Faster loading pages can get you higher traction online and improve your chances of ranking on SERP. Today, businesses of all sizes and domains choose WordPress for web hosting. It is the most popular CMS platform that lets you integrate with different plugins and tools to create a dynamic website.
But, a great-looking website won’t yield any results if the site does not load in three seconds. Faster loading pages improve the user experience and optimise the performance of your WordPress website. Below are a few tips that can help you speed up your WordPress website.
Read: 9 Important SEO Metrics to Track (How to Improve Them)
How To Speed up a WordPress Website?
Website speed is a vital ranking factor as it helps improve the experience of users while browsing through a website. There are many ways to optimise your site for speed. Some of them include using the best web hosting provider, optimising images & videos before uploading them on your website, and deleting or uninstalling unnecessary WordPress plugins. Apart from these, a CDN Network can help improve website speed. Plus, make sure to pick a lightweight theme for your website to avoid speed issues.
A. Why is Speed so Important?
Nothing frustrates a visitor more than a slow website. It creates a bad user experience, leading to a high bounce rate. And in the worst scenario, the users may not return to your website because of slow loading.
1. According to a study, most people prefer a faster loading time compared to fancy site animations.
2. According to Google – as the page load size goes from 1 to three seconds – the user bouncing rate increases by 32%.
3. Google uses core web vitals to understand why the users leave your website. There are three vital metrics – First input delay, Largest contentful paint, and Cumulative layout shift.
- The range of the First input delay should be 0 to 100ms
- The range of the Largest contentful paint should be 0 to 2 seconds
- The range of Cumulative layout shift should be 0 to 0.1
B. Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress Website
1. Look for a Different Host
The hosting provider you choose will have an impact on your website speed. If you are on a budget plan, your website won’t be able to accommodate the resources (images, video files, etc) – and that will affect the speed. Moreover, with a traffic surge, your website will suffer. Following this, it is essential to understand your WordPress hosting plan features.
Read this Bluehost review to understand the WordPress hosting plans offered by Bluehost.
- Based on your need, you need to choose a hosting plan that helps improve your site’s functionality. You also need to ensure your web hosting provider offers the best customer and technical support.
- Irrespective of a blog or a website, choose a hosting provider that offers seamless scaling.
- Select a web hosting provider that offers added tools and plugins that enables efficiency and speed.
- Some website providers also offer website migration options for improving website speed.
Make use of Bluehost coupons to buy web hosting for your website now!
2. Optimise Images and Videos
If your page size is heavy, you’ll need more resources to scale. Images, videos, and media files take up a lot of space. You will need to compress the media files to ensure your site is loading faster.
- Images take an average of 34% of the total website resources, so it is vital to optimise images using different compression tools. Besides, a good image optimisation workflow is the easiest to implement.
- You can use Optimole and WP Smush plugin for image optimisation.
- Moreover, you can compress media files to decrease the page size or use lazy load, which is a popular option.
3. Discard plugins – Not in Use
When you create a WordPress website, you install many plugins and tools to enhance the site’s functionality and performance. But as your site grows, the requirement also changes. Unnecessary plugins and tools bloat your database, thereby affecting the website’s speed and traffic.
- You will need to disable or delete all plugins that aren’t in use.
- Check in the dashboard area and see your list of plugins. Uninstall the ones you don’t use. Most plugins serve no real purpose on your site and only affect the site speed.
- It is best to evaluate the plugins you don’t require and make a list of relevant ones. This step plays an important role in improving website speed and performance.
4. Use a Lightweight WordPress framework
There is no dearth of WordPress themes. But, some themes, like dynamic WordPress themes, may affect site speed as they are loaded with dynamic elements, social icons, and widgets.
Dynamic elements may be visually appealing, but they are not good when it comes to the site’s functionality. Besides, if there are too many elements on a website, it will cause the server to crash.
- The best thing you can do is use a lightweight theme with minimum plugins.
- You can choose default WordPress themes that offer minimum plugins but are good for a new site set-up.
- Additionally, with a feature-rich website, having a good framework is essential. If the WordPress website is not updated regularly, it may cause lags and issues.
- Try keeping the auto-update feature on to prevent any site-related issues.
5. Minify JS and CSS files
It is essential to minify the CSS and JS files to improve website speed. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool notifies you about the minification of these two files. By minifying JS and CSS, you can reduce the number of codes that are transferred to the server.
The added characters are eliminated during the process, which helps in better site readability. Besides, reduced page load time provides a better user experience.
- You can use different plugins to minify the JS and CSS files.
- AutoOptimise is a popular plugin for minification. The plugin helps optimise the javascript files and CSS and ensures your website loads faster. In addition, you can also minify the HTML of your website.
6. Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Most people aren’t aware of pingbacks and trackbacks. The two components alert you when your page or blog receives a link.
- If you keep pingbacks and trackbacks on your website, it will put added strain on the server resources, which may cause slow loading.
- When someone requests a site link, it generates added request from WordPress that works on and off. This functionality can impact your site while targeting DDOS attacks.
You can disable pingbacks and trackbacks on the WP-admin page.
- Go to your wp-admin page, discussions, and settings.
- You need to disable ‘allow link notifications from other sites.’
7. Use a CDN Network
The location of your web hosting server impacts your website speed. A CDN network helps speed up a WordPress website for all visitors. As the network comprises many servers around the globe, each server stores static files that make a website. The static files include CSS and JavaScript.
- With a CDN, a user is served a static file from the server closest to the website. Following this, your server will work faster, and the site will load faster.
- Apart from the CDN network, you can use plugins that offer speed and a better user experience. Always check for plugins before installation on your website.
Also read: How To Setup Free Cloudflare CDN For Your WordPress?
Speed up your site
The need for speed has become a primary requirement of a website. Visitors prefer websites that offer an enhanced user experience and faster loading time.
By optimising your website using the above tips, you can considerably improve your site’s speed.
There are also many tools to check website speed, so use them to identify errors and rectify them. Plus, invest in reliable hosting to optimise your site’s load time and performance. Use Bluehost hosting coupons to buy hosting at a discount.
Leave a Reply