In today’s post, you will learn about how to speed up a WordPress website to improve search engine rankings in 2020.
Let’s start.
WordPress is known as the largest content management system in the world.
There are lots of people trying to speed up their WordPress website because speed is the best-ranking factor of Google.
It is one of the most trending topics around the blogger community these days.
For some WordPress users, speeding their WordPress website becomes a nightmare for those who don’t even know where to start troubleshooting this problem.
In this detailed guide, I’ll help you to solve this problem with all the troubleshooting steps that I’ve learned in my five years blogging journey.
Why You Should Increase Your WordPress Site Speed
So, here a question arises; Why should you speed up your WordPress website?
What should happen if my site loads two seconds more?
The answer to your question is; it matters a lot.
Google has officially stated that the site speed will affect the site ranking in SERPs.
Here are some reasons why you should speed your site up.
-
Most of the search engines rank fast loading websites up as compare to the slow loading sites. So, if you want to improve your ranking in SERPs, then make sure your website load time best.
-
When someone lands on your website, you have only a few seconds to convince your users to spend time on your website.
-
If your site loading time is more than two or three seconds, there are more possibilities they leave your site before landing your page.
How to Check Speed of a Website
First, you need to check the current load time of your website.
There are some tools that can help you to test your site speed.
But remember that your site may vary page to page, depending on different factors.
Usually, a website homepage is used as a benchmark for checking the load time.
However, sometimes it depends on how many requests you are generating.
These are some tools which help you to test your website page speed:
- Tools.Pingdoom.com
- Webpagetest.Org
- PageSpeed Insights (This tool is to help users to understand what type of element can boost your site speed.)
So, now you will understand the basics of why you need to speed up your WordPress website.
9 Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress Website
1. Choose the Better Web Hosting Provider
This one is the most basic step in order to increase site performance.
Choosing the best WordPress hosting plan with the right hosting company can take your website to the next level.
Most of the new website creators go for shared hosting because of unlimited bandwidth, emails, space, domains, and more.
However, the fact is most of the shared hosting providers can not deliver 99% uptime in peak hours and fail to provide good loading time.
SEO Basics is hosting on Bluehost, as they provide the best WordPress hosting with a guarantee of 99.99% uptime.
But Why Choose Bluehost?
There are lots of other web hosting companies out there, why choose Bluehost?
Let me explain it to you.
Bluehost is one of the most trusted hosting companies in the past couple of decades.
It is used more than 2 million websites all around the world.
Whether you are running a small business or an owner of a big portal, Bluehost provides all kinds of WordPress hosting according to your need.
Bluehost provides a variety of web hosting services from low-cost shared hosting to virtual servers, dedicated servers, and cloud storage.
Bluehost charges are very cheap as compare to other hosting companies as they don’t provide monthly web hosings.
So, choosing Bluehost for your WordPress hosting can always benefit your site performance in Google.
2. Choose the Better WordPress Theme
This might be weird in listening but a lot of typical elements on the theme can slow down a WordPress website.
If you also have so many elements on your homepage then this will also high your page load time.
The best solution to this problem is, choose a lightweight theme.
The WordPress default theme Twenty Nineteen is quite speedy and lightweight.
But I know you don’t want to use Twenty Nineteen.
That is why I recommend the GeneratePress premium theme because it is less than 1 MB in size.
The less size helps this theme to loads very fast whenever a user comes on your website.
You can also choose Astra and OcianWP if you’re at the starting point of any WordPress & WooCommerce project.
3. Optimize Images
High-quality images take too much time while loading your website.
That is why you need to reduce the image size in order to speed up your WordPress website.
This process is called image compression.
You can do this step manually but this process will take your lots of time.
However, there are lots of plugins available that will automatically compress all your website images.
One of them is WP Smush which I recommend you to use on your site.
WP smush will automatically reduce all your image sizes without losing their quality.
These plugins have bulk optimization tools so you don’t have to optimize your existing images manually.
4. Deactivate or Uninstall Unwanted Plugins
If you keep unwanted plugins on your site then it will add lots of trash files on your web server.
It will also reduce the page speed of your website as there are lots of files to be load on your server.
The simple solution to this problem is, use those plugins which can do some extra work for your website.
Some plugins like the Elementor pro page builder can also build your fast-loading landing pages for your website.
The Elementor Pro plugin is one solution of your all needs as it is recommended by some pro bloggers.
It is necessary to deactivate all unwanted plugins in order to speed up the WordPress website.
And also, look for the fast loading plugins.
5. Use Caching Plugin
Using the best caching plugin for your website can load your website faster.
A cache plugin can create and store your website’s static HTML pages on your server.
Instead of juggling comparatively strong WordPress PHP files, every time the user wants to reach your website, your cache plugin serves the lighter HTML page to your users.
This helps the cache plugin to increase the loading time of your website page.
If you would like to choose the best WordPress cache plugin, then I recommend you to go for W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket.
These two plugins are one of the best WordPress cache plugins used by millions of websites around the world.
6. Keep Your WordPress Website Updated
It is your responsibility to keep your website updated with the current version of WordPress.
Not only WordPress but also your theme and plugins should be up to date with the latest version.
WordPress frequently updates will not only offer new features but also fix security issues and bugs.
7. Optimize Your Site’s Homepage
It is also one of the most important parts in order to speed up the WordPress website.
Lots of people directly land on your home page so it needs to be load faster.
You don’t need to add more widgets to look like an awesome website.
Make your homepage with the help of a page builder plugin like Elementor pro.
It can build your homepage fast loading but can also build your other landing pages creatively.
Showing many lengthy blog posts on a single page could also cause a longer loading time issue.
Keep in mind, the simple or cleaner homepage you keep, the faster it loads.
8. Minify JavaScript and CSS Files
If you are familiar with the Google PageSpeed Insight tool, then you will be notified about the warning that minifies your JavaScript and CSS files.
It means that after reducing the number of JS & CSS files, the load time of your site will also reduce.
After reducing these files, you will also reduce the server load time for your website and you can improve your site loading time.
There are so many ways to minify JS and CSS files.
You can do it manually or you can use a WordPress plugin called Autoptimize.
9. Compress Your WordPress Site’s Size
We have already discussed compressing the site images to reduce the site load time but you might be surprised that it will also be possible for your website.
After all, the WordPress website is a collection of your files.
The smaller your WordPress website size is, the faster it loads.
GZip compression will minimize content on your website by about 70%.
And after being compressed, a website loads quicker because of bandwidth reduction.
It can be done by using a simple caching plugin that can add a simple code on your .htaccess file directory.
By reducing the load time with GZip compression, you will know why you need to use this WordPress cache plugin feature.
Conclusion
So, here you will definitely understand why having a fast loading website is a must need thing nowadays.
It will give you lots of benefits in Google search rankings as well as help you to gain authority around your community.
Your WordPress website needs to load fast in mobile devices also because Google prioritizes mobile page load speed as a key metric when determining your website’s search ranking,
I hope that this guide on speed up WordPress website will help you and you apply these solutions on your site to reduce your load time.
If you have any queries then feel free to share us on the comments.