28/02/2021
WordPress is a very useful platform for building great websites. Almost 40% of the total websites on the internet are using WordPress.
But it has a drawback too! It sometimes loads slowly.😔
A slow-loading page means, more bounce rate...fewer visitors, and loss of traffic!! 😳
A website’s loading time is a very important factor for search engines like Google, to rank it in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Websites that load slowly are now penalized by Google by pushing them down in the search results.
So, if you want to rank higher in search results, it’s very important to optimize the speed of your website.🚀
Now, you may wonder, what is an ideal page load time...?
The answer is, 2 seconds.
Anything above that should be optimized. The faster it is, the better.⏰
Let’s find out 10 ways in which you can increase the speed of your website:🕵️♀️
1. Choose a fast web hosting provider: The web host you choose greatly affects the performance of your website. Shared hosting can reduce the speed of your website, as there are other sites as well that are sharing the same server.
2. Optimize the images used in the website: Images consume a major time while loading a page. Hence it's crucial to reduce the size of images. Thankfully we have amazing WordPress plugins for this.
3. Remove all the unused plugins and widgets: Removing unused plugins and widgets will free up more space and reduce the size of junk files.
4. Choose a lightweight WordPress theme: A WordPress theme with fewer elements is better in terms of loading time experience. Keep it simple and minimalistic.
5. Opt for premium DNS instead of free DNS: Using a better quality DNS service can greatly enhance the loading speed of your website. So invest in a good DNS provider, it will help you in the long run.
6. Clear your database regularly: After using your website for some time your database will get filled with data that is no longer being used. Clearing that regularly will free up space.
7. Optimize the homepage of your website: Your website’s homepage is the first thing that a visitor visits while clicking on your website. A slow-loading homepage can divert your customers to other websites. Use excerpts instead of the full content.
8. Use CDN: Using Content Delivery Network for your website can help in increasing the loading speed significantly.
9. Reduce the size of CSS and JS pages: By reducing the CSS and JS file size you can decrease the loading time of those pages.
10. Use caching plugins: Using caching plugins can increase the speed of your website to 2 to 5 times faster.