10 Proven Tips To Boost Your WordPress Website Speed And Performance

The speed of your website matters a lot. Most website owners encounter this issue when their website takes time to load, there are a lot of reasons behind the slow speed of a website. If you are also searching for how to speed up WordPress performance, then you will definitely benefit from our expert solutions.

Slow WordPress performance is not an internet issue, it’s all about website issues. Fast websites are the need of the hour, if you don’t want to lose website visitors you need to speed up your website.

A slow website creates many problems like annoying the users by taking a long time to load, affecting the user experience, and also increasing the bounce rate which indirectly affects the SEO of the website. Don’t worry, we will guide you on how to get perfect website speed but first, we understand what affects website speed.

A Slow Website Is Caused by A Variety of Factors

• Unoptimized Images
• Heavy coding script (Java & CSS)
• Hosting & Server
• Not Using gZIP Compression
• Too Many plugins
• Not Using CDN (Content Delivery Network)
• Too Many redirects
• Too Many HTTP Requests
• Not Optimizing database queries

There are many reasons that affect website speed. We have already mentioned some of them above. Now let’s see what are the ways that can get faster loading websites.

1) Optimized Heavy Images and Speed up Performance 

The size of images matters, heavy images take time to load, and hence it affects website speed. Colorful images make your content interesting and increase engagement so images are very important, you can’t avoid them. 

If you directly upload images without checking their size of them, then you are making a big mistake. Don’t directly upload images, compress them for the web. Take help from online software or tools and optimize the perfect size. Always use JPEG and PNG images that are ideal for the web. 

2) Remove Unnecessary Plugins and Speed up Performance

Plugins are the life of WordPress. With the help of plugins, you can easily integrate functionality and features. This makes WordPress very easy to use, but plugins add extra code that increases the size of the site.

These plugins use JavaScript and CSS files to perform tasks. As a result, these files get heavy and slow down the speed of the website.

You should use a maximum of 20 to 30 plugins; if you have more than that, you should consider removing them. The plugins should be lightweight and optimized. Always use only necessary plugins and always check the size of the plugin before installing it. Check out any unnecessary plugins that are taking up too much space on your website and just remove them.

3) Website Theme Matter a Lot

Don’t use a heavily scripted theme that looks good but slows the website speed. Many poorly coded themes take time to load and affect site speed.   

Theme plays a big role in how fast your website loads. So always choose lighter themes. 

Don’t go for a theme that is loaded with lots of functionality and features, you can add those features with quality plugins. 

If you are using a complex theme, then change it and see the difference in speed.

4) Reduce HTTP Requests

A large HTTP request means slow website speed. It is a background process of any website, when someone wants to visit your website, the user’s browser sends a “request” to your server. This is called an HTTP request. Your website server accepts the request and displays the web pages. The browser has to take all the info from various copies such as plug-ins and images and load pages after that. 

The browser takes time to check out all the files and sends multiple HTTP requests as per needed. 

From various online tools, You can easily identify How many HTTP requests your website received.

Delete the unused plugins, remove unnecessary images and enable lazy loading and reduce multiple third-party requests.

5) Avoid Too Many Redirections

Too many redirections affect the website’s speed. Sometimes you get 404 errors on your website and the easiest method to deal with permanently redirecting it. Always maintain your site structure which helps to avoid these types of situations.

You should need to avoid too many redirections, each one adds an extra load on the website and affects website speed.

6) Use CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Geolocation affects the website speed of your website server and the location of the user. Like, if your web server is located in the United States then the visitor in the US will see a faster speed than a user in India. Here CDN helps to give the same speed to all visitors around the world.

CDN is very helpful to provide the same speed to all the visitors of your website no matter what the location. CDN is a global connection of the connected servers that help users to see the web page fast.

CDN is easy to set up on a WordPress website. You can check out your hosting provider that will also provide the CDN services, just integrate CDN into the website and see the changes in speed.

7) Compress files with GZIP

GZIP is the best method to compress files over the net. It reduces file size by up to 70% and takes less time compared to other compression methods. When you start using GZIP compression on your website, your website loads faster. In WordPress, you can take the help of plugins to enable GZIP compression in your website.

8) Upgrade to the Latest PHP Version

If your WordPress has an older version, then it also affects the performance of your website. WordPress is written in the PHP programming language and runs on a hosting server. Make sure your web hosting provider is using the latest version of PHP to run your website. If not, then update your website with the latest version of PHP to improve the performance of your website.

9) Optimize WordPress Database to Improve Performance

After using a WordPress Website for a while, the database becomes full of unnecessary data that is not useful for the website. Like spam comments, tags, and other unnecessary data. So, clean the database to improve website speed. To clean the database, you can take the help of plugins available on the WordPress platform. 

10) Use a Fast Hosting Service

Hosting plays a major role in website performance. If your website is hosted on a slow hosting server, then your website will load slowly and it will affect the performance of your website. Most website owners choose shared hosting services for their websites. 

If your website is on a shared hosting server, it will be affected by other websites on the same server. Shared hosting is cheap and reliable but it affects the performance of your website whenever other websites on the same server get more traffic. 

Some hosting services do not provide all the benefits like advanced security features, WordPress updates, automatic backups, or other features that help with website performance. So upgrade your plan to dedicated hosting and see the change in website performance.

Final Thought

All the above tips definitely help you increase the performance of your WordPress website. Do-it-yourself tips help you improve your website speed with no professional guidance. Various reasons affect website speeds, you need to check out every aspect to get the best speed. If you are stuck at any point, then you need to consult a professional without any hesitation to bring you the best results.