How to Quickly Speed Up Your WordPress Website

A lot of websites are built using WordPress because it’s an easy to use website building platform and it’s optimized nicely, resulting in a SEO-friendly design and structure.

One of the easiest things you can do to your WordPress website is make it load faster. This not only has a positive impact on your SEO, but it also improves the user experience.

Nobody wants to wait for a webpage to load. In fact, if someone has to wait more than 2 seconds for a page to load they are likely to just leave and find another site to visit instead.

Here are some tips to help you speed up your WordPress website.

Put It Through The Tests

The first thing you will want to do is find out how fast your site loads and what, if anything, is causing it to be slow. Google’s free PageSpeed tool is a great place to start.

“If you want to know what Google thinks of your website’s performance you can find out,” says Henk Schipper of Jaloezieen Fabriek. “Not only will it tell you a score and suggestions on what to improve so it loads faster, but they give you both a desktop and mobile score.

Limit Plugin Use

One reason WordPress is so popular is because there are thousands of free plugins available that instantly add features to your website with no coding or development skills needs.

But using too many can really slow down your website.

“Don’t get wrapped up in having so many features on your website that it results in slow load times and a poor user experience,” offers Chris Dziak of Pure Nootropics. “Use a few, but don’t go overboard.”

If you need to use a lot of plugins you will need to make sure you use powerful hosting, and that brings us to the next point.

Use Quality Hosting

If you host your WordPress site with $1/month shared hosting you can expect your site to load like a slow pig. If you want the best hosting environment, sign up for WordPress specific hosting.

A website that has information on a popular topic with a lot of traffic, like Golden Slipper, you want to be sure the server environment can handle spikes in traffic.

These servers are configured and set up specifically for WordPress, resulting in a much better performance and load time. You can get top rated WordPress hosting for about $25 per month. There are also several security layers built in, which is important, since WordPress is the #1 CMS in terms of hacking attempts.

Install a Light Theme

Like with plugins, using a theme that is built poorly or has too many features, will slow your load time down. If you click here you will see a nice light weight theme that responds very well and provides a nice user experience.

opt for a nice simple theme that is basic in terms of features. Your visitors are more interested in the content on your website than a fancy image slider. The content will be of no interest to them if they can’t get it to load quickly anyway.

When researching themes be sure to look for speed and load test data provided by the developers and coders.