6 Easy Tips to Speed up Your WordPress Website
If you already own a WordPress website, then at some point you might have gone frustrated with its loading speed and wanted to know how can you improve it?
I then did some A/B testing until I finally figured out how to increase the loading speed of my Website.
WordPress websites are great for business, blogging and featuring your work.
But the one weakness that I have noticed in Word Press is that the website is sometimes sluggish and takes a long time to load if you don’t maintain it correctly.
If you don’t know what’s your website speed, then why don’t you run a website speed test & find out how well is your website performing?
In order to find your website loading speed, use the following tools:
Website Score given to my Blog lokeshkaushik.com by Pingdom.
The slowness of your website can prove a hassle for your site visitors & regular subscribers. This will cost you lots of web traffic loss that I am sure you don’t want it to happen.
So, if you want to increase your site’s loading speed you need to find out what’s your site loading speed first.
Improving your website’s loading speed is a very important part and can’t be ignored.
According to WPbeginner, in a case study that involved large sites including Google & Amazon found that a mere 1-second delay in website loading time can lead to 7 % conversions loss which is quite a bit.
Even Google uses speed test to evaluate the performance of a website and ranks it according to its response time in addition to other SEO factors.
I was not going to let the poor results of the website speed test affect the SEO of my WordPress website.
So I began working on my website which includes lots of A/B testing, image optimizing & trying different plugins that could help me improve the speed of my website.
I want to share some of those tips with you, so you can apply them to your WordPress websites.
1. Choose Good Website Host:
The first and foremost thing is to choose a good host for your WordPress website. A shared host might seem like a cheap option, but it can lead to the slow speed of your website.
During high traffic periods, the website performs even worse. If you serious about using WordPress for publishing or running your own business, then spend a little extra money and invest in a dedicated host for your website.
It will definitely pay off in the long run.
2. Choose Premium Theme:
Having a solid framework or theme for your WordPress website is another important factor which greatly affects your website’s speed.
You need to choose the WordPress theme carefully. In other words, the theme should be powerful, SEO friendly offers a lot of features all without compromising on the speed.
That’s why I never compromise in theme. I always choose the premium theme whether if it’s for my Business, Personal Blog or for my Client’s websites.
From what I have experienced, choose a theme which does not drag down the performance of your WordPress website.
3. Image Optimization:
If you are heavy on image-driven content like me, choose an image optimizer plugin like Short Pixel & Smush Image compression.
The plugins reduce the file size of the images without compromising on quality. This tool will help you optimize the images you are using for your WordPress website, so they can load up quickly without causing the site to slow down.
The Free plan comes with a limit but premium plan offers complete image compression.
4. Use Cache Plugin:
Cache plugin plays a great role in increasing your website’s loading speed. You must use an effective caching plugin. They drastically reduce the page loading time and the ones available at WordPress are free for use.
I like the W3 Fastest Cache because it is easy to install and has all the features that we need. The plugin will help in caching the elements, and you will see your webpage load up quickly.
5. Keep it updated
Keep your WordPress website updated.
Time to time you will see new updates of your plugins & themes which you must keep updated. New updates offer new features, fix security issues & bugs.
So, in order to avail updated features and keep your website secure, don’t forget to update it regularly.
6. Don’t upload videos Directly:
When you publish an article or add videos to your website try not to upload them directly because it will cost you Bandwidth & slow down your website’s loading speed.
Instead of uploading videos directly to your website, use video hosting websites such as YouTube & Vimeo & then embed them into your site. This will save your Bandwidth and increase your site speed.
Wrapping Up:
I hope you found this guide useful. Applying some of these steps is sure to get your WordPress website running faster and smoother than before.
