data) arrives from the server to the browser.
We can understand this much more clearly with a restaurant analogy:
Placing the Order (Request): You go to a restaurant and tell the waiter, "I want a special meal." This is the user clicking on www.yoursite.com.
The Kitchen Process (Server Processing): The waiter passes the order to the kitchen. The chef prepares the ingredients, cooks the meal, and plates it. This is the server querying the database and processing the PHP codes.
Service (First Byte): The waiter picks up the plate and places the first dish on your table. This exact moment is TTFB.
If the kitchen (server) is slow or the waiter (internet connection) moves slowly, you wait at the table hungry. The situation is the same for your website; if the server reacts slowly, the user stares at a blank white screen waiting.
TTFB is not just a technical metric; it is a factor that directly affects the success of your business.
According to Google research, when a site's loading time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor leaving the site immediately (bounce rate) increases by 32%. No matter how good your content is, users will not wait if that content does not arrive quickly.
Google places great importance on page speed under the scope of Core Web Vitals. If your server responds slowly while Google bots are crawling your site, your crawl budget is used inefficiently, and your rankings drop. Fast TTFB = Happy Google Bots.
According to Google PageSpeed Insights data:
Excellent: Under 200 ms (milliseconds).
Good: Between 200 ms - 500 ms.
Poor (Triggers Warning): 600 ms and above.
If you see the warning "Reduce initial server response time" in tests, your TTFB time is over 600 ms and requires urgent intervention.
Why is your site's "engine" starting late? Here are the 4 most common reasons:
If your hosting provider uses old-generation servers, slow mechanical disks (HDD), or overcrowded shared hosting, the "kitchen" cannot keep up with orders. When the server processor is insufficient, the response time elongates.
Dynamic sites like WordPress pull information from the database for every visit. If the database is not optimized or the MySQL service on the server is slow, queries get delayed.
Creating the page from scratch for every visitor exhausts the server. If there is no Caching mechanism, the server repeats the same process over and over again, extending the time.
If your server is in the US and your visitor is in Europe or Asia, latency occurs as data crosses oceans. Even at the speed of light, physical distance increases the ping time (latency).
The most effective way to solve the TTFB problem is to choose the right infrastructure rather than struggling with code. As Hostider, we have optimized our infrastructure for minimum TTFB with our "speed-obsessed" engineers.
Here is Hostider's speed formula:
We have shelved old-style SSDs. Hostider servers use NVMe technology, which has a data access speed 6-7 times faster than standard SSDs. This means database queries and file reading operations are completed in the "blink of an eye."
We offer LiteSpeed, the world's fastest web server, as standard in all our hosting and reseller packages. Especially for WordPress sites, we can reduce TTFB time to under 50 ms by creating static HTML outputs with the LSCache plugin. It creates a performance difference of up to 600% compared to Apache servers.
If your target audience is in a specific region, your server should be there too. Thanks to Hostider's data center locations (e.g., Turkey), network latency is minimized for your local visitors. Data does not have to cross oceans unnecessarily.
The most current and fastest versions of PHP (PHP 8.1, 8.2, etc.) run on our servers. Additionally, database optimizations are constantly monitored by our technical team.
If your site is slow, it means your customers are going to your competitors. Reducing TTFB time increases not only your Google score but also your sales, ad revenue, and brand reputation.
Do not waste time struggling with software and plugins. Solve the problem at the source, that is, at the server.
Move your website to Hostider's high-performance servers and see the speed difference with your own eyes. Moreover, we handle the migration process for you for free!
???? Are You Ready to Make Your Site Fly? Click Here to Review Hostider Hosting Packages with low TTFB guarantee, NVMe disks, and LiteSpeed technology.
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