10 Dazzling Tips To Optimize Your WordPress Website
If you want to keep users happy and boost conversion rates, make sure your website is running at a good speed. Luckily, there are ways that you can increase the performance of your WordPress site and help it load faster. Follow these tips for optimizing webpage loading time in order to get more user engagement on all platforms!
Are you looking for easy-to-follow steps on how to optimize page loads? If so, then this guide will be right up your alley!
#1. Set WordPress Permalinks
Your website’s URL is called a permalink. It tells your visitors what page they are visiting and how to get back there again later on if you have edited the content of your site, fixed an error, or moved it around in any way. In layman’s terms, this might be seen as something that users type into their address bar for viewing purposes, such as “www.examplewebsite”/“post-name.”
They also link other websites and search engines so people can find out about all the great work going on through easy clicks! You may want to change these settings, so here’s how: Settings -> Permalinks.
The way that most people create their blog titles can seem confusing or obtuse at first glance, but it actually has some very logical reasoning behind it. For instance, if my title was “A Tale Of Two Cities,” then I would use %title%% as the URL in order to link back to my article from anywhere else on my website with ease.
Altogether, every WordPress development company and developer ensures that permalinks are assigned deftly to avert glitches.
#2. Use GT Metrix
GT Metrix is an online tool that’ll give you a visual representation of all aspects of your site’s performance, such as PageSpeed and Yslow, score, size, load time, number of requests. It allows you to create a GT Metrix account which will automatically keep records for the historical analysis on this site. For those who want to save these reports offline or elsewhere, there are also downloadable PDFs available as well!
It is an easy-to-use online tool that will help you track your site’s performance. It provides many helpful graphs and charts to show everything from page load time, the number of requests, the size of the website pages themselves — even down to individual HTML file sizes!
It is an amazing tool that can tell you all aspects of your site’s performance. You create an account that will automatically keep track of changes in speed or response times so if any problems arise; they are immediately detected. For those who want more detail than this but don’t necessarily need something like GTMeter, there are other tools out there, such as Pingdom Website Speed Test Tool.
#3. Leverage Search Engine Optimized Theme
WordPress offers an array of themes to give your website a strong foundation. Themes are selected based on their aesthetics, but you should also consider the theme’s optimization for search engines as well. Speed and code are two critical aspects of SEO-optimized themes; these qualities ensure that Google bots find what they need when wading through source codes.
Well written & up-to-date with the latest best practices guarantees Google will find your site when they look in their database, which means more targeted traffic for your business.
Moreover, it is crucial to incorporate open graph meta tags as well as appropriate use of headings in order for social media sharing and browsing sites like Twitter to be able to pull information about your site. Additionally, the HTML structure in WordPress website development should be neat and clean, with valid code that can handle any needs you may have when designing pages on the website.
The canonical URL tag helps ensure content stays relevant across all platforms by providing search engines an accurate link back if they revisit old links or there’s duplicate content from another page — this way, users will be directed back to the original article instead of getting redirected elsewhere!
#4. Leverage CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A CDN is a network of geographically spread out servers that caches your site’s data so users can access it more quickly. A CDN will speed up the load time for all visitors to your website, no matter where they are in the world because each node (edge server) has cached copies of pages and images needed by any visitor in their respective geographical region.
A Content Delivery Network is essentially just a cluster-like system with nodes located near different parts of the globe, which speeds up loading times for websites due to its caching mechanism — one copy stored at an edge server close enough to you if not directly from you! These edges also cache essential web pages and images like those necessary when viewing sites.
#5. Enable Caching
The process of storing some data on the hard drive of visitors’ during their first visit to the website is caching. It is done, so when there’s a second visit, it loads significantly faster. If you’re using 10Web as your host, all you need to do is click one of our “Hosting Services” buttons in order to enable this feature.
Most good hosting providers include some type of caching service, and if yours doesn’t offer these services at all, then plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Fastest Cache will help get things running more smoothly for everyone involved! That’s the reason WordPress development services ensure to enable caching in each website development.
#6. Minify Script
Minify scripts to reduce network traffic and page load times. Comments, spacing, and well-named variables are helpful for developers in the development phase but create extraneous junk when it comes time to serve your web pages.
The browser can read JavaScript without comments or variable names just as easily as they would with them since browsers don’t need these additional details as a server does — so make all of those tools invisible before saving your code!
#7. Deleting Unused Plugins & Themes
If you’ve been a good web designer and have picked the fastest themes and plugins, then it is time to get rid of any unused ones. The next step for site maintenance should be deleting all outdated or unnecessary content from your server space by getting rid of old themes or plugins that might not even be active on your website anymore but are still taking up precious disk storage!
This way, there will always only be what you need on hand instead of cluttering things unnecessarily.
#8. Declutter Your Media Library and Reduce Server Load
The media library is a valuable resource for webmasters. It can become too crowded with all of the images, documents, audio files, etc., that are uploaded to your site over time. After some use (especially if you don’t optimize them), these files may slow down server performance due to their sheer number.
Cleaning up this space periodically — even automatically! — will help WordPress website developers keep things running efficiently, while also making it easier for you to find what you’re looking for when adding new content in the future.
#9. Use Links & Anchor Tag Deftly
Many people don’t know that optimizing your site’s SEO efforts means giving some extra attention to the links you use. You may already understand how critical it is to include a link with each post, but there are additional ways you can take advantage of this strategy for boosting traffic and search rankings.
One way is by linking back to old posts on your own website — not just when they’re relevant, but also as often as possible! This will help give both Google crawlers (and, therefore, potential visitors) an idea of what else might be interesting here in addition to whatever topic we’re focusing on now.
Additionally, because these incoming links point towards older content rather than our newest blog entries or articles, which may have been published days ago.
#10. Update Plugin, Theme, and WordPress Software
Unfortunately, WordPress has been hacked in the past, and your website may be at risk. Make sure to update all of your plugins as well as any themes you use, so they’re up-to-date with current versions running on a regular basis because hackers are always updating their methods along with those who make it possible for you to operate your websites.
Regularly updating WordPress and your plugins is the best way to ensure that you’re always running things smoothly. Updates on all levels of your site will help keep everything up-to-date, such as security updates from developers who are constantly working hard for better performance across the board in every aspect of operations, with each update made available at a given time.
Wrapping Up
A slow site can lead to a significant drop in the number of visitors who stick around, which will negatively affect your bottom line. However, this doesn’t have to be your website’s fate, since WordPress offers plenty of ways to improve its speed.
Throughout this guide, we’ve looked at some best methods for optimizing performance in WordPress website development and making it run faster than ever before — no matter what type or size you might deal with on a day-to-day basis. If you implement these tips into how you manage and maintain things yourself, then not only do they work better, but also make any user happier too. For more insights, stay tunes with me.
