SEO is one of the important factors to bring your website in front of people and slow website speed is one of the factors that can affect SEO. From the past few years, there’ve been so many case studies that show how much a website with fast loading speed is necessary. From these case studies, you can get to know how popular companies like Amazon have agreed that online businesses can increase their revenue by following the strategies to optimize website speed.
Why the website’s loading speed is so much effective? Just imagine, you visited a website and you found that it’s loading speed is very slow. What you would have done? You would have definitely gone back and found some better websites. The same goes for every user on search engines. According to popular researches, the user doesn’t stay on a website that takes more than 5 seconds to load.
In this post by Kreo Web, you will get to know 8 best tricks to optimize website speed that can definitely make your website fast and your users engaged. In this website speed optimization article, we are particularly focusing on WordPress based website. So if you have a WordPress based website then this article can definitely transform your website’s life.
Also Read: SEO Optimization Strategies for Startups
8 Tricks to Optimize Website Speed
1. Compress Images on Your Websites
Images and videos are the heaviest loads that your website carries. They are the major factor to affect the website’s loading speed. If you are working on a WordPress based website, then you can install plugins to optimize your website images.
What are the Best Tools to Compress Images?
You can use tools like an online image compressor and WP Smush(WordPress Plugin) to compress and optimize the images on your website.
2. Use Content Delivery Network
A CDN or Content Delivery Network refers to a group of geographically distributed servers that work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content. By using a good CDN you can improve the loading speed of your website, reduce bandwidth cost, increase content availability and improve website security.
CDN is basically a group of servers linked with each other keeping fast delivery of content as its primary goal. The usage of CDN is getting popular nowadays and most of the websites have CDN installed in it.
Which is The Best Platform for CDN?
When it comes to the best CDN provider, you can trust on Cloudflare to get a private Content Delivery Network for your website.
3. Minify Website’s CSS and JS Files
Minifying your website’s CSS and JS files basically mean to minimize the size of these files. In other words, we can say, it is to cut out the extra and unnecessary size these files acquire. In fact, it is one of the best strategies for website speed optimization. To cut out the junk of CSS and JS files you will have to remove all the unnecessary lines, characters, and spaces from the coding.
On the other hand, you can also minify your PHP file by converting possible PHP into HTML. The basic idea is just to minify the coding wherever it is possible. Always remember that minimizing these files in the back-end doesn’t affect your website.
How You Can Optimize CSS & JS Files?
If you have a WordPress based website it is very easy to minify CSS & JS files, which is going to take just 2 minutes for completion. The easiest way to minify CSS and JS files on your website is by installing WP Minify Plugin or Speed Booster Plugin.
To play more with CSS and Javascript files you can put the CSS on top and Javascript at the bottom, which is an effective way to speed-up your website.
4. Use a Light Theme for a WordPress Website
Using a good server to host your website and a good theme is the first priority you should focus on, to optimize website speed from the first day. Using heavy themes will surely affect your website’s loading speed as they consume a big amount of space in the server. Not only this, heavy & slow themes can also give you trouble when you are going to work on the website.
What are The Best Light Themes for WordPress?
Light themes like flatsome, divi, uncode, etc. are the best to use for your WordPress based website.
Also Read: Best Themes for WordPress Websites
5. Uninstall Unnecessary Plugins
Unnecessary plugins are a total waste for your website. Keeping plugins that you don’t use puts a heavy load on your website. This is because, plugins will also maintain their own space by using the space provided by your website, whether they are active or not.
With unnecessary plugins your WordPress dashboard can get messy, putting a heavy load on the website and thus, affecting its loading speed. For better optimization of website speed, you should always flush out unnecessary plugins on a regular basis so that your website can run smoothly.
How to Uninstall Unnecessary Plugins?
To uninstall unnecessary plugins just go to the plugin dashboard in WordPress and select all those plugins which are not in your use or unnecessary for your website. “Deactivate” all the unnecessary plugins and then click the “delete” option.
6. Install ‘Total Cache Plugin’
If you have a WordPress based website then removing cache to speed-up your website is very easy and free. You will just have to install the “Total Cache” Plugin, which is one of the most popular plugins to remove cache from your website and increase the speed of a website.
How to Install?
Just go to the Plugin dashboard and from there, you can click the “Add New” button to add a new plugin. Then search for “Total Cache” plugin. Click install and then activate to fully install the plugin.
7. Fix Broken Links
Fixing broken links has remained one of the dominating factors to fully optimize your website. Reports of popular websites have proven that after fixing broken links they have seen good growth in their business from the website. Fixing broken links should be among your top priorities when you optimize your website for good loading speed.
How to Fix Broken Links?
The most popular tool to check broken links is Google Search Console. Another tool you can use is a plugin known as “Broken Link Checker”, which can make your work much easier.
8. Install ‘Speed Booster Pack’
“Speed Booster Pack” is a WordPress Plugin that makes all the process of website speed optimization much easier, just with few clicks. It will not be wrong to say that you can perform all the above-mentioned speed optimization tricks in one platform, i.e. the “Speed Booster Pack” Plugin.
Is it Free or Paid?
“Speed Booster Pack” is the best plugin to optimize website speed and the best thing about it is you can get it for free. You can simply install this plugin in your WordPress from the plugin section in the dashboard.
Tools to Check Website’s Loading Speed
When you optimize website speed then it is very necessary to keep an eye on website speed, after all, you need something that can tell you whether your website speed is increasing or not. Here are the two best tools you should use to check your website’s loading speed,
- Google Page Speed Insights
- GT Metrix
What is the Best Website Speed?
According to popular researches, websites with less than 5 seconds of loading time tend to perform better than websites taking more than 5 seconds of loading time. When you check your website’s speed on Google Page Speed Insights and GT Metrix they have their specific scores, which tell what the speed of your website is and how you can improve them.
Below mentioned are the scores of “Google Page Speed Insights’ and “Gt Metrix”
0-49 Poor
50-89 Fair
90-100 Excellent
GT Metrix gives the result in an alphabetical grade i.e. A, B or C with scores in percentage.
How Kreo Web Can Help?
Kreo Web is a leading and creative Mississauga & Toronto based Web Development and Maintenance Company, which executesright steps to maintain your website. We work with bes tools and strategies to give your website the perfect maintenance and speed it requires.