Time is money. In today’s digital world, speed is very important especially when we are talking about the loading time of a website. If you are having a WordPress website and it is taking a lot of time to load, then be ready to bear the consequences of having a slot website. If you do not speedup your WordPress website then you will witness high bounce rates which will result in reduced conversions and low search engine rankings. So the most important question is How to optimize a WordPress Website? Before understanding how to do WordPress website speed optimization, let us understand:
Importance of Speed
The speed at which your WordPress website loads will determine the number of people who visit your website and the number of people who continue staying on it and show interest. If a website is very slow and takes a lot of time to load, the visitors will not wait for long before exiting the page or website. They will move on to a competitor’s website who offers same services but the website is faster. Hence it is important to speed up the WordPress website to deter visitors from leaving your website.
Search Engine Ranking
The loading speed of a WordPress website also determines the ranking of the website on various search engines. Low speed means low search engine ranking which means lower chances of attracting more visitors to the website. Reduced visits means lower conversions. Therefore it is very important that your WordPress website has a fast loading speed, so that it can perform better than your competitors.
There are a number of things you can do to speed up your WordPress Website. As an extremely well coded platform, WordPress offers a number of options for optimizing the website, to increase its speed and to make it more dependable. Even if you are not a professional, there are many ways for WordPress website speed optimization.
Below mentioned are few ways which can guide you on how to optimize a WordPress website. The guide will help you diagnose the problems which are responsible for slowing down your website, by listing ways for WordPress website speed optimization.
1. Select a Reliable Web Host
Selecting the right web host for your WordPress website is the first step towards WordPress website speed optimization. You need to find a web host which offers excellent speed and support. One needs to consider a number of factors before finalizing the web host. However attractive or economical the web hosting plan maybe, do not take the plunge without understanding your needs and requirements from a web host. Shared web hosting is very economical as many websites are sharing the same host. However this sharing has a dire effect on the speed of the website. The websites who have opted for shared hosting, end up having extremely slow loading websites.
When selecting a host, it is advisable to choose a host which offers an extensive range of services like domain name registration, offering data backup, free transfer of website, integration with various google apps, unlimited disk space, option to have multiple websites on a single account etc.
GoDaddy is popular amongst beginners, however their server is shared by thousands of websites, making the websites extremely slow. It is advisable to visit web hosting communities and read about others experience before deciding on a web host for your website. ExonHost is the current favorite amongst the web hosting enthusiasts. It is super-fast and has a technical support team which is extremely helpful and knowledgeable. It offers good speed, uptime and support, all the features required in a good web host.
2. Select a Fast well coded WordPress Theme
The theme of the WordPress website selected can be very useful while undertaking WordPress website speed optimization. A WordPress theme which is coded well and is able to balance the number of images to the content on the page can help to speed up WordPress website. The basic idea is to try to keep the theme as simple as possible, so that the website is not cluttered with unwanted elements and can load easily. A large number of WordPress website themes are designed intelligently to provide the best user experience to the visitors without impacting the loading speed. The default themes offered by WordPress are extremely well-coded, light-weight, fast in speed and customizable. Choose one of the themes and hire the services of a good website developer to build a great website.
3. Optimize the WordPress Database
The next step for WordPress Website speed optimization is to optimize the database. This is not a simple task, it is time consuming and needs to be done patiently as it’s a manual process. MySQL is one of the best databases today, however its biggest drawback is that it does not clean itself efficiently on a regularly basis. You can install wonderful WordPress optimization plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-DB Manager. These little plugins will help in easily optimizing and managing your complete database. The WP-DB Manager also sets up date on a regular basis for optimization, which keeps the website clutter free and in top performance. These plugins can help you delete and get rid of all the pending spam, trashed posts, auto-saved drafts etc.
4. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Today in the world of internet, it is very common for website developers to use Content Delivery Networks for delivering the best quality content to their users. CDNs replicate the static content of the websites like the images, CSS, Javascript, etc. and offloads them to the servers which are located near the users. Since the servers are nearer to the users, it helps tremendously in speeding up the loading time of the website. This helps in retaining viewer interest in the website. With the help of CDNs the load on the primary server reduces and the primary server can perform significantly better while serving the rest of the website.
The market is flooded with a number of CDN options, however CloudFlare, MaxCDN and Amazon CloudFront CDN are the most popular CDNs. All of these CDN’s are easy to use and are extremely user friendly.
MaxCDN is popularly used by many developers to speed up WordPress websites. It is very easy to install and has many smart pricing options. MaxCDN offers excellent features like providing additional control and security measures.
5. Optimize the Images
With the easy availability of free stock images sites online, today whether it is bloggers or website designers they are now able to access a wide variety of high-quality images and photos for commercial use. However, if a website has a large number of images, then the website may suffer from slow loading speed.
One of the heaviest elements on a website are the images and videos. Therefore for WordPress website speed optimization you will need to optimize the uploaded images. The first step for optimization of images involves specifying the maximum image dimensions for thumbnails and the images.
Which means, if the image you want to upload is 1024px wide, and you have defined the maximum content area as 604px wide, then the image would be resized to a 604px wide image, which is significantly smaller in size as compared to the original image.
The next step would be to reduce the sizes of your uploaded images without resizing them, or spoiling their quality. Yahoo’s Smush.it is very useful for reducing the size of the images without resizing them. WordPress has a plugin called WP Smush.it which allows the user to upload images, which are automatically optimized using Yahoo’s Smush.it API.
Conclusion
Slow loading time of the website not only creates a bad impression on the visitors, but it is equally bad for your SEO. If you want to monitor the loading time of your website, check the performance Pingdom’s Site Speed Test. If your website runs a load time of less than 3 seconds it is good, less than 2 seconds is remarkable, and less than 1 means your website is super-fast!
WordPress website speed optimization is not difficult or impossible. Any individual who has good knowledge and experience about WordPress can help to speed up WordPress Website. As a top Website developer and design company in Mumbai, the purpose of writing on the topic: How to optimize a WordPress website, was to inform the viewers on what exactly they can do to take their website’s speed optimization to a higher level. So mentioned above are some of the possible ways in which one can optimize their WordPress website.
Velocity Consultancy is a professional Web Designing and Development Company providing comprehensive and cost effective web solutions for a wide range of website design & development services. We are dedicated in assisting small to medium sized businesses establish an online presence. We help our clients in harnessing the wide reach of the Internet by designing and developing web solutions which will help them in marketing their products to a larger audience. We have worked with many satisfied clients on redesigning their old websites, helping them create a professional website design.