What does leveraging browser caching mean?
When a user visits a webpage their browser must download the files that make up the page to be able to display it. The more files they have to download, the longer the page will take to display. This is bad for SEO, bad for mobiles and bad for people with slow connection speeds added to which, each file makes a separate request to the server further reducing your page load speed so we need to be leveraging browser caching to make sure we are speeding up the process wherever possible.
Leveraging browser caching means to instruct the browser to save files locally allowing instant access to them on consequent visits, reducing server load and page load time which is awesome for user experience and Google loves it too!
What settings should I use to leverage browser caching?
Here are the .htaccess browser cache settings you can add via FTP or in Yoast SEO plugin while you are carrying out a speed optimization pass, ideally this would be carried out as part of the initial set up of Yoast on your website.
# Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml # Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent # BEGIN Expire headers AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject .eot AddType application/x-font-ttf .ttf AddType application/x-font-opentype .otf AddType application/x-font-woff .woff AddType image/svg+xml .svg ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month" ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds" ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds" ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-opentype "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 year" # END Expire headers # BEGIN Cache-Control Headers <filesMatch ".(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$"> Header set Cache-Control "public" <filesMatch ".(css)$"> Header set Cache-Control "public" <filesMatch ".(js)$"> Header set Cache-Control "private" <filesMatch ".(x?html?|php)$"> Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate" # END Cache-Control Headers # Fonts # Add correct content-type for fonts AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject .eot AddType application/x-font-ttf .ttf AddType application/x-font-opentype .otf AddType application/x-font-woff .woff AddType image/svg+xml .svg # Compress compressible fonts # only uncomment if you dont have compression turned on already. Otherwise it will cause all other filestypes not to get compressed # AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-opentype image/svg+xml ExpiresActive on # Add a far future Expires header for fonts ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-opentype "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff "access plus 1 year" ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 year"