WordPress is a fantastic blogging and CMS platform. However, it has a flaw in that it can be quite sluggish with the default settings.
Without some adjustments and optimizations, your site might become sluggish. That will not only inconvenience returning visitors but also result in a decrease in subscribers and sales. I’ll go over every effective technique I’ve discovered to significantly speed up WordPress in this short guide.
Why does the speed of a WordPress site matter?
When a visitor first arrives at your website, you only have a brief window of time to grab their attention. Yes, the majority of people do understand, but how high is the standard now?
In a report by the Microsoft search team, it was found that a 2-second delay in page responsiveness decreased user satisfaction by 3.8%, increased lost revenue per user by 4.3%, and decreased clicks by 4.3%. Prepare to lose sleep at night because of this. That is money that was lost due to subpar work.
Most visitors will leave your site if it takes too long to load and won’t return. Additionally, Google now takes site speed into account when determining rankings. As a result, if your site is slow, you risk losing visitors out of impatience and having lower search engine rankings. This means that the speed of your site affects SEO. Let’s prevent that from happening.
How to make WordPress faster
You can speed up your WordPress site by taking a number of steps to optimize your server. Some of the best tactics are listed below:
Choose a good hosting provider: For WordPress sites to load quickly, selecting a reputable hosting company is crucial. Select a hosting company that provides optimized servers, quick load times, and consistent uptime.
Enable caching: Enable caching so that your server can keep frequently used data in memory rather than having to retrieve it from the database. To enable caching on your WordPress site, use plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.
Optimize your database: Database optimization is crucial because a bloated database can cause your site to load slowly. Use plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-Sweep to purge unnecessary data from your database.
Use a content delivery network (CDN): By caching your content on numerous servers around the world, a CDN can help your site load faster. This guarantees that users can easily access your content from anywhere.
Minimize HTTP requests: Reduce the number of HTTP requests your site makes because they slow down page loading. By reducing the number of images, scripts, and other files on your site, you can lower the number of requests.
Enable Gzip compression: Enable Gzip compression because it can significantly speed up load times by reducing the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. You can use a plugin or a piece of code in your.htaccess file to enable Gzip compression on your server.
Optimize your images: Image optimization is important because large images can cause your site to load slowly. You can compress your images and reduce their file size by using plugins like Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer.
These techniques will help you optimize your server and speed up your WordPress site for users.
