Learn to Enhance the Speed of Your WordPress Website with These Simple Tips

By: Janice Wald | February 13, 2018 | Tags: how to speed up your WordPress site, speed up WordPress, speed up WordPress site |

Stymied.

That’s how I feel as I write about new SEO trends for a future article.

Research reveals what is important in 2018 are the same factors that were important in 2017– you must speed up your website.

A faster-loading website results in a better experience for your site visitors and a boost in SEO for you.

Site creators are scrambling for information in order to help them speed up their websites.

Proof: My post How to Set Up Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress is the second-most shared post about speeding up your WordPress site at Buzzsumo.com.

Today’s guest author Derek Iwasiuk is a WordPress expert and SEO specialist. His tips explain how you can easily enhance the speed of your WordPress website.

Learn to Enhance the Speed of Your WordPress Website with These Simple Tips

When it comes to using WordPress, there are times when the platform does become slow and hard for you to work on. You do not have to stay with this ordeal for long as there are ways which you can make WordPress pages load faster.

A more rapid WordPress will enhance the user experience, and this does go a long way in boosting the popularity of your website or blog.

Improve the speed of your WordPress website

Very often you will find that your site is much slower than you think and this becomes very irritating. When web pages load slowly, they give users an adverse experience, and people do not wish to revisit the site. It is important that you should give proper attention to your WordPress website so that you can improve the user experience. In case, your site takes too long to load; it will affect its search engine optimization ranks online. The following are some simple tips via which you can use to boost the loading time of your website-

Update the content management system of your WordPress site- One of the most convenient and simple ways to accelerate the speed of your WordPress website is to update its content management system. The upgrade will improve your WordPress website.
Using a cache plugin-You can receive a handful of plugins that provide you with countless advantages in the web development process. If you wish to boost the speed of your website, you should try plugins like the WordPress Super Cache, Clear Cache for W3 Total Cache and Me, etc. They will automatically clear the cache that has been built on your website and accelerates its speed. When you opt for these plugins, they make your site faster.
Reliable hosting plan- It is essential for you to choose a reliable hosting company when it comes to your website. This will help increase its speed or reduce it. Some of the best web hosting companies are iPage, Go, Daddy, DreamHost, Hostgator, Bluehost, A2 Hosting, etc. They offer you the best services for your WordPress website. With the aid of a good hosting plan, you effectively can improve the speed and the loading time of your web pages with success. This increases functionality. [Related: For good speed, you need to have a cloud hosting for your blog or eCommerce store. If you have an online store, check WordPress WooCommerce hosting.]
Theme- It is imperative for you to select a lightweight theme that does not cause too much of pressure on your WordPress website. You effectively can get a plethora of themes that help you speed up the process faster.
Reduce the size of images on your WordPress website – If you take a look at your WordPress website, you will find that images are important. However, large images do take a long time to load, and they reduce the speed of your site. This is the reason why you should minimize the size of the images as it will make your website faster. You should compress the pictures that are on your WordPress site without compromising on the quality at all. The popular plugins that help you to reduce the size of your WordPress images are WP Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, Compress JPEG and PNG images. These plugins will help you make the pictures of your WordPress website smaller without compromising on its quality.

It is crucial for you always to have a website that gives you functionality and quick loading time. This helps you in improving the user-experience faster. It is important for you to pay attention to your site. WordPress users will reap the benefits of a fast loading website.

You also can remove the white space from CSS, Javascript and HTML codes if possible. These white spaces make the code easy to read for people. However, servers and browsers do not care for this white space as long as it is valid and can execute without flaws. For the removal of white spaces from your code, you do not have to go through them manually. You may use the plugin called WP Minify and W3 Total Cache as they can manage these white spaces while you are operating the website.

Reduce Requests

When visitors visit your web page on your WordPress site, its corresponding files are sent to the browsers of visitors. They include images which have to be loaded.

It is important for you to reduce the number of files or objects on your WordPress website. You actually can reduce the HTTP requests needed to speed up the loading time of a WordPress website. An efficient way to do the above is to simplify the website design. With the W3 Total Cache plugin you effectively can add both Javascript and SCC files so that they can be combined into a single file.

To accelerate the speed of your WordPress website, you can optimize tables of the database. This will help free space and improve the smooth running of your database. These database tables may be optimized manually with the aid of a plugin. The WP-DBManager permits you to repair, optimize, backup and restore your WordPress database. You can also utilize the WP-Optimize tool that helps in cleanup and promotes optimization of your website. With the aid of this plugin, you effectively can eradicate revisions in posts, spam comments, trash items and other comments that are unapproved.

The above are just some tips and measures which you can effectively use to optimize your website. With the aid of the above steps, you will find that the speed of your WordPress site increases and its popularity among search engine ranks rises!

Author Bio: Derek Iwasiuk is a WordPress specialist and SEO expert who helps small to medium scale businesses with reduce server response time WordPress tips for better efficacy and performance.

Readers, please share so website creators learn how to speed up the loading time of their WordPress website.

Which plugins do you use to speed up your WordPress site? I look forward to your answers in the comments section.

This post was made possible by the support of our readers.

Why is WordPress Considered to Be the Best for SEO?

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Pamela

I must ask: Who knows how to do all of this besides tech geeks?

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Pamela,
  Thanks for your comments. Although I do admit I outsource my tech needs to people more knowledgeable than I am, it is not always necessary.
  For example, I know in order to boost my SEO and user experience, I need to speed up my site. In order to speed up my site, I know I need to reduce image size and uninstall plugins.
  I use WPSmush to reduce image size, and I uninstalled plugins that were redundant or unecessary. I am not tech savvy, but I find plugins simple enough that I don’t have to outsource.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Arvind

high definition images and use of unnecessary plugin can decrease your website speed….just keep a simple wordpress theme with quality content…good speed of WordPress website helps visitors to spend more time on your site…!!
Great post…thanks for sharing..!!

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Arvind,
  Thanks for commenting! Another commenter wrote the information sounds extremely technical, but your comments make speeding up your site easy.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Jeanette S. Hall

Janice and Derek,

Once again you point out a common flaw all of us out here in the blogosphere deal with daily! I have my site working as fast as I can get it, but since I am in the middle of reconstructing my site it will be slow until I get finished mucking around with it.

Well need to get back to working on the site and visiting other people’s sites so I need to go! Talk to you later.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Jeanette,
  Thanks so much for commenting. Good luck with your revamping of your blog site! The faster the site, the better the user experience and the SEO.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Freddy G. Cabrera

Website speed is such a critical factor for your blog’s success and Google rankings.

It is related to the UX (user-experience). A bad user experience will hold you back and not get you the results you are looking for on your blog site.

One of the most important things you should invest in is a high-quality web hosting service. I would also recommend using a CDN (content delivery network). The one I’m currently using is cloudflare.com. By using such service you can save a lot of bandwidth and really speed up your entire site.

Thanks for sharing these tips!

Best regards, Derek! 😀

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Thanks for the tips Freddy. I’m sure people looking for a hosting service will appreciate the recommendation.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Brad Lindsey

Great article…thanks!

Glad you pointed out reducing requests. This can be overlooked and not always easy to minimize. Thank you for the nice list of cache plugins as well!

I think image compression was one of the biggest things I learned to help optimize site speed. There are some great plugins for this that are quick and easy to use.

I recently wrote a similar article highlighting good cache and image compression for a quick and high increase in loading speed for WordPress websites: https://www.designatude.com/blog/speeding-wordpress-website-less-5-minutes/

Hope this can help your readers with the addition of image compression coming into play.

Love your blog Janice and will continue to return for some more useful information!

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Brad,
  Thank you so much! I appreciate the compliments and your contributions to the discussion by sharing your link and your ideas.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
kesav

This is a must required information at this point of time. Recently google has started to penalize mobile websites with high loading time. Its definitely important for the website holders to re-think and work on their website speed. I guess in this post all the important factors to reduce your websites loading time have been explained very clearly. A informative post at a right time.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Kesav,
  What insight you show into the effects of a slow-loading site. I had not heard that about mobile devices. Thanks for letting us know. Thanks for your comments as well.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
  - kesav
    
    Hello Janice yes starting from FEB, Google has started to penalize websites with poor loading time on mobile. This will be a better insight https://www.cnet.com/news/google-search-penalizes-websites-slow-on-phones/. Its high time for all website to concentrate on their website loading time.
    
    Reply to this message
    - Janice Wald
      
      Thank you for the link!
      Janice
      
      Reply to this message
Abdullah

Very important and must required information for the speed up for website, thanks for sharing such nice information.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Abdullah,
  It was our pleasure! I agree Derek wrote an important post. We’re glad you enjoyed!
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Ashutosh singh

This is very helpful to improve your rankings and it’s never changing with the time. The speed factor for SEO is never changing with time.
Great content for reducing website size to reduce loading time.
Thank you for sharing such information.
Ashutosh singh

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Ashutosh,
  Great to see you! Thanks for your compliments on the content of the post. You’re right. A fast-loading site will always be important. Thanks for writing.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Sagar Chauhan

I love your content janice 🙂
It’s amazing for me.
And this was very helpful to improve blog’s ranking.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  So glad to hear Sagar! Thanks for writing to tell me!
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Marios Tofarides

Hey, Janice!

Thanks for a very informative post!

I’ve read that having 5 plugins or less installed is important in order to speed up the blogging site. But 5 plugins are too few in my humble opinion. What’s your opinion, based on your experience? (This question goes to anyone who wants to answer it as well)

Marios

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Marios,
  I appreciate your comments. I wrote the author and told him you have a question. Hopefully, he’ll come by to respond. Derek is more the expert in this area than I am.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Ryan Biddulph

I like the tips Derek. For me, getting a CDN and buying high quality hosting made differences in my site speed, big-time. I left my cheapie, 3 dollar a month, crap hosting and paid 10 to 15 bucks or more monthly depending on currency fluctuations. Night-day difference here. But I needed a CDN because my blog traffic and image usage put a heavy strain on my site, causing formatting problems when I saw a big traffic spike after publishing new posts. Enter a trusty CDN; hosting images offsite is the way to go to speed up your blog.

Ryan

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Ryan,
  Since you and I both use Phillip Dews (a plug for Phillip here,) if you have a CDN, I’m sure I do too. My organic traffic is much higher since Phillip worked his magic, got me the CDN, recommended I lose some plugins, and sped up my site. Thanks for commenting.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Luis Medilo

Some good advice in your article. I use WP Rocket, Cloudflare and MaxCDN to make my site go faster.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Luis,
  Thanks for coming by with your suggestions. I appreciate you contributing to the conversation.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Bobshegz

Hello Janice, what would you consider as the optimal speed for a wordpress site. My site’s speed is about 4 seconds. Is that alright.

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Bob,
  I wrote the guest author and told him you have a question. In the meantime, I would direct you to
  GTMetrix. The site will actually grade the speed of your site. You’ll know if it’s an A that way.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Moss Clement

Hi Derek & Janice,

I actually using some of the plugins mentioned in this article to help speed up my site. I’m using WP Smush for image optimization, and WordPress super cache to speed things up.

Ryan mentioned CDN, never heard that but I think it’s a good try.

However, I also try ensure that my plugins are always up-to-date, this also helps to speed up WordPress, as well as uninstalled inactive plugins.

Thanks for sharing Derek, and thank you too for publishing Janice!

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Moss,
  Thanks for writing us. I also use WP Smush. What is WordPress super cache?
  My tech helper (who I share with Ryan Biddulph) has me using CDN so it must be good. However, I’m concerned I could have a faster-loading site, so let me know about WP Cache. Thanks,
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
  - Moss Clement
    
    Hi Janice,
    
    How was your weekend? WP Super Cache works like any other caching plugin and, here’s how it works.
    
    The first time a visitor comes to, and open your site, the files and images are stored by the browser on the users hard drive.
    
    So, should he or she returns to your website anytime in future, the browser will load faster because all data are already cached / stored in the users hard drive.
    
    What the browser does at this point is that it simply fetch the files from the cache memory and present them to the user.
    
    So it’s necessary to use a caching plugin to enable the browser to cache and store files such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript so that when the user returns to your site, it will load those files faster.
    
    I hope this helps.
    
    Reply to this message
    - Janice Wald
      
      Hi Moss,
      This sounds important but adding plugins can have disadvantages. Maybe I’ll ask my tech helper about it.
      Thanks for the explanation.
      Janice
      
      Reply to this message
Joseph

Hi janice,

I just joined WordPress recently, the speed of my site is killing my seo, considerably more than the expected, I tried using the w3 super cache and lazy load plugin, but it is still slow.

Now my question here is.

Does plugin slow down site?

Am using 31 plugins working on my site now.

What number is okay?

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Joseph,
  I just looked it up for you and this is what I found:
  
  While most sources aren’t willing to go out on a limb and say how many plugins they consider to be too many, Dan Norris, co-founder of WordPress website support service WP Curve, recommends 20 to be a good number. However, while pointing out that less is best, he’s also keen to explain there are no hard and fast rules.
  
  Delete what you can! It will speed up your site! Did you go to GTMetrix to check your site speed?
  If you need a recommendation for a tech helper, mine sped up my site from an F to an A. Let me know if you want his contact information.
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
Slasher Digital

it’s really good content.I think people who like to learn about website things they will be helpful.

Reply to this message
Smart Blogger

My websites using hosting with Operating systems: Linux and Server: LiteSpeed. I also use the plugin Cache LiteSpeed. Whether this is enough to speed up my blog?

Thank you so much!

Reply to this message
- Janice Wald
  
  Hi Smart Blogger,
  I’m afraid I don’t know the answer. I didn’t write the post. It was guest authored.
  However, the people at this Facebook group can help you https://www.facebook.com/groups/WPTechCafe/
  Janice
  
  Reply to this message
  - Smart Blogger
    
    I will be joining the facebook group. Thank you so much!
    
    Reply to this message
Deborah Davis

Hi Janice,
Thanks for sharing these wonderful tips. I also Stumbled this post.

Best regards,
Deborah

Reply to this message
Deborah Davis

Hi Janice,

Thanks for suggesting these popular plugins that help you to reduce the size of your WordPress images.

How do they work? Do we have to add the image to the plugin to reduce the size before importing the image into the blog post or does the plugin automatically reduce the image size?

Reply to this message