How To Speed Up WordPress for better Google rankings Using These Plugins

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Now more than ever, your WordPress website speed can make or break your online presence. Why? First, it’s a major Google ranking factor. So high speed grants you higher rankings, satisfied users and increased conversions.

But how fast are talking about? According to Kissmetrics, 40% of your audience will leave your site if takes more 3 seconds to load. Tough crowd to please, right?

Read on and learn how to speed up your WordPress site in 5 easy steps. You don’t need any coding knowledge

1. Choose an SEO friendly theme:

WordPress is famous for thousands of free and premium themes. This could tempt you into choosing the most colorful theme. In so doing, you could be dragging your website.

To avoid this, choose a search engine optimized theme based on functionality and not aesthetic quality. In fact, it’s better to choose a basic light-weight theme, which is fast and mobile optimized.

You can use plugins to boost the functions it lacks.

2. Optimize images:

Images are great for WordPress SEO, boosting engagement and driving traffic. It no secret. What most people don’t know is that images can slow your site load time.
To optimize your images, compress them before you upload them to your WordPress website. TinyPNG is a great tool for that. You can also install WP Smush, a plugin that automatically optimizes the image on your site.

3. Use a caching plugin:

With an awesome caching plugin like W3 Total Cache, you stand to 2x to 5x your site speed.  How is that possible?

You see, the process of displaying your page to the user is long. And it happens every time someone visits your site.

When multiple users visit the same page on your site, the process becomes longer. This automatically reduces your site speed.

A caching plugin avoids that hassle by storing a version of your pages and readily availing them to your audience.

4. Reduce the number and size of blog posts displayed:

By default, WordPress displays entire blog posts on your homepage and archives. Also, at least 10 posts are displayed per page.

This drags your site. Your homepage takes the biggest blow since where most people first land on your site. It’s also annoying for users who are not interested in reading all your blog posts.

Instead, only show excerpts of your posts. Simply go to Settings > Readings > For each article in a feed, show and select Summary. Also, reduce the number of posts per page to about 5 to 7 per post.

5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN):

By now, you know that displaying your content to your readers is a lengthy process. It takes even longer for readers who are far from your server location. A CDN lets you fix that.

Basically, it hosts your cached files and distributes them to various servers globally. This makes it easier for anyone to access your site despite their geographical location.

MaxCDN is the most popular and reliable CDN available. Most of your favorite site use it. You may not know that but the smooth browsing experience is evidence enough. Free-CDN is also another free alternative.

Conclusion

Do you see how easy it is for you to speed up your website? It’s all thanks to the fact that WordPress is easy to use and tons of tools are available to improve functionality.

You must feel like such a bigshot web designer now. And so you should! You can now smile all the way to the first page of Google with these simple yet powerful tactics.

Michael Jones