A slow WordPress website is disappointing to users and can lead to lower rankings in search engines as well as businesses falling behind competitors. In the world we find ourselves living in today, time is a commodity, and thus, website response time needs to be as optimum as possible. The danger of having a WordPress site that takes too much time to load calls for action.
Like anything else, a website that does not respond fast like other functionalities has a hidden cost that can be high to the business:
When the speed of any website is enhanced, that creates an enhancement in the people’s interaction, the visibility and credibility of the website from search engines get better, and sales figures increase as well. Following are the ten primary quick measures that will help your WordPress site load significantly faster than before.
So, let us discuss the 19 most effective ways of WordPress site speed optimization and to speed up a WordPress website.
Following these strategies will help you not only improve the performance of your website but also ensure WordPress site speed optimization and smooth navigation.
A host that doesn’t perform is the source of a slow-loading WordPress website. Hosting plans should be tailored for WordPress and adequately staffed to accommodate the traffic and demands of the website. When looking for a hosting provider, pay attention to these elements:
Images constitute the most extensive files in any WordPress website, and they will always slow down the pages. For images, the following are the most critical factors:
In general, the total number of files required for download so that a webpage can be rendered through a browser is represented through HTTP requests. Since these requests are variable with respect to a specific page Load, it is wise to surround these HTTP requests and if possible, keep them at a lower rate. Here are effective techniques to achieve this:
A CDN is basically a collection of servers that are located in various regions and are interconnected to provide remote connections to the wide server. This helps because if a visitor resides worldwide, there is server content closer to him, making the load quicker and better.
Transferring files such as Javascript and CSS will not be a big challenge as the GZIP compression file transfer rate is considerably improved. It would benefit performance improvement of page load rates due to the use of so many files, yet the transfer files will always be lower.
A large WordPress database can be a drag on your website. To optimize your database, do the following:
Browser caching gives a browser the ability to retain static files so they do not require downloading during subsequent visits. Setting cache expiration headers helps improve your site performance as well.
Plugins provide WordPress websites with added functionality, but too many of them will slow down the performance of a site. Install only the plugins you need and deactivate or delete those that you have outgrown.
It is important to understand that to have a speedup WordPress website, a simple theme is a necessity. Pick a theme that is appropriately coded and optimized without the excess bloat.
Browser caching is when the browser saves some pages temporarily. Let’s assume for a second that you already have a website and are struggling to understand how these things work for you. To cut the whole explanation short, when someone visits a webpage, there are some static files like images, JavaScript, CSS, etc; which need to be loaded. And more often than not these files are stored in a remote server. Every subsequent time the user visits the webpage, he/she has to download the files again from the server, resulting in latency. That will not happen the next time you are on the same website because you already have the files on your device. The practice of using the same page elements every time a user visits the webpage will dramatically cut the load time and increase the speed of your WordPress website.
Minification is eliminating characters and whitespace in a document (in this case, CSS, Javascript and HTML websites). Effectively, it reduces the file sizes of CSS, Javascript and HTML documents, which would otherwise bloat the pages and slow down the time taken for the website to load. Minification is a simple and effective way of compressing data and using fewer characters.
Fonts are an extremely important part of web technologies today but are also one of the main resources that can slow things down if not deployed in an effective manner. In order to fix that, we suggest that you reduce the assets needed for fonts including limiting the number of used fonts and also the font formats. Doing so will cut down the number of HTTP requests for the fonts that are not needed and look to improve the overall performance of any website.
When a resource is blocked, your browser cannot display page content until it is fully loaded. To alleviate this situation, it is in your best interest, as a WordPress website owner, to give priority to primary CSS as well as JavaScript files. Other files should be loaded later. Doing so will make it possible to render the page content without unnecessary delays.
Keep-alive connections also help reduce latency and increase connection and yield performance. They allow the browser to persistently remain connected to the server. Allowing keep-alive connections enables faster loading of a WordPress website.
Google’s direction says that you should avoid adding redirects if you want faster loading times. As a good practice, try reducing redirects as much as possible. If you need to, the permanent one is a 301 redirect; the temporary but friendly one is a 302 redirect.
One of the elements that can considerably affect the speed of your site is the use of a WordPress theme. Therefore, in a bid to speed up your WordPress website, a performance-optimized theme should be used. Go for themes that are light and loaded with skeletons & nice features alone.
A caching plugin like WP Super Cache or WP Rocket can significantly speed up your WordPress website. These plugins create static HTML files of your website’s pages, reducing the server’s workload and improving load times. They can also optimize database queries, minify code, and implement other performance enhancements.
There are WordPress plugins available that will allow you to automate a number of the optimization tasks mentioned in this article. These plugins will focus on improving the caching, minification and other performance settings, thus providing an easy way to make your WordPress website faster.
Now and then, check on your site’s performance so as not to have performance bottlenecks. Expand your efforts to include tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix and Pingdom to monitor the speed of your website and get concrete guidelines for improving it.
WooCommerce store owners should consider these other tips further to reduce the load time of their websites.
If these ten tips are observed with dedication, then the speed of your WordPress websites is likely to be at the optimum level, thus providing the users with the very best experience. Have a clear understanding that it does not end with a one-speed test. Website speed improvement is an ongoing, never-ending process. Test the website at regular intervals and get areas that need adjustments.
Change the settings and keep the website in the best working condition. Also, make sure the speed of the WordPress website is given priority as this can improve the overall experience of the visitors and raise the search engine ranking of the website, thus generating more traffic to the business.
