How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website

The speed of a website contributes significantly towards user experience, search engine results and conversion rates. Studies have even proven that ninety percent of web users get irritated with the website loading speeds which causes them to exit the website. How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website.

If you have a quicker website built on WordPress, it will help in improving user experience and enhance the performance of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

This article deals with a number of ways you can use to improve the speed of your WordPress website with practical optimization tips that you can use to speed up load times and performance..

Why is Speed Important for WordPress Websites?

Before we jump to the tips and tricks, let us take a quick look at the reasons as to why speed is of essence for WordPress sites.

1. User Experience (UX)

A quick website does not disappoint any of its users. A site that stores information and loads fast, will most certainly have many users remaining on it. However, if your site is capable of offering good content, but loaded with a sluggish internet connection, users may leave before even viewing what you have on offer.

2. SEO Advantages

Google Algorithm also consider page speed into their ranking. It is probable that clear results in SERP will come from sites that load fast, therefore encouraging more organic visitations. The majority of users tend to avoid sites whose load time is relatively slow and this translates to authority issues.

3. Conversion Rates

Websites with increased speed levels tend to have improved conversion rates.

4. Mobile-fashioned

With the continued increase in mobile traffic, a fast mobile site is no longer an added advantage but a necessity.How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website.  Site users accessing the site on mobile will most likely leave the site if it takes too long to open, conservatively speaking, this restricts the need to speed up one’s WordPress site for any other type of users.

5. Reduced Bounce Rates

Google measures bounce rates, which quantify the percentage of users who visit a site and leave without clicking on any other pages. Such pages, when opened, tend to have higher bounding rates which greatly affects your SEO ratings in a negative way. To improve the situation, boosting loading speeds will result in fewer bounce rates since the content will captively hold users for longer.

How to Optimize The Speed of Your WordPress Website

At this point, we saw how speed is an important aspect of a WordPress site. So what can be done to actually optimize the site speed? Let’s go through the actionable optimization tips one by one.

1. Select a High-Performance Hosting Provider

The bedrock of any quick loading site is the choice of the right hosting services.

Options for High-Performance Hosting:

• Shared Hosting: Normally, shared hosting is less expensive but can cause a slowdown of your website since you share the same server with many other sites.
• VPS Hosting: Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting allows you to have more dedicated resources and this enhances the performance of the website.
• Managed WordPress Hosting: Managed WordPress hosting services such as WP Engine, Kinsta, and Site round focus on WordPress and offer optimized performance.

 Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

One of the functionalities, known as the Content Delivery Network (CDN), is responsible for the strategic redistribution of the static components of your site such as pictures, styles, scripts, etc. everwhere in the world. Therefore, physical distance between the web files and the web browser of the user is reduced and as a result, load time is reduced.

For instance, if the main server of the site is in the US, an Australian visitor is likely to view the web pages much slower as compared to other users in the US.

Some of the prevalent CDN providers for WordPress based sites are:

• Cloud flare (complementary and paid versions available)
• Stack Path
• KeyCDN

3. Optimize Images

Heavy image files are one of the issues that increases the loading speed of webpages. For instance, if there are images on the website that have not been optimized, they may take more time to load, which will affect the user experience and search engine optimization.

How to Optimize Images:

– Compress Images: Make use of TinyPNG or ImageOptim amongst other applications to reduce the file size of an image while maintaining its quality.

– Use the Right Format: A JPEG is the best option for any picture that is a photo, whereas a PNG is preferred for pictures that need a transparency background. WebP is an advanced format that maintains high-quality resolution while also keeping a low file size, however, some browsers do not support it.

– Resize Images: Ensure that the images on the website are not bigger than they need to be. Plugins such as Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer allow for automatic resizing and compression of images immediately after uploading.

With image optimization techniques, it will become possible to reduce load times dramatically and enhance the performance of your WordPress installation.

4. Leverage Browser Caching

Browser caching allows websites to save certain items (such as pictures, JavaScript, and CSS files) within the user’s browser.

How to Enable Browser Caching:

• If you are using caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket, browser caching is commonly on by default.
• If you would like to set up browser caching on your own, that can be done by modifying your website’s .htaccess file or using your hosting provider’s control panel.

5. Minify and Combine CSS, JavaScript, and HTML Files

Minifying is the process of taking a CSS, JavaScript or HTML files and stripping all unneeded spaces, comments and line breaks without changing the meaning of the file. This reduces the weight of the files and makes them load quicker.

How To Recombine And Minify Files:

• Install browser extensions such as Autotomize, WP Rocket that will automatically minify and combine all CSS, JavaScript and HTML files for you.
• Reducing the number of files by merging them speeds up the process as it minimizes the requests to be made to the server.

6. Use Caching Plugins

Caching plugins develop static copies of your dynamic WordPress site and present them to the visitors hence minimizing the need to create new content every time a visitor arrives. Caching decreases the server load considerably and increases the speed with which pages load.

Some of the most commonly used caching plugins for WordPress include: –

• WP Rocket: an excellent paid plugin that features file modification, database cleaning, lazy upload, and many more.
• W3 Total Cache: the most popular free plugin which includes caching, compression, CDN and more.
• WFP super cache: a basic easy to use and very efficient cache plugin suitable for WordPress users.

7. Optimize Your WordPress Database

As you add content to your WordPress website, the database tends to fill with junk data which includes post revisions, drafts, spam, and many others. Maintenance of your database is essential as it helps in speeding the performance of your website by relieving the pressure off your database server. Database Maintenance Practices:

• Make use of WP-Optimize or WP-Sweep to help you maintain a healthy WordPress database by omitting redundant information.
• Control the number of saved Post Revisions: WordPress keeps many copies of your posts and pages which increases the amount of space taken in the database.

8. Disable Unnecessary Plugins and Themes

Every additional plugin that you add to your WordPress install brings more code to your site, which can increase the loading times of your site if these are not optimized. In case you are not using a plugin or theme, it is advisable to deactivate and uninstall it.

How to Spot Unused Plugins:

– Go through the installed plugins thoroughly and turn off the ones which are unnecessary.

– Employ the Plugin Performance Profiler to determine the amount of extra load time each plugin is responsible for.

9. Avoid WordPress themes that utilize excessive resources.

WordPress themes are not all the same. Certain themes are built with an intention of achieving speed whereas others are loaded with excessive elements and such sit can maintain a very high speed.

As you choose a WordPress theme, you should:

– Go for light and speed-focused themes such as GeneratePress, Astra, or Neve.

– Avoid sites that offer complex themes with too many unnecessary inbuilt features which can cause extra hindrance and reduce the speed of your site.

10. Keep WordPress, Plugins, and Themes Updated

WordPress utilities news and fixes are frequently updated. the developers to enhance functionality, resolve issues and tighten security. It is important to update the WordPress core, themes, and plugins in order to take full advantage of the performance enhancements and security updates that come with them.

• Automatically update the minor WordPress upgrades to your site by changing the wp-config.php file or the settings of your hosting.
• Monitor the WordPress admin dashboard for plugin and theme updates from time to time.

More Ways To Make Your WordPress Site Faster

• Employ Lazy Load for your Images and Videos:
• Lazy load is a mechanism that only loads images and videos when they are to be viewed by the user. This help decrease the initial page load since such images and videos are not included initially. This is provided in many of the caching plugins or themes.
• Turn off hotlinking: When other websites link its content to your images, videos, or other resources.
• And uses your bandwidth, this is called hotlinking. You can restrict hotlinking from occurring by using your hosting control panel or the .hatches file.
• Turn on GZIP Compression:
• GZIP compression shrinks down HTML, CSS as well as Javascript files that these files will open up rather quickly. GZIP compression is incorporated by default in most WordPress caching plugin systems.

Conclusion

Enhancing the performance of your WordPress site is vital for improved customer satisfaction, better SEO performance, and increased conversion rates.

Please note that website load time is a continuous activity. Track the performance of your website on a regular basis with the use of such applications as Google PageSpeed Insights.

Metrix or Pingdom and make the necessary improvements to your website whenever it becomes necessary.

High end hosting, caching, CDNs and most importantly, proper …