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What You Can Do to Improve Your WordPress Site Speed (5 Simple Ways)

Sep 6, 2023

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The slow loading of websites can sabotage your business. A continuous stream of content have diminished the attention span of humans, meaning users lose interest quicker than ever before.

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If your website takes time to load, visitors may move on to another site.

There are a few great strategies you can use to increase the speed of your WordPress site speed. Using plugins and following guidelines can help make your website load faster and also keep your visitors on your page.

In this article, we'll look at five ways you can improve the speed of your WordPress speed. We'll also explore the factors that slow down your website and the reasons why speedy loading speeds are crucial. Let's begin!

What slows down your WordPress website's speed? (And Why Speed is Important)

Time to load a website refers to the time that it takes for your website to display all content fully. It could be comprised of images video, text, or other components.

Some of the elements that could slow down your site include:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • The slow plugins
  • Lack of caching
  • External scripts

The algorithm penalizes websites that are slow and puts them on the bottom of the list of search results which makes it more difficult for customers to find your site.

It is possible to use a no-cost software such as the IsItWP Speed Test to assess the speed of your WordPress website's performance:

When you have a base line, it is time to start making tweaks to improve the loading speed. Additionally, you can use this tool to run tests throughout the process of updating to determine which strategies work best for your site.

What can you do to improve your WordPress website's speed (5 Simple Ways)

If you're aware of the importance of the speed of your WordPress website's speed is, we'll take a look the ways to reduce your site's loading time.

1. Pick your theme and plugins carefully

Themes and plugins are the primary components of WordPress websites. But, poorly-designed themes and plugins could make your site slow.

If you are choosing a theme or plugin for your site, it is important to:

  • Review user reviews and reviews. This can give an idea of how the plugin and theme will perform for users.
  • Find out if the theme or plugin has been recently updated. Tools that receive frequent updates from their creators will be more reliable and are likely to be better optimized.
  • The staging site's performance before and after the addition of the tool to determine if there are any significant reductions.

2. Improve Your Images

In order to reduce the impact of the effect of your media files You can think about using an image optimizer similar to ShortPixel. ShortPixel plugin:

This plugin integrates into the WordPress site. It enables you to optimize the images from all types of files that include PNG and JPEG. It is very user-friendly, and it can be used to compress any photos on your site with a single click.

You may use this ShortPixel plugin to make images more efficient by going to the Media tab, then Bulk ShortPixel > Begin Optimizing:

This bulk optimization tool can make all of the images from your WordPress library all at once.

There is another option to use "lazy loading". This will stop your site from displaying images until the user scrolls down and reaches the desired images. This speeds the loading process.

It is possible to enable lazy loading with a plugin like Smush:

After installing the plugin, all you have to do is to go through the following: Smush, Lazy Load > Activate:

When you enable lazy loading, it is possible to alter the settings to suit your needs, such as kinds of media, exclusions and the script's placement. Smush is also a good choice to compress and shrink images even if you do not use ShortPixel.

3. Use a Caching Plugin (or a Host with Built-In Caching)

Caching is a vital process that helps your website load quickly. It makes and saves copies of your site within a place called a cache. It's so that your whole website does not have to load every time a new user. The server is able to retrieve the saved site details for the first time, meaning it will take much less time to load.

One of the simplest methods of caching your site is to use an application like the WP Super Cache. It employs a variety of techniques, such as simple static files for general users and "super-cached" static file designed for experts:

It is possible to use WP Super Cache to save your site's information by going to the Settings tab, then WP Super Cache > Caching on:

On this dashboard, you can change your cache settings by navigating to the Advancedtab. You can select which users are able to access cached content, as well as how long your caches last, and if you wish to allow expert delivery of caches.

Its internal caching feature is one of the most efficient offered, making it literally the fastest WordPress website host out there.

4. Use an Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers scattered across the globe. Each one stores a cache of the data on your website, and when a user visits your page, they will receive the information from the CDN nearest to them. Your website is therefore able to run faster due to the fact that there's less geographic distance.

There are many CDN alternatives available, including Cloudflare. Sign up to the paid subscription and then begin using this premium CDN to deliver your site more quickly to users.

5. Make use of Excerpts

If your website has a blog, you will likely want to display your content. The problem is that displaying blog's entire content will slow down your website's speed. Instead, you can think about displaying snippets of the content on the page's landing pages.

For example, you can see on the blog landing page that the page does not display blog the entire blog posts. It only shows a few sentences from each one, and lets the user simply click the title to read the rest:

Based on the theme you're using, it is possible to alter your settings so that excerpts are displayed through the Settings menu > Reading For every post in a field that you want to include a summary:

Then, you can easily customize the excerpts of new posts by going to posts > add new. From here there is a button to select Post > Excerpt:

You can also create a customized excerpt that can be displayed instead of the entire article. Additionally, you can add excerpts to your existing posts.

Conclusion

Slow loading websites can cause a lot of damage to your company. If your customers click away they could be missing out on opportunities for conversions. So, optimizing your WordPress website's speed is among of the most important aspects you can accomplish.

For a quick recap, here are some ways that you can boost the quality of your WordPress performance:

  1. Reduce your image file sizes through the ShortPixel software Consider lazy loading.
  2. Make use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Cloudflare to speed up loading times.
  3. Utilize post excerpts to speed up loading time.

Are you looking for answers regarding how you can improve your WordPress site's performance? Let us know in the section of comments below!

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