Slow websites cause frustration among visitors, which leads to a drop in traffic.
So what can you do about it?
Understanding Your Website’s Loading Speed
Before you start looking for ways to improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, it’s important to understand how website loading speed works. The loading speed of your website depends on several factors, including the quality of your hosting, the size of the files on your website, the plug-ins you use and the amount of traffic you receive.
Check Your Website’s Loading Speed
The first step to improving the loading speed of your WordPress website is to check its current loading speed. You can use free online tools such as GTmetrix, Pingdom or Google PageSpeed Insights to get a report on your website’s speed. These tools will give you an overview of your site’s loading speed, performance issues as well as recommendations for improving your site’s loading speed.
Choosing Fast and Reliable Web Hosting
Choosing web hosting is one of the most important decisions you will have to make to improve the loading speed of your WordPress site. Fast and reliable web hosting can dramatically improve the loading speed of your website. When choosing web hosting, make sure you choose a reputable web host that offers fast and reliable servers for your website. And if for the same price, you prefer a green hosting, go to Infomaniak 😉
Optimize the images on your website
Images are one of the main culprits of slow loading websites. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, you need to optimize the images on your website. You can do this by avoiding using images that are too large, compressing images, using suitable image formats such as JPEG or PNG. And by adding an image management or cache plugin.
Remove Unnecessary Plug-ins
Plugins are an important aspect of WordPress, but they can also significantly slow down the loading speed of your website. Too much plugin, kills the plugin. Sometimes a plugin can be replaced by a small development that will ultimately cost you less if the plugin is not updated and causes your site to be hacked. Don’t overuse them and make sure they are up to date.
Optimizing the WordPress Database
The WordPress database stores all the data on your website, including posts, pages, comments, users, etc. Over time, your database can become cluttered and slow down the loading speed of your website. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, you can optimize the database by removing obsolete tables, unnecessary data and post revisions.
Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A CDN is a network of servers that store copies of your website in different locations around the world. When a user visits your website, the CDN routes the request to the server closest to the user, which reduces the loading time of your website. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, you can use a CDN to distribute your website content worldwide. This option is only necessary for an international website.
Using a Lightweight and Optimized WordPress Theme
Choosing a lightweight and optimized WordPress theme is crucial to improve the loading speed of your website. Poorly coded or overly heavy “gas machine” themes with multiple options and templates can significantly slow down the loading speed of your website. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, you can choose a lightweight and optimized theme that uses clean and minimal programming.
Use Caching
Caching is a technique that temporarily stores data on the user’s browser or server, which reduces the loading time of your website. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress site, you can use caching and optimization plug-ins. At Farweb we use WPRocket.
Reduce Redirects and Broken Links
Redirects and broken links can slow down the loading speed of your WordPress site. Redirects are instructions that tell browsers to go to another page, which can cause confusion for users and result in a decrease in your website’s loading speed. Broken links are links that point to pages that no longer exist or have been moved. To improve the loading speed of your WordPress website, you need to reduce redirects and broken links on your website.
Conclusion
Improving the loading speed of your WordPress website can significantly improve the user experience and SEO of your website. By following these tips, you can improve the loading speed of your WordPress website and provide a better experience for your visitors. At Farweb, we can help you speed up your WordPress website.
