How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site: 10 Easy Steps

The reason to speed up WordPress is that it has certain effects on SEO and user experience. The first effect you will see with content-focused sites is an increase in keyword rankings. The second effect is on user experience because slow loading site...

How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site: 10 Easy Steps


Why should you speed up WordPress?

There are a few reasons to speed up your WordPress site, I’ll list the most popular ones.

The reason to speed up WordPress is that it has certain effects on SEO and user experience. The first effect you will see with content-focused sites is an increase in keyword rankings. The second effect is on user experience because slow loading sites lead to bad customer satisfaction rates.

The third reason why you should speed up WordPress is that it will make your site more accessible for people with disabilities such as screen readers or slower connectivity.

Speed up WordPress for better SEO, faster load times, and better accessibility

How to test the loading time of your website?

Web developers and website owners need to be mindful of the loading time of a website. This is because, according to Google's research, 40% of the people who abandon their site visitors are not willing to wait more than three seconds for a page to load.

There are several ways to check the page loading time:

- use a tool like Pingdom which provides detailed information about the page load time, as well as all other stats related to the server's performance.

- use WebPagetest which shows how long it takes for your webpage to load from various locations around the world.

- use GTmetrix, which provides similar information about web pages and websites and evaluates them for performance issues that may impact your rankings on Google or bounce rates from visitors coming from social media sites

1. Choose a better web hosting provider

Choosing a web hosting provider is a difficult task. There are many parameters to take into consideration, such as cost, security, speed of service, and customer service.

Choosing a web hosting provider can be tough because there are so many factors to consider like cost, security, speed of service, and customer service. Choosing one that fits your needs best will depend on how much you want to invest in your website's success.

Our Agency's Favourite hosting that we use for ourselves as well as clients is listed below.

1. Cloudways (Costly but damn worth it)

Cloudways is a company that provides hosting solutions for apps and websites. They have their own servers and data centers which are located in different parts of the world. There is always an option to choose a server location that offers the best connectivity for a website visitor from any point in the world.

Cloudways offers VPS, Dedicated Server, and Managed Hosting solutions to fit your needs and budget. If you're looking for a web host with affordable pricing, then Cloudways is the right hosting company to go with.

2. A2hosting ( Best of the Best)

Websites and servers are essential to the operation of any business. That is why it is important to choose a reputable service provider when building and maintaining your website.

One of the best hosting companies in America is A2 Hosting. They offer reliable high-quality hosting solutions that can help you grow your business and increase your site's performance. With over two decades of experience, they have proven themselves as one of the best providers in America.

Features:

- Reliable high-quality hosting solutions

- Affordable prices with no hidden fees

- Customer service available 24/7

a2hosting is a web hosting service provider that offers reliable and cost-effective services.

a2hosting has been in business for over 20 years with an established reputation for the quality of their customer service. Hosting packages are available for both individuals and businesses.

Read our Complete Hosting Guide For beginners.

2. Use a lightweight WordPress theme/framework

WordPress provides a simple way to build a website from scratch. You can find many free

It can be difficult to choose the right WordPress theme for your website. There are so many options and you want to make sure you pick the one that best suits your needs and goals. A lightweight WordPress theme is a good choice for any site because it is fast, secure, user-friendly, and customizable.

A lightweight WordPress theme will not bog down your site with unnecessary features or bloat. The light framework will help keep your website running smoothly so it can rank higher in search engines like Google. This type of framework also makes navigation easier because all the content is organized in one place on the homepage.

The two most popular WordPress frameworks on ThemeForest are GeneratePress and Astra. They are both lightweights, easy to use, mobile responsive, SEO friendly, and come with their own child themes.

1. GeneratePress

generatepress

GeneratePress is a free and lightweight framework that has been downloaded over 1 million times in the past 2 years. It is built for speed: it loads as fast as possible without sacrificing any features or customization abilities.

2. WPAstra

Astra is another popular WordPress framework that offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface to build your website with its pre-built templates and layouts.

WP Astra is a professional-grade WordPress theme. It is compatible with WPML, WooCommerce, and WP Super Cache.

WP Astra theme enables you to create websites of any type from a portfolio website to an eCommerce site, or anything in between. The theme provides you with a wide range of features and functionalities for your website design needs.

WP Astra has been designed for the WordPress platform and it comes with full compatibility for WooCommerce so that you can start selling products online without any hassle.

3. Reduce image sizes

A WordPress site may contain a large number of images and other media files, and the size of these files can be a concern, especially if it is hosted on a shared hosting plan.

Images are an essential part of any website. They help make the content more interactive and also provide a better understanding of the subject being discussed.

However, when there is too much data on a page, it makes the site load faster. This is why we need to reduce the image size in WordPress to help our website load faster.

We should reduce the image sizes in WordPress because this will help increase loading time for our website and make it more interactive for readers.

So you can reduce the size of your images by using the plugins mentioned below.

1. EWWW Image Optimizer (Best and Our Favorite) - 

The EWWW Image Optimizer is a freemium plugin to optimize images for the web. It allows you to resize, compress, and rename your images so that they are in the correct size/format for social media or other publishing outlets.

EWWW Image Optimizer is freemium software that optimizes your images for faster loading on websites and reduces file sizes by up to 70%. It can also help with website performance, speed up page load times, reduce bandwidth usage and data transfer costs.

2. Compress JPEG& PNG Images

This plugin reduces the size of JPEG or PNG images without compromising on quality. It also converts image formats and creates thumbnails with different sizes, which will help you save storage space on your server and reduce page load times.

3. WP Smush

This plugin is used to compress and optimize images for faster loading time, especially for those who are running on a low-end hosting service or have a lot of images in their posts and pages.

4. Minify JS and CSS files

The code for JavaScript and CSS files is a crucial component of any web page as it defines the layout and functionality of the website.

Minifying JavaScript and CSS files reduce file sizes, making it possible to load these files faster.

Minifying CSS and JS files can have a significant impact on performance because they are loaded synchronously with the rest of the page's content. By reducing these files in size, web pages can load faster. This is especially useful on pages that load many stylesheets or scripts or when bandwidth is limited (e.g., mobile).

Best Plugin For Minifying JS and CSS - 

WP-Optimize plugin is a free powerful tool that helps site owners to speed up their site by optimizing all the files and database tables.

WP-Optimize was created by the WP Rocket developer team who have over 20 years of experience in web development. They also offer a premium plugin with a free trial, which means you can try it before you buy.

5. Use advanced caching mechanisms with a caching plugin

Caching plugins are used for efficient optimization of the site. A caching plugin stores a static copy of the site's pages and serves these cached pages in response to requests.

This allows the webserver to respond more quickly since it doesn't have to generate a page dynamically each time. It also reduces the load on the server, since the server doesn't have to generate all those pages.

Best Plugin For Minifying JS and CSS -  WP-Optimize

6. Use a CDN

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are networks of servers that host a website's content and deliver the content to the visitor as quickly as possible.

CDNs work by caching a particular site's most popular content in data centers around the world. When a user requests data from that site, the CDN handles fetching that data from one of its caches instead of fetching it itself. This drastically decreases loading times for popular articles or pages and increases cache hit rates for infrequently accessed content.

A CDN is most useful when there is a significant difference in distances between the user and server. The closer the user is to the server, the faster their page loads.

Free CDN Service - Cloudflare

Premium CDN Service - BunnyCDN (Best)

7. Enable GZIP compression

GZIP is one of the most important features that we should enable on our website. It can compress the content on the server, meaning that users get to see their content faster. The faster the loading time, the better the user experience.

GZIP compression has a worldwide impact as it is used by nearly every web browser and all major operating systems. For this reason, people all over the world are likely to benefit from enabling GZIP compression.

GZIP compression is open-source software that compresses data for faster download speeds and reduced bandwidth usage. This means that you can provide visitors with a good user experience without having to spend too much money on expensive hardware or spending hours optimizing your website’s performance.

Free Plugin for Gzip Compression - WP-Optimize plugin

8. Cleanup WordPress database

Cleaning up the WordPress database will help you get rid of duplicates, spam, and other unwanted items and helps in increased loading time.

There are two ways to do this:

1) Deleting files manually from the database by navigating to "wp-admin/index.php?page=wp-admin/options-general.php&show=cleanup"

2) Using plugins, like WP Cleaner or WP-Optimize

9. Deactivate or uninstall plugins

All plugins slow down the loading time of your website. The more plugins you have, the slower the load time. So, it is important to keep a limit on how many plugins are running on your WordPress site and deactivate or uninstall those that you do not use.

There are some plugins that run automatically when you open up a post or page and these will definitely slow down your site performance. You should know what these plugins are to avoid using them.

10. Keep external scripts to a minimum

External scripts have the potential to slow downloading times.

External scripts are not only slower, but they are also more difficult to manage. A script is a type of piece of code that runs in the background when the page is loaded. These scripts can be either external or internal: external scripts come from a third-party website, while internal scripts are written by the website's developers.

It is possible to use external scripts without affecting performance, but those situations are rare and usually reserved for legacy sites where minimizing any changes has less importance than staying compatible with older browsers.

11. Disable pingbacks and trackbacks

Pingbacks and trackbacks are shown in the comments section, but they can cause a delay in loading time.

It is important to disable pingbacks and trackbacks because they show up in the comments section. While this may seem like a harmless side effect, it can actually slow down the loading time of your website.

Conclusion

There are a number of things you can do to make your website load faster.

We recommend starting by optimizing your images.

If you don't have the time or expertise to make these changes yourself, consider hiring a professional to help you.

What is WordPress speed optimization?

WordPress is a fantastic platform for all kinds of websites, but it does not come without its downsides. One such downside is that WordPress sites can be notoriously slow and cumbersome to navigate. This is especially true for users with an older computer or those who are on a slower network connection.
If your WordPress website feels slow, clunky, and takes ages to load, this post should have given you some pointers on how to speed up your site.
There are many WordPress plugins that claim to offer speed optimization services, but most of the time they just provide empty promises.

How to use WordPress speed optimization?

WordPress speed optimization is a process that’s worth investing in. It helps you improve the website loading time and make it faster. The best WordPress speed optimization techniques are making use of a CDN, caching plugins, and reducing the number of requests.
It’s not enough to just have fast code or load times – WordPress speed optimization also depends on what blocks are being loaded when you visit a site. If there are only images or scripts being loaded, then the site will load quickly; but if the content takes time to load then this can lead to slower speeds.

About Author

Hameed Aslam

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Hameed Aslam is a website design and development expert, as well as an SEO and content strategist. He is the founder of DCreato and many other online ventures. Hameed's skills with web design, development, SEO, and content marketing have helped him achieve success in online business. He loves to help others learn about these topics so that they can also be successful online.

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