WordPress is primarily used by millions of users around the world. It is a dynamic platform that has a myriad of options to offer. It also powers more than 835 million websites on the internet. However, capitalizing on its performance abilities is the job of the respective website owners. But how can you speed up your WordPress website with the right web hosting for small business?
In
this blog, we’ll be sharing several foolproof techniques that you can follow to
optimize your WordPress website's performance. Using these techniques, you can
increase your page load speed and SEO ranking. Consequently, you can provide an
excellent user experience for your audience.
But
why is WordPress performance optimization so important? And what are the
different techniques to optimize speed with the perfect WordPress hosting UK solution?
Importance of
WordPress performance optimization
A
slow-loading WordPress website directly corresponds to a loss of sales and
traffic. Statistics can change, but according to a study, around 57% of
visitors will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Therefore,
if you aim to increase page views, generate more leads, increase conversions,
or accomplish any other goal, it is necessary to speed up your website for an
improved user experience and website speed.
Another
downside of a slow-loading WordPress website is that it can affect your SEO
rankings. As you know, different search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing,
consider a couple of factors when ranking your website, including speed,
performance, and the interaction of users. An easy-to-use and fast-loading
website reveals to search engines that you worry about your website visitors
and provides an unmatched user experience for them. Subsequently, your web
content is going to be ranked higher in search engine results pages.
Also,
keep in mind that optimizing WordPress isn’t a once and for all task. The
longer your website is on the web, the more new content you’ll add, and the
more significant it is to regularly maintain and optimize it.
8 Techniques to
Optimize Your WordPress Performance
After
understanding the importance of optimizing a WordPress website, let’s delve
deeper into different techniques to speed up your website:
1. Select the Right Web Hosting
Service
A
web hosting provider saves your website files and delivers them to your
visitors when they request them. If your hosting provider messes up, every bit
of website optimization from across the globe won’t be advantageous for it.
Therefore,
it is crucial to select a reliable WordPress hosting UK service that provides
faster page speeds and a higher uptime guarantee. At the same time, excellent
technical support. Furthermore, you’ll have to look forward to one web host
that offers WordPress-related features such as automatic updates and backups.
Because of this, the majority of website owners decide to host their websites
through MilesWeb’s web hosting for small businesses.
Websites
on MilesWeb.com are hosted on highly secure, ultra-fast web servers developed
particularly for WordPress websites. Irrespective of their expertise, their
team is completely focused on offering everything you require to succeed. If
you face any challenge, their professional support team is there to help you.
They
integrate premium CDN, which supports a worldwide network of data centers, to
deliver your content to every visitor on the basis of their geographical
location. It also helps your website load faster without any downtime.
2. Select the Best Quality
WordPress Theme
WordPress
users can access a wide range of themes with distinct styles and features. From
thousands of WordPress theme options, you can select the ones that have
suitable layouts and functionalities for your type of website or particular
business.
However,
it’s quite captivating to select a design based on how it appears, there’s much
more than that. Selecting a design that looks alluring but has bad performance
will affect your website over the long term. You should always personalize
WordPress themes in order to best fit your design preferences. Hence, when
selecting a WordPress theme for your website, take into account:
●
Its Features: Indeed, your desired
features should be included in it. But also, be careful not to choose heavy
themes because they can slow down your website.
●
Check Demo: Check out the selected
theme’s demo and analyze how fast it can load page elements. Also, check
whether it lags or not.
●
Check Reviews: By reading several positive
reviews, you can ensure that the themes are recent and look out for anything
that leads to slow load times.
●
Its Support: Good WordPress themes will
have helpful alternatives, given that if you get into trouble, particularly
with optimizing speed. Several free WordPress themes will depend on forums;
therefore, look into them to find out whether there are any latest
contributions and whether the developer is active and receptive.
●
Latest Updates: Like every other technology,
WordPress is continuously evolving. Your selected theme needs to keep abreast
of the current version of WordPress, thereby it functions properly and loads
quickly. If a considerable amount of time has passed since the last update,
then it might not be any more supported by the developer.
3. Optimize Images
Images
are the most important component of any website. However, their large file size
can contribute to slow loading times. If your website is slow-loading, than
you’d love it, and also if you haven’t optimized your images for a long time,
this could be a turning point.
Remember
that large-sized images also require more time to load; it is up to you to do
some compression on the image files to be posted on your website. The images
can be optimized on the WordPress website by uploading them in the correct size
that is needed on the website and by using other image editors that are needed,
such as any compression tool like ImageOptim or Photoshop.
Another
option is to utilize a WordPress plugin like Smush, which optimizes images when
uploaded to the website. You can use this plugin to compress images that are in
your Media Library.
Using
the Jetpack plugin, you can automatically compress images and also resize the
files for smartphones, increasing speed where it's most required. The best part
is that Jetpack’s speed feature is already built in; therefore, it doesn’t
require any action from your side!
4. Make Use of Caching
When
a visitor visits your website, their web browser passes through a process of
loading all files, photos, and sections of code on the web page. Caching helps
speed up this process by storing a copy of your website in a visitor’s browser;
thus, it helps skip a large part of this loading process when they visit next
time.
A
variety of caching plugins are available, which you can utilize to enable them
for your website. For example, WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and much more.
These plugins need different levels of skills and experience.
Some
of them have lesser customization alternatives but are easy to configure. Other
plugins let you edit each detail but are complicated to use. Be cautious here,
because any inaccurate caching configuration can crash your website.
5. Deactivate Any Unwanted Plugins
Every
active plugin on your website loads code when any visitor visits your website.
The more the number of plugins there are, the more codes need to be loaded and
therefore, more amounts of data are needed to be processed, causing the slow
speed of your website.
Thus, it is important to disable unwanted or extra
plugins because it takes lesser time for the server to process the data in
relation to the visitors and frequency of access. Check out the plugins running
on your website and determine if there is any plugin that is not useful to you.
If,
at all, you are in doubt as to whether a specific plugin is necessary for your
website, you should deactivate it and observe whether or not it makes any
changes to your website. If you do not observe any change, you can remove it
from your website. But before making any changes, you should always take a
backup in case, aren’t you?
To
deactivate a WordPress plugin, one will log into the website, then navigate to
the “plugins” section >>> navigate to Installed Plugins >>>
search for the one that you want to be deactivated, and then click on
deactivate.
Do
not worry, in case you change your decision! Just reactivate that particular
plugin. If you aren’t thinking of reusing it, you can permanently delete it
from your website.
6. Always Use a Commercial DNS
Service
The
performance of your WordPress website can be increased by utilizing a
commercial DNS service. A DNS, i.e., a domain name system, is a phone directory
of the web that translates human-readable website names [for example,
https://www.abc.com] into IP (Internet
Protocol) addresses [for example, 192.168.0.38] that the computer understands.
You
get a domain name from a DNS service provider and the service you choose
affects the speed of your website because it is responsible for informing
browsers where your website is located on the web. If it takes longer to locate
your website, then your website too will take longer time to load.
Therefore,
ensure that you select a well-known DNS service provider that speeds up the
domain lookup process and makes it reliable every time.
7. Make Use of a CDN
As
mentioned above, a CDN, or content delivery network, is a group of servers that
are distributed all across the globe and are responsible for handing over your
website’s content to visitors.
Every
time any user wishes to access your website, your web pages are sourced from
the closest server to the user. Hence, a CDN may prove helpful in enhancing the
performance of your website since the distance of your server from your
visitor’s browser is reduced.
8. Reduce Using Third-Party
Scripts
You
should minimize using third-party scripts because they can slow down your
website, just like plugins. They add additional data that must be processed
when any user visits your website. Additionally, they can insert
vulnerabilities and keep track of your visitors behind their backs or without
consent. Have a look at some of the tools that could insert third-party scripts
into your website - Google Analytics, chat boxes, ads, videos inserted by
YouTube or Vimeo, or through social media feeds.
Since
many of them are completely appropriate, secure, and useful, you've got to
restrict them if feasible. At least you must try to reduce their effect on the
performance of your website. You can achieve this by doing custom code
modifications and using a few CDN tools. The simplest way is to utilize a
WordPress plugin such as Autoptimize, which consists of a script blocker.
How Can You
Measure the Performance of Your WordPress Website?
If
your aim is to check the effectiveness of your website, there are numerous
tools where all you need to provide your website’s address or URL, and the tool
will create a report. Google PageSpeed Insights is the most used one.
After
providing your URL, you can check the performance score of your website both on
a desktop as well as on a smartphone. You will also receive strategic
suggestions for improving the website. Other instruments that you can employ
include GTmetrix, WebPageTest, and Pingdom.
These
tools will propose similar outcomes and recommendations. These tools can also
be used to diagnose your Core Web Vitals and determine what areas you need to
enhance.
Conclusion
WordPress
websites are recognized for being quick and flexible, but they succeed with
some efforts that enhance your website’s speed and customer experience. As
discussed earlier, there are plenty of techniques to enhance the performance of
your website, but the benefit of hosting with MilesWeb is that you’ll receive
excellent web hosting services, along with lots of performance-improving
features that can manage heavy workloads.
If you have any doubt related this post, let me know