Introduction
Today, website speed is the lifeblood of an online world. A research study shows that a user expects a website to load in seconds, and if it doesn’t, then the bounce rate goes sky high. Page speed does not only affect the user experience but also plays a major role in SEO rankings. Google favors faster websites on its search results, meaning an improvement in your WordPress site’s page speed can lead to more organic traffic and increase conversions.
1. Choose a Reputable Hosting Company
Why It Matters: Your hosting provider is the backbone of your website. While shared hosting can be cheap, it isn’t without potential downsides. It distribute server resources to other websites, causing slowdowns and, more often than not, during high traffic.
- Recommended Hosting Options: For better performance, you may want to consider a more advanced type of Managed WordPress Hosting or Virtual Private Server (VPS). Managed hosting services include Kinsta, WP Engine, and SiteGround, all of which are optimized for WordPress to improve the speed and security of hosted sites.
- Pro Tip: Steer clear of very cheap shared hosting. It’s dirt cheap, but sacrifices some speed and reliability. If you need help choosing a host, Dreamsubmitting Web Services can point you toward the best option based on your budget and performance needs.
2. Use a Lightweight Theme
Why It Matters
Your WordPress theme is the foundation of the design for your website, which means it directly affects the loading speed. Heavy themes, built with many features, and ones that have complex designs often weigh down your site, whether you are using all those features.
Recommendations
Select lightweight, well-coded themes: such as Astra, GeneratePress, or Kadence. Such themes are priority-bundled for speed, with flexibility to release without building in performance compromises.
- Pro Tip: Choose a speed-optimized theme rather than an eye-candy theme heavy with features. It will make your site load much faster and deliver a seamless experience to visitors. Need some help choosing or getting a theme installed? Our team at Dreamsubmitting Web Services will be glad to customize or install a theme for you.
3. Optimize Images
Why It Matters: Large images are a major performance bottleneck. Optimization can reduce even the largest files into minuscule sizes without affecting their quality – and any reduction in image file size will enhance the performance of your site.
- Optimization Tools: In your toolset, add a few of the following plugins: Smush, ShortPixel, or Imagify, which will automatically compress any image on upload. Convert images into WebP for even more compressing. If you do not know how to implement it, Dreamsubmitting Web Services can do that for you.
- Pro Tip: Always use the right dimensions for your images and don’t upload unnecessarily large files. Try compressing images before uploading them into WordPress to reduce the dependency on a plugin.
4. Leverage a Caching Plugin
- Why It Matters: Caching allows your site to serve static versions of your pages, de-bottlenecking your server and accelerating experience for return users.
- Top Caching Plugins Some top caching plugins include WP Rocket, which is paid; W3 Total Cache and LiteSpeed Cache. Each cache has settings that help speed up page loads through the minification of CSS/JS files and lazy loading.
- Pro Tip: Some hosting providers have in-built caching, so you might not need a separate plugin. If you need assistance with configuring cache settings, feel free to contact the Dreamsubmittending Web Services team.
5. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Recommended Plugins: There are no problems with the minification of code when using Autoptimize and WP Rocket together. They also allow you to defer the loading of certain scripts, which might be helpful in site speed optimisation.
- Pro Tip: You have to test your site once you enabled minification, because sometimes it just breaks some functionality. Dreamsubmitting Web Services provides code optimization service for ensuring everything will run just fine.
- Why It Matters: A CDN delivers your content from a network of servers distributed across the globe, so that users receive the content from the nearest server to them, which reduces latency and fastens their access.
6. Best CDN Providers Among Them:
Some of the best options include Cloudflare (free and paid plans), StackPath, and BunnyCDN. Cloudflare offers a free tier, making it a great option for site owners strapped for cash.
- Pro Tip: With good hosting, a CDN delivers some serious speed boosts. Want help setting up a CDN? Dreamsubmitting Web Services offers CDN integration services for all types of WordPress sites.
7. Reduce External Scripts and Plugins
Why Does It Matter: The page may be slowed down by any third-party scripts such as ad services or analytics. Every other plugin adds in some scripts or stylesheets adding up to the load time.
- Pro Tip: Sit back and review all the installed plugins, delete or disable any that are unnecessary. Try as much to work without so many plugins for just the features you require and avoid duplicating work using plugins. We can help audit and optimize your plugins for improved performance at Dreamsubmitting Web Services.
8. Enable Lazy Loading for Images and Videos
Why It Matters: Lazy loading defer the loading of images or videos till they’re ready to come into the viewport. That is, image and video content is not loaded off-screen – thus saving bandwidth and reducing load times.
- To Enabling it: WordPress has a natively-enabled lazy loading feature. You could as well enable the following WordPress lazy-load plugins for more optimum functionality: Lazy Load by WP Rocket, and a3 Lazy Load for better control.
Lazy-load only below-the-fold contents – lazy loading above-the-fold images causes perceivable stalls. Our team can make lazy loading work efficiently for your site in performance mode.
9. Optimize the Database
Why It Matters: “Over time your database gets full of all sorts of junk data from revision, spam comments, and temporary options”, that can slow your site down.
Best Plugins that You Can Use WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner which can automatically and easily keep your database lean.
- Pro Tip: Clean up regularly, especially for high-traffic sites or constantly updated content. Dreamsubmitting Web Services can help create and maintain database optimization to maintain performance.
10. Disable Trackbacks and Pingbacks
- Why It Matters: Trackbacks and pingbacks notify other blogs that you are linking to them. This creates unnecessary server requests and slows down your site.
- How to Disable: Access to WordPress’s Settings > Discussion in your dashboard and uncheck the box for allowing pingbacks and trackbacks.
- Pro Tip: These functions won’t hurt your SEO, but they can really clean up your performance. We include these optimizations with our standard site maintenance here at Dreamsubmitting Web Services.
You do not do this to improve your WordPress page speed once, but rather, you are consistently working on it. Through these steps, you will be very well on the way to a faster and better website that truly ranks better on the search engines with higher users retaining on your site.
Optimizing WordPress Sites for Speed and Performance Optimizing every WordPress installation at Dreamsubmitting Web Services for maximum speed and performance. Do you need help to set up a website, configure plugins, or continue ongoing maintenance to build an amazing user experience that results in outcomes? Feel free to reach out to me at any time!