Easy Tips to Increase Your WordPress Site Speed

• By Vivek Sharma
• 29-06-2023
• Digital Marketing

Speed optimization is really important for your WordPress site. Users don’t have the patience to wait for site pages to load. In today fast moving world and time, everything has to be quick. Nobody waits for anything. In case any link or site doesn’t work users have a tendency to shift to another.

Users are quick in everything and probably you have to be fast on your website to convince users with your site and its content to influence them to stay on it. To expect more traffic, users, and conversions one needs to be fast with their WordPress site. Google also penalizes for slow working WordPress sites by ranking them low in search engine result pages. If your site doesn’t operate well and has a higher load time, the user won't wait a minute and will move to your competitor. And for all of this, it is really mandatory and essential to work on your WordPress site by using proper methods to increase website speed.

One needs to follow all digital marketing strategies and techniques to remain on top of the search engine result pages. Proper techniques must be adopted to make your site load time faster and give users positive insight into your WordPress site.

Ways To Increase Your WordPress Site Speed

1. Update Everything on WordPress Site

To have an up-to-date site, WordPress requires frequent updation as its maintenance. Updation ensures the smooth functioning of the WordPress site. It also aims at fixing all the security issues. WordPress themes and plugins should be regularly updated. For optimum performance, updation is a must by ensuring the latest versions are installed on the WordPress site. Not updating may make the system run slow and also causing for having multiple threats.

2. Speed-Optimized Theme Selection

The theme needs to be selected, that is optimum with the speed. It should not take a higher loading time. Themes that take time can result in slowing your WordPress site. Themes should be attractive along with speed optimization. Better to choose a theme that is simple and attractive, unnecessary layouts in a theme can affect the speed of your WordPress site. Additional features can be incorporated into simple themes using WordPress plugins.

The themes that are to be selected should be properly coded. Poorly coded themes can slow down your site with increasing loading time.

3. Reliable Hosting Provider Selection

Hosting provider has an impact on WordPress site performance. Hosting can be shared hosting, or virtual private server (VPS) hosting. The price of shared hosting is less as this number of other websites share the same hosting plans. If shared websites get a lot of visitors then your site can be impacted by this as both of you are sharing the same host provider. Newer websites can use shared hosting plans but established ones should have an independent dedicated VPS for their site. If a lot of traffic is generated by the independent VPS provider defiantly it will earn enough to pay for its plan.

4. Faster Plugins with the Best Quality to be Installed

Best plugins must be installed by the user. One can use the recommendation list for the best plugins. Often the best plugins for WordPress take less storage space and don’t bloat the site. Bad plugins that are not effectively coded can increase page loading time which results in making WordPress sites run slowly. Slow WordPress sites are not liked by users. User experience is important while making access to the site, plugins used should be easier to use without any hassle and such plugins must have optimum performance. Reviews and customer feedback lists can be checked before installing the plugins on the system. Accordingly, the most recommended one such as WPForms, Monster Insights, and shared counts which has the best review should be preferred for your WordPress site.

5. Deletion of Unused Plugins and Themes

Unnecessary plugins on your website can slow your website and can take more site loading time. Deletion of unused plugins can make the website faster. For this unused plugin needs to be deactivated. Later on, these deactivated plug-ins can be deleted from the plugins list. Each plugin installed on the website can take up additional space and can hamper the site's performance negatively. Sites can be tested for their performance after the deletion of unused plugins.

6. Installing High-Quality PlugIns

Elimination of unnecessary plugins is a must and it must be assured for the plugins installed must be of high quality. Best-quality plugins don’t take up high storage space on the server and they are light in their code. High-quality plugins are updated regularly in WordPress updates. Reviews from clients can be checked before switching to any plugins. It is to ensure whatever plugin is selected is the best for your WordPress site.

7. Try Lazy Loading for Your Site

Multiple images on your site's homepage and all loading at the same time can make the site slow. One can try lazy loading images by not loading all images all at once. When the user scrolls down remaining images load in the meantime. Lazy loading can make the site run faster than loading all content in a single go. Content loads slowly and this gives the appearance of a quick load time for WordPress sites.

8. Use the Latest PHP Version

Running your site on the latest PHP version will have a major impact on website speed. Comparatively, speed will be better when you use the latest PHP version than the older one. Installing the latest PHP version is also easier by following the essential steps as given. WordPress is written in this PHP language. The website can benefit a lot by switching to the latest version as its site speed performance increases manifold.

9. Limiting External Scripting

Most of the site uses third-party scripting. One must analyze the pros and cons of using third-party scripting. Additional features can be added by using third-party scripting. Features that can be included are ads from the other site, social media sharing buttons, videos, etc. Third-party scripting affects the performance of site loading time. One can use third-party scripting as there can be added advantage. But this use must be limited as this results in site performance slowing down. Added advantage of third-party scripting must be compared to WordPress site performance hit.

10. Compress Media Files

Large images at full sizes uploading can slow WordPress sites intensely. For this plugin can be installed which automatically compresses all media files. Large file uploading can make the site slow. WordPress sites smaller in size will take less time to load. Compressed files will have a good performance in loading time. Smaller files are good for WordPress speed.

11. Clean Up Unnecessary Database

Accumulation of content is common if left unchecked. This accumulation piles up and becomes large clutter unless regular cleaning of unnecessary files is done. An extensive database on the site can slow down its speed as it bloats the system. There are large leftover files from unused themes and plugins. Advanced database cleaners can scan all the files and can delete unnecessary databases. It is done in a quicker way than if it has to be done manually.

12. Simplifying Content Database for WordPress Site

A simple webpage consumes fewer resources and is faster to load. Over the past few years, it is seen most websites prefer minimalistic web design. Simple pages attract more customers as they are more comfortable with simple web designs than complex ones which are difficult to understand as they have high complexity. Cutting off unnecessary content from your web design makes it much faster to load and can have a significant performance difference.

13. Limit Comments Per Page

Comment by the users is great but the same are part of site content. Too many comments by users can make the site slow. For this, comments need to be split into pages. All comments loading at the same time can affect the loading time of the site.

For this in the setting section>Discussion and then clicking on break comment into the page can be selected. Along with this number of comments on a single page can also be selected.

Splitting the comments into different pages lets the original page load much faster. Even the comment section can be disabled to avoid the hassle of the WordPress site slowing down.

14. Using a CDN for a Globally Faster Site

Slower website loading at a global level (distant locations) can be corrected with the use of CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN is a collection of globally connected web servers. Through CDN website can have a global reach to a large number of customers. Request from any customer for website access, server that is closer to the user provides access to the customer at a faster loading time. CDN is easier to set on a WordPress site. CDN manages all content delivery to users on time.

15. Controlling Post Revisions

Post revisions are good. But these post revisions save every update done. Every time changes are done to post revisions, a new copy for the same is stored in the database, this is for retrieving data in the future. Saving off all the changes in the database piles up the database volume and can cause the WordPress site to slow down.

For this post revision needs to be limited and controlled to a set number. The site can be opened by typing wp-config.php. The post-revision number can be modified as you prefer. It can be set to any number or can also be turned off.

16. Homepage Optimization by Simplifying Designs

Making the homepage look simpler, with the least design templates and widgets. It will make the site loading time faster, one needs to simplify their designs without much complexity.

Full-length posts need to be avoided as they can take more time to load. One can split the entire post content into pages. The homepage should have minimum content and should be attractive with simplicity. The cleaner the things, the faster it will buffer with no waiting time.

17. Compressing Files Using GZIP

GZip is a file compression method. It makes file compression at a much faster rate. The power used by this Gzip compression method is also less as compared to other compression methods. It can be used as a speed optimization plugin. With this files are sent across the internet to multiple users at a much faster speed. Plugins can help in installing Gzip compression on your WordPress site.

18. Disable Hotlinking

When one website used another web resource is termed hotlinking. Copying the images from your WordPress site will consume the resources from your site. For this one must disable hotlinking to another website. Hotlinking done by another website kills the bandwidth of your site.

19. Splitting Post Content Into Pages

To increase website speed, one can split the lengthy post content into pages, so it takes less time to load. If all the information is loaded at once, there is a lot of pressure on a server which is why it will make a site slow down.

20. Fixing Task Schedule When Traffic is Low

The server of your WordPress site is enough loading with handling customer queries. To increase website speed, server load can be minimized by fixing the schedule of updates and backup tasks when traffic is low. This will not strain the server with the extra load of updating different software. Regular updates instead of daily can be done once a week. Security scans can also be fixed for times when traffic is the least. One can see tremendous improvement in website speed.

It Must Be Said

Having a faster WordPress site is the need of time to give users a positive experience. Search engine optimization for a website is a great way to keep your site at a higher ranking in SERP. Nobody likes slow websites. Slower ones only frustrate users. A slow website negatively affects search engine ranking. one has to employ digital marketing strategies to remain at the top of search engine result pages. The above ways are necessary to keep your site load time faster. A slow website can affect SEO and for this expert team is mandatory to work on all the essential ways to increase your WordPress site speed. You need to spend your time to save your visitors time. Definitely faster speed is liked by the users as it gives them a positive personal experience.