Speed of your website is important for user experience and for Google.
Optimising your website performance score (ie improving website page load speed) is the best SEO & UX strategy of this age, as studies shows that just 1-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by almost 7%, and approx. 53% of your potential website visitors will leave the website if it takes more than 3 (yes, THREE) seconds to load.
Crazy isn’t it?
Why your SEO rankings will drop if the performance score is bad?
It’s simple! Google crawls the performance score of the website as a ranking factor, as well as if your website is not faster, people will leave your website immediately which causes high bounce rate- which is a ranking factor as well.
Alright! so the questions are, how do you know whether your website load faster or not and how to do a performance comparison with your competitors.
How to Check WordPress Website Speed Score
Below are the two most common and effective methods to audit your website performance score and to improve the same.
Method 1: Using WordPress Plugins (recommended)
The best and easiest way is to install one of the best WordPress speed optimization and analytics plugins such as MonsterInsights.
MonsterInsights helps you to run diagnosis as well as one-click fixes so that you won’t have to worry about how to fix the list of action items in the report. No coding skills required for any of the optimization steps!
Method 2: Using Google Speed Insights
An alternate method is by using Google’s Speed Insights tool to audit the page load speed of the website and to optimise the same.
All you have to do is, just visit Page Speed Insights tool here and enter your domain name to analyse. You’ll get your page load speed score along with optimisation tips to improve the same.
However, you might need some level of coding skills to execute the same in WordPress.
WordPress Best Practises for Improved Page Load Speed
It is just a myth that WordPress website slow in general. Your WordPress website speed depends on a lot of factors including your website hosting, the plugins types and number of plugins used, images, external scripts and much more.
Using the below hacks, we’re sure you will see a high growth on the website speed score. Let’s dive in.
1. Select the Right WordPress Hosting
Choosing the right hosting provider is one of most important factor for the success of your WordPress website.
Most recommended to WordPress hosting providers are FastComet and BlueHost.
2. Use a Caching Plugin to Improve Response Time
The next high-impact WordPress optimization hack is to use a premium caching and files and database optimization plugin such as WPRocket. It helps reduce the load time of your website and improves the server response time.
Caching service providers temporary store frequenty visited pages and information which quickens your website speed. Also users may be accessing the most requested pages or information from their browser storage itself or from a copy of your website on your caching providers server so that such repeated visits may not load your server.
If you’re looking for a highly effective premium option, then we recommend using WP Rocket as it’s user-friendly, cache your website with a single click, and offers other features like image optimizations to speed up a WordPress website. WPRocket is effective as well.
Free alternative is WP Super Cache, but you will lack of alot of features in free version.
3. Optimise Your WordPress Database frequently
The next WordPress speed optimisation strategy is by optimising your WordPress DataBase.
What is database? It’s a few numbers of tables in your hosting where data related to your WordPress are stored. Each time, WordPress goes to Database tables to find and retrieve requested information by your visitors.
Over time, your database might have stored a lot of temporary information and even tables that are no longer needed.
The easiest way of cleaning the database is by using the WP-Sweep WordPress plugin. It’s a free plugin, and you can clean up unused tags, trashed posts, revisions, auto drafts, and more.
4. Use Streaming Platforms for Videos & Audios
Hosting videos and audios directly on your WordPress takes a lot of your server bandwidth and causes lower website speed.
The simple fix is to use a streaming service such as YouTube or Vimeo for uploading videos and audios and embed them on your WordPress website.
We highly recommend using Vimeo as YouTube embed video has their branding as well shows related videos at the end from other people (maybe from your competitors as well) which may cause a conversion drop.
5. Use Industry Best WordPress Plugins
Make sure you’re using trusted and industry best plugins on your WordPress website as it is a fact that many plugins are not coded well, and not optimised for performance.
Also it is important to remove unused plugins and to reduce number of plugins used on your WordPress website. There may be a single plugin that may can replace two or three different plugins on your website.