Do you want to increase the page loading speed of your WordPress website? Google has announced that website speed is one of the ranking factors.
If you want to rank your website, then you should focus on website page speed. But, how you can improve the page speed of your website. There are certain things that you need to perform on your website to increase the loading speed.
In this article, I will share the different methods that will increase your website’s loading speed.
Why Is Page Speed Important?
As stated above, it is one of the ranking factors in Google Search Engine. Therefore, in this section, I have sorted the reasons why page speed matters.
- When readers visit your website, and it takes time to load, readers will find another similar site.
- If your site is eCommerce, then it is very important to improve your site performance. You may see a decrease in sales and conversions.
- The website with a longer load time will have a higher bounce rate and lower the average time on the page.
Check Website Speed
The first step is to check your website page speed and where it is taking time to load. If you want to check the website speed, you can check it with the MonsterInsights WordPress plugin.
MonsterInsights is a WordPress Google Analytics plugin. It will give you more insights about your website in the WordPress dashboard itself.
Download and install the MonsterInsights. Navigate to Insights » Reports » Site Speed
The main advantage of using MonsterInsights is that you will get suggestions for improving your site speed and set up the goals for the same.
Here is the meaning of the terms.
- Server Response Time- This is when the server responds to the user request and loads the website.
- First Contentful Paint– This is time for loading the visual elements on the website.
- Time to Interactive– This is the time between when the website first starts to load.
- Total Blocking Time– This is the time it takes until people can interact with your website.
Use CDN
When a user visits your website, then the request goes to a server location. The distance between the reader’s location and your server will impact the page loading speed.
What could be the solution to reduce the distance and deliver the web pages fast?
The answer is to use the CDN. The CDN is a Content Delivery Network. It will deliver the web pages from the nearest location to the reader.
The company that provides the CDN has many data centres worldwide to serve your website from all the servers nearest to the visitors.
This will reduce the page loading time, and you will realize it when you install the CDN to your WordPress website. The most popular CDN is Cloudflare, Sucuri, KeyCDN, StackPath, Rackspace, etc.
Compress Images
This is a very important point for improving website page speed. If you are uploading images without compressing them, then definitely your website speed will get low.
It is a must and recommended that you should compress the images before uploading. However, if it is not possible for you to compress images, you can use the image compression plugins.
You can use ShortPixel, WP Smush, reSmush.It, EWWW Image Optimizer, Compress JPEG & PNG images WordPress plugins for compressing images automatically.
Deactivate Unused Plugins
If you were not using any plugin, then you can uninstall it. However, it will take unnecessary space and DB storage, which will cause slight performance issues for your website. Therefore, it is recommended to delete the unused plugins.
You can manually delete the unused plugins.
Right Web Hosting
This is the first step for starting your blog. It is very important to choose the right web hosting for your WordPress website.
I would recommend using VPS over shared hosting. The VPS is a dedicated instance. You will get better performance as you are the only person using it. However, you will have to manage your server.
The shared hosting is cheaper, but it is shared between multiple users. The hosting provider manages the server.
You can go for Vultr, Digital Ocean, Linode, etc. You can also use the managed VPS of Bluehost, Hostgator, SiteGround, Dreamhost, etc. The managed VPS is costly for beginner bloggers.
Caching Plugin
This is very important if you want to improve the page loading speed. You can use the caching plugin.
How does caching plugin works?
When the first request goes to your website, it will connect to your server, fetch all the information like images from your database, and deliver the web page to the requester. Of course, this will slow down the loading speed.
If you are using any caching plugin when the first request goes to your server, then it will store the cached version of that page, and next time when someone requests the same page, it will not connect to your server but deliver the page from the cached version of the page. In this way, it will increase the page loading speed of your website.
WP Rocket is the best caching plugin available. It will improve the website speed. The best part of this plugin is that you don’t have to do any configuration. Once installed, it will start working.
Theme
You can use the fasted WordPress theme for your blog. The heavy theme will decrease the performance of your blog.
You can go for GeneratePress and Astra, which is better for you, but these two themes are the fastest theme for WordPress.
DB Optimize
There are lots of unwanted stuff stored on your WordPress website. We have to optimize your website to make it faster. You don’t have to worry about it because there are many WordPress plugins available for doing it.
You can use WP Sweep, WP-Optimize, WP DBManager, WP Reset, WP Cleaner Pro etc.
If you follow all the above methods, then definitely your website speed will improve.
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