If you are looking for a comprehensive guide on how to optimize speed on your WordPress website, look no further. Here is all the information you need to get your WordPress site running smoothly like butter!
Over 43.6% of websites in the world use WordPress. The platform is a powerful content management system (CMS) that is popular for creating any kind of website. Its beginner-friendly and intuitive interface has made it popular worldwide. However, the site can slow down for various reasons. It can affect the overall performance and even impact the Google ranking.
To avoid the problem, you can undertake various practices to speed up WordPress site. In this article, we will explain some of these best practices that will help you optimize your WordPress website’s speed. So, make sure you read until the end!
Why You Need To Optimize Your WordPress Site’s Speed?
Speed is a crucial factor for any site. It hugely impacts the website’s ranking in search engines like Google. An effective and fast site also enhances the user experience. Visitors do not like slow sites and leave if it takes longer than three seconds to load. It will greatly influence how visitors judge the business based on the user experience. As a result, a slow site increases the bounce rates.
Unoptimized WordPress sites are also prone to security risks. Unused and unnecessary plugins and themes can also slow the site. It can consume valuable server resources, slowing down the page speed. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize the speed of your WordPress site. Other factors that can cause your site to slow down include not properly configured web hosting, large images, page size, external scripts, and poorly coded plugins.
You can test your website speed before jumping to optimize it. There are various tools to audit your WordPress site’s performance. Some of them are as follows:
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Chrome DevTools
- Lighthouse
- Pingdom Tools
- WP-Optimize
- Cloudflare Website Performance Tools
Tips On How To Optimize Speed On Your WordPress Website
Now that we know the need for WordPress site speed optimization, let us explore various ways we can do that. Here are some tips:
Choose a powerful WordPress hosting
The first way to optimize speed on your WordPress site is by choosing a powerful WordPress hosting service. There are various types of hosting available, which are explained below:
- Shared hosting: It is the most affordable WordPress hosting service and is also easy to use. Shared hosting is suitable for smaller websites. As the name suggests, the server resources are shared by many websites. Because it is shared by many, the amount of resources used can be disproportionate, which can cause your website to slow down.
- Managed hosting: Managed hosting is powerful and suitable for all websites. It is specially built for WordPress and can handle high traffic. Hence, this type of hosting uses very few resources and improves the site’s speed. Managed WordPress hosting also offers powerful features, but it is expensive and less flexible.
- Dedicated hosting: Another WordPress hosting suitable for high-traffic websites is dedicated hosting. It allows users to have the server for themselves, so there is no need to share resources. Dedicated hosting offers complete control over resources and server configurations. However, using the hosting server is more expensive and requires extensive knowledge.
When choosing a WordPress hosting plan, choose the best one for your website. Remember that you will get what you pay for, which will hugely impact your site’s performance.
Managed and dedicated hosting are best for handling a website’s heavy traffic and maintaining its speed. They are the best options to speed up your WordPress sites. Shared hosting may be cheap, but you have to share the resources, which will impact the page load speed. With the recent development of Headless WordPress, cloud hosting is also becoming popular.
Install a reliable cache plugin
One of the best things about using WordPress is that there are thousands of free and paid WordPress plugins. You can install a reliable cache plugin that will help to optimize your website’s speed. A cache WordPress plugin makes managing the dynamic WordPress page easier, even when many visitors visit the site simultaneously. It can make your site load faster, from two to five times.
The caching plugin makes a copy of the webpage after the first load and serves the cached version to every user. Therefore, it eliminates the need to go through the entire page generation process each time. Some of the best WordPress caching plugins are:
- WP Rocket
- WP Super Cache
- W3 Total Cache
Optimize images
Images help to make the content on your web page more engaging and interactive. The colorful photos also help to make the website more attractive and appealing. However, unoptimized or large-size images can hurt the WordPress site’s speed. It can cause the page load time to slow down, impacting the overall user experience. Therefore, editing and optimizing your images for performance optimization is essential. Optimizing the image refers to reducing the image size without losing its quality.
Similarly, it is crucial to use the correct image format when uploading images on the site. For example, JPEG is more suitable for colorful images, while SVG is best for logos and icons. You can use optimization plugins that allow you to compress images without losing quality.
There are also external software, such as Photoshop, Canva, TinyPNG, etc., that you can use to resize images. You can also enable the lazy loading feature to speed up your WordPress site. With lazy loading, the images only load when visible on the screen. Note that WordPress version 5.5 + has built-in lazy loading.
Use a lightweight theme
Like plugins, the WordPress library contains thousands of WordPress themes (free and premium). Although the themes may look attractive, some can be bloated with excessive and unnecessary features. They may give your site appealing animations, effects, and high-quality images. However, these effects require a lot of coding. Inefficient coding will inflate the file’s size. As a result, a bloated theme will impact the speed of your WordPress site. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a lightweight one.
You should choose a minimalist theme instead of a bloated theme. Then, you can add plugins to add extra and necessary features. You can also add extra effects with custom CSS. It allows you to avoid unnecessary animations, widgets, sliders, or effects that can slow down your website.
You can also test the theme speed with the help of Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix before installing it. After the theme installation, it is also crucial to keep it updated. It helps to improve WordPress speed optimization, as well as plugin compatibility and security.
Use Content Delivery Network
The visitors accessing your WordPress website do not only belong to a specific geographical location. They may be using the site from different parts of the world. The real-world distance can slow down your site speed drastically. The location of the web hosting servers significantly impacts the loading time of your site. It affects international users and users in remote regions. This is where the Content Delivery Network (CDN) comes in.
The CDN stores copies of your WordPress website’s files on multiple servers across the globe. It distributes bandwidth in various locations, reducing the server load. As a result, there is less impact on the performance speed of the site, regardless of the location. Due to the faster load time, the user experience also enhances, and SEO improves. Moreover, the Content Delivery Network protects the site from harmful traffic and DDoS attacks. Some of the best WordPress CDN services are:
- Cloudflare
- StackPath
- Amazon CloudFront
- BunnyCDN
Optimize your WordPress Database
Another way to optimize the WordPress site speed is to clean up your database. Over time, your WordPress database can collect many unnecessary files and data. Unused plugins, themes, unpublished content, old media, etc., can occupy your storage space. It loads the server, affecting the website’s performance speed. So, it is crucial to clean up unused and unnecessary data from time to time.
Optimizing your database reduces its size and junk data. It also improves server performance and reduces bloat. Frequent cleaning of the WordPress database also enhances backup efficiency. You can use a data optimization plugin to clean your database easily. Similarly, you can also manually optimize it. Some of the popular data optimization plugins are:
- WP-Optimize
- Advanced Database Cleaner
- WP Rocket
Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
The source code files, such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, can accumulate over time. As a result, the performance of your WordPress website can lag. It causes a load on the server, increasing the response time. Therefore, it is crucial to minify the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. It reduces the file sizes and removes unnecessary characters like comments, spaces, line breaks, etc. Similarly, minifying these source code files improves the rendering speed of the web page.
The good thing about WordPress is that there is a plugin for everything. You can easily install a plugin to minify CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and other source codes. Similarly, you can also do it manually or use online tools. Whether you use a plugin or minify manually, it improves the WordPress performance, allowing the web pages to load faster. The best plugins for minifying the source code files are:
- WP Rocket
- Fast Velocity Minify (Advanced Users)
- Autoptimize
Use the latest PHP version
Another way to optimize the speed of your WordPress website is to use the latest PHP version. With every new update, WordPress enhances its features and security. Hence, keeping your PHP updated to the latest version is crucial to speed up your site. The new versions execute the codes more efficiently and enhance better compatibility with the plugins and themes. It also updates its security, reducing vulnerabilities.
After updating to the latest version, it is also important to check PHP compatibility. You can use the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin to ensure the themes and plugins run smoothly. Note that PHP versions are regularly updated. If you have any doubts, you can contact your hosting provider for more information and support.
Conclusion
Speed plays a crucial role in ranking your website higher in the search results. Speed optimization helps enhance your WordPress site’s performance. It also enhances the user experience, decreases bounce rates, and ultimately improves SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Similarly, it also increases the conversion rate, which contributes to the success of the site and business.
We hope you will find our tips on how to optimize speed on your WordPress website useful. You can apply them to your site and get the results yourself. You can use plugins to help you with the speed optimization task, or do it manually. Whatever you do, a fast-loading site is crucial for every website. It helps to build a strong online presence in the fast-paced and changing landscapes of the digital world.