WordPress Page Speed Optimization
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The Importance of Fast Loading for SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is essential for anyone who wants to increase consumer traffic and brand recognition. The goal of SEO is to improve your ranking on search engines, allowing your website to be seen by as many people as possible. Given that Google searches account for more than 90% of site traffic, it’s critical that your site ranks well.
There are several digital marketing tactics you can use to improve the performance of your WordPress site, such as incorporating keywords, creating high-quality content (or stylesheets), and designing an engaging website layout. However, no matter how beautiful or compelling your website is, technical bugs will destroy it.
Over 50% of mobile users will exit a web page that has a loading speed of over three seconds.
While that may appear to be a short timeframe, technological advancement has conditioned people to expect speed and convenience. Finally, slow site speed degrades the user experience, resulting in a higher bounce rate and a lower search engine ranking. It also has a negative impact on your reputation; how can people trust the quality of your products or services if you can’t provide quality website functionality?
A slow website load speed has an effect on your SEO. The slower your website’s loading speed, the lower your ranking factor. WordPress page speed optimization is more important than ever before.
The Core Web Vitals update will make page speed an even more important part of Google’s algorithm in August 2021. This new update will be determined by three major factors:
- The loading time of the hosting provider
- The amount of time spent on the webserver
- The visual stability of the website (such as quality of pixels and image files)
As the new update is implemented, any website that wishes to succeed must adapt. Most website owners should be wondering, “How do I increase my page speed?”
What Causes your WordPress Website to Slow Down?
The primary key to increasing the speed of WordPress websites is to identify what causes them to slow down. Gaining this important knowledge will allow you to improve performance and make better long-term decisions.
The main causes for a slow WordPress site are:
- Web Hosting – If your web hosting server is not configured it can greatly affect your website speed.
- External scripts – External scripts can also have a huge impact on your website performance since it adds a great amount of data to your loading time.
- WordPress Configuration – If your WordPress site is not configured to serving cached pages, it will overload your server which will cause your website to be slow or even crash.
- Page Size – Images on your web page that aren’t optimized for web.
- Bad Plugins –Using a poorly coded plugin can significantly slow down your website.
WordPress Hosting
A good WordPress hosting service is critical for the performance of your website. It is best to select the one that will work best for you. Shared hosting service providers go above and beyond to optimise your website. However, because you share server resources with many other customers or websites, it may provide poorer performance. You won’t be able to tell how much other customers are consuming.
Managed WordPress Hosting offers the most optimised server configurations for running WordPress.
How to Speed Up WordPress Websites
No website owner wants a low conversion rate that does not provide a return on investment. According to one case study, every second delay can result in a loss of conversion, fewer page views, and a decrease in customer satisfaction.
Fortunately, there are methods for increasing the speed of your website. Some options to consider for your website are listed below.
Optimize Your Images
Optimizing your images and image size is a great way to reduce page load time. Large images and files will take longer to load, negatively impacting the user’s experience. Compressing or minimising the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files is part of optimization. When doing so, it’s critical not to sacrifice image quality; some programmes, such as gzip, allow you to reduce file size but don’t take into account how the final product will look.
Clean Up the Clutter
You can also clean up the database in WordPress. Over time, your database will begin to accumulate unnecessary data. This clutter can slow down your WordPress site. Deleting unnecessary data will assist your database in remaining as small as possible.
WordPress Plugin
Unused plugins and themes should be removed. Because plugins and themes must be kept up to date, unused ones can pose a security risk and negatively impact the performance of WordPress sites. To speed up your website, delete any that are no longer in use.
Lazy Load
Lazy loading images is another option. Lazy loading is an older technique for speeding up WordPress that involves loading images as the user scrolls down the web page. This is done to avoid stressing the web server and causing slower load times. Because you are not loading all of the elements of the web page at once, you are putting less strain on your server’s resources.
Reduce External Scripts
External scripts should also be kept to a minimum on your website. The use of external scripts on your web pages adds a significant amount of data to your total loading time. As a result, it is best to keep it low and include only the essentials, such as Google Analytics.
Minify Your Files
Minifying your CSS, HTML, and JS files is another way to reduce load time. In other words, you should remove unnecessary characters from your code, such as commas and spaces. Getting rid of characters that don’t add anything to your code will make your website run faster.
Content Delivery Network
Many websites also use content delivery networks, or CDNs, to meet their load page requirements. These networks, in essence, share the task of delivering content by storing copies of your site in different data centres. These geographically dispersed servers collaborate to increase web speed and reliability.
Browser Caching
This is a method of preventing website lag by temporarily storing website information such as JavaScript files, images, and web page information. Your website will save time by not having to load unnecessary files by storing this information. Many websites use expiration headers to cache information for a set period of time (such as a year).
Monitor Bandwidth Usage
The rate at which your website transfers data, either outbound or inbound, is referred to as bandwidth. Outbound bandwidth is used when a server sends something to a user, such as in response to a request. Inbound bandwidth, on the other hand, refers to data that enters the server, such as when a file is uploaded. Using more data than your website can handle quickly degrades both quality and speed.
Fewer Redirects
Many websites include links that take users to another page, such as an internal page of your site or an entirely different website. When a user is redirected, they must wait for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete, which slows down your page response time and frustrates the user.
Optimizing Your Site
How do you put the various methods for optimising web speed into action now that you’ve learned about them? While there are some methods you can use on your own, such as installing Google Chrome plug-ins (such as PageSpeed Insights) or running speed tests, it is difficult to achieve the required speed without professional assistance. Furthermore, taking on the task on your own can be time-consuming and distracting from your day-to-day e-commerce and business tasks. WordPress speed optimization services are, thankfully, available.
Core Web Vitals Optimization
WP SitePlan is the leading WordPress website maintenance and support service that provides a team of experts to manage, protect, and improve the quality of your site. Our team will not only optimise your page speed using tried-and-true techniques like image compression, minification, and browser caching, but will also provide:
- Daily data backups
- Real-time uptime monitoring
- Daily security scans
- Database optimization
- Core, plug-in and theme updates
- Monthly reporting
We offer a Support plans (which includes desk and WooCommerce support) and Pro plans for websites that require a higher level of personalised service (which comes with unlimited desk help, complete malware removal and daily performance and speed checks).
After you sign up for an account, our team will backup your data, analyse your metrics, and update your site as needed. We can ensure your site aligns with any upcoming Google algorithm updates by applying our knowledge of SEO and website optimization — and if it doesn’t, we’ll make the necessary changes.
Running a business is a full-time job, as is maintaining a website. You risk losing valuable business if you don’t fix technical bugs and make sure your website loads properly. Nobody should have to work two full-time jobs; instead of burdening yourself with website optimization, outsource it to a professional page speed optimization service like WP DevCare. Contact us now to learn more about how we can help today!
