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How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website

(And Why You Should)
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Let’s Speed It Up!

WordPress
Keeping your WordPress site’s load times speedy can be frustrating and, ironically, take up a lot of your time. 

But the faster your site loads, the more likely you are to keep users on the page and convert them.

Thankfully, there are some useful tricks and tools that can help you get things moving much faster. 

If you play your cards right, you’ll be amazed at how much of a difference optimizations to your site can make.

In this guide, we’ll explain what you need to know about WordPress page loading times — why they’re important,
what slows them down, and how you can make yours better.

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Table Of Contents
How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website (and Why You Should)

1 Why Is Loading Speed Important?

1. Improve SEO Rankings
2. Boost Landing Page Scores
3. Increase Conversion Rates

2 Why Is My WordPress Site So #@%!& Slow?

1. Non-Optimized Images
2. Content Delivery Networks
3. Server Response Time
4. WordPress Themes
5. Caching

3 4 Tools for Checking Page Speed

1. Google
2. JetRails
3. GTMetrix
4. Pingdom
Pro Testing Tip

4 3 Types of WordPress Plugins For Page Speed

1. Caching
2. Image Optimization
3. General Optimizers

5 4 Factors For Choosing The Right WordPress Optimization Plugin

1. Reviews
2. WordPress Versions
3. Active Installations
4. Conflicting Features

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Why is Loading
Speed Important?
Most websites — especially

eCommerce sites — only perform well

if they load quickly.

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Time Matters
Make It Count!

Seconds Matter Goodbye!!!

According to research by Additional Google research found

ThinkWithGoogle, every extra that 53% of mobile site visitors

second of load time increases the leave a page if it takes three

likelihood that you’ll lose your site seconds or more to load.

visitor:
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The Importance Of Loading Speed

Rising Up The Ranks

Improve SEO Rankings

Google and other search engines use a range of factors to determine
where your website will appear in organic search rankings. 

One of the most important elements in Google’s calculations is mobile

loading speed. Google even provides a tool to help website owners
test their site’s speed on mobile devices. (This is not an accident.)

Beyond a direct impact on your search ranking, slow speeds can also
hurt your site indirectly. 

For example, as we mentioned already, slow loading speeds can

contribute to a higher bounce rate, or more people leaving your site
without engaging. 
But when search engines see that users leave your site before they
interact with it, your rankings can fall even further.
Boost Landing Page Scores
If you’re running Google Ads that link to a landing page, the speed of that
page is taken into account when Google compares your ads with other
campaigns competing for the same keywords.
And if your landing page loading times are slow, it can lead to: 

• Ads not appearing as often

• Higher cost-per-click (CPC)

Increase Conversion Rates •

•
Dissatisfied customers 
Missed opportunities

(Granted, we don’t know everything about marketing, but these seem like
As mentioned prior, your conversion rates are dramatically impacted by the speed
of your site. Making adjustments can make a huge impact. bad outcomes. 😉 )

For example, research by Portent in 2019 found that website conversion rates
drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between
seconds 0-5).

And according to data from Kissmetrics, a one-second delay in page response

can reduce conversions by as much as 7%. Which, for an eCommerce site
making $100,000 day, could cost as much as $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

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Why Is My WordPress Site

So #$%!& Slow?
Slow loading times on WordPress sites usually
boil down to the same batch of issues, especially
for eCommerce. 

You’ll want to run speed tests to see how your

site is performing (more on that later), but the
problems you run into will most likely include
some combination of the following five factors...
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Reasons For Slow WordPress Sites

Here We Go…
Non-Optimized Images WordPress Themes
Your WordPress website doesn’t look like much without images. 
A poorly coded third-party WordPress theme can slow down even the
But if you don’t optimize your images before or during the upload best hosting solution and optimized site elements. 
process, your site’s size and loading times will expand faster than that girl
in Willy Wonka who turned into a blueberry. If you’re using a prebuilt WordPress theme for your commercial
website or eCommerce store, choose one from a trustworthy source
We’ll discuss a few different ways to resize and compress your website that doesn’t have more features than you plan to use. 
images later. But if you have lots of images on your website that are
bigger than 2MB, your WordPress site isn’t going to load very fast,
And if possible, enlist your preferred web developers to create a
especially on mobile devices.
theme that only includes what you need to maximize loading times.

Content Delivery Networks

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are an essential tool in the battle against slow- Caching
loading pages.
Each time a visitor accesses a page on your website, it takes time —
On top of all the issues listed in this section, the physical distance between a valuable, precious time — to render on the screen. 
website’s server and a user’s location can also make pages load more slowly.
Enabling caching allows assets on your website to be downloaded to
CDNs virtually shorten that distance by storing a cached version of your site temporary storage space, or “cache,” on a user’s hard drive. Storing
content in multiple geographical locations. This way, when a user clicks through those files locally speeds up subsequent page loads. 
to your WordPress website or landing page, the content is coming from the
closest possible cache, not a central location that might be on the other side of
In other words, caching your site “primes” pages so they can be
the world.
rendered before a visitor accesses them. 

Server Response Time It’s like having pre-cooked fast food ready and waiting for customers
Sometimes, like a boring Christmas party, the blame for a slow WordPress (but less gross).
site falls on the host. 

Less reliable web hosting services might not provide the data bandwidth or Slow page load times are not limited to these factors alone, but
processing power your site needs, which means it’ll be next to impossible to they’re among the most important.
fix things on your end.

Also, if you’re on a shared or virtual hosting plan, you’re using “common” Website owners and developers will inevitably encounter these
hosting space that could fluctuate during peak traffic times.  problems when they’re trying to speed up a WordPress site for
With all that in mind, if your tests show a slow server response, it might be better performance. 
time to upgrade to managed WordPress hosting. A managed solution
includes a server and CDNs devoted exclusively to your website, which will
If you can identify these issues and address them proactively,
create a faster and more secure (and probably more expensive) solution.
your website should see significant performance improvements.
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4 Tools for Checking

Page Speed
There are a few different page speed tests that can
help you analyze your website’s performance and
find areas to improve. 

It’s important to test page loading speeds regularly

to locate and head off any business-impacting
deviations.
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Page Speed Tools

Let’s Get Crankin’

Google GTMetrix
Google has several tools for checking loading speeds, as GTmetrix’s Website Speed Test is another free tool for
well as related diagnostics for technical issues like mobile- analyzing page speed. 
friendly design standards and other important factors.
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Like the others listed here, GTmetrix can see how your site’s
These include:  performing, compare it to similar sites, and identify
opportunities to improve and optimize your loading times.
Website Performance Measurements by Web.dev 
Test My Site by ThinkWithGoogle 
Google’s PageSpeed Insights

When in doubt, use all three to scan your website. Review

and address the issues that the tools discover whenever
possible.

JetRails Pingdom
JetRails is a fast and simple audit for eCommerce and The Pingdom Tools Website Speed Test analyzes your site
commercial websites. Their test measures the milliseconds it speed from a handful of global servers. This gives you a quick
takes for a web browser to receive its first byte of data from 2 4 overview of how quickly or slowly your site loads in different
your hosting server when a visitor attempts to visit your site.  parts of the world. 

This metric, known as Time To First Byte (TTFB), is a common Pingdom also reports on how different on-page and back-end
shorthand for page loading speed. TTFB often exposes elements, like fonts and redirects, fit into the overall makeup of
“Achilles heel” of page speed, as it will tell you if your hosting or your particular website.
your website practices are to blame for any load time issues.

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Pro Testing Tip:

This is a good time to mention that these tests can return false positives. That’s why it's important to try more
than one test to verify your results.

And we mentioned it at the top of this section, but it bears repeating: test your loading speeds at regular
intervals. You should also double-check page speeds after making changes or updating pages on your
website.

Page speeds can be impacted by a wide variety of factors and change over time. It’s essential to watch out for
any problems, as they could cost you money if they aren’t addressed.
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3 Types of WordPress
Plugins For Page Speed

The WordPress Content Management System (CMS)

offers thousands of pre-built plugins.

Given how popular WordPress is, many of these

plugins are used on a mass-adoption scale in
websites worldwide.

Image Optimization
New images should be properly compressed and optimized every time they’re added to your site.
Remember, most desktop screens aren’t any bigger than 1920px by 1080px, and mobile screens are
usually 700px across or less. Given those guidelines, there’s no reason to upload and publish pictures
larger than this. That also leaves more room for error as your team edits and adds to your site content.
Image file size is also crucial when you’re optimizing images.
You can reduce an image’s dots per inch (DPI), which lowers the overall image quality but is
imperceptible online. For example, print publications usually require images with 300 DPI, but the
standard for images online is just 72 DPI.
Image optimization plugins can also help automate the process to reduce the chance of human error.
Lots of popular WordPress image optimization plugins include features like automatic compression and
image resizing, including:
• Smush
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Optimus
• ShortPixel Image Optimizer
• Imagify
Depending on your needs — eCommerce products, branding collateral, etc. — you should be able to find
an image optimization plugin that meets the needs of your WordPress site.
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3 WordPress Plugins
Plug And Play!
General Optimizers
General or all-in-one speed optimization plugins usually include a range of
features designed to get your site loading faster. These include:
Minification
Shrinks HTML, JavaScript, and CSS fi le sizes by removing unnecessary
characters like spaces, line breaks, and comments, reducing the amount of
data necessary for transfer. You’ll need to upload a new “minifi ed” CSS or
stylesheet to your site to implement the new code.
GZipping
Caching
GZIP fi le compression tells your server to fi nd all repetitive strings text and
replace them with pointers to the fi rst instance of that string. Like
minifi cation, this greatly reduces the amount of text and data your website
As we’ve discussed, when a visitor accesses your website,
needs for loading. Unlike minifi cation, however, GZIP happens on the
various files need to be activated and rendered to display a server-side and doesn’t require extra work on your end.
given page in a browser window. 
Lazy Load
Lazy load works well for long pages or blogs with long comment threads.
Caching technology speeds up that process by storing pre-
This technique defers the loading of images and other on-page content
rendered copies of pages instead of re-rendering them for
until it becomes visible in the client's viewport or the page's ‘onload’ event
every request.
fires. With this add-on, your page will load primary elements faster and
reduce the lag of loading a large page.
WordPress caching plugins like WP Fastest Cache and W3
Total Cache take care of most of these issues automatically. Popular all-in-one plugins for WordPress include:
And while there are other cache plugin options to choose
Hummingbird
from, these two are used in more than one million active
PageSpeed Ninja
WordPress installations and have more than 2,000 five-star Autoptimize
reviews. WP-Optimize
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What To Remember About

WordPress Plugins
These tools are built to help optimize your WordPress web page elements through automated
processes and easy-to-enable features. Ideally, these plugins will save you lots of time and effort.
For instance, it can be time-consuming to manually minify your website coding without a plugin.*

*Note: If your web host uses Cloudflare, many of these tactics are available without additional
WordPress plugins.

Again, these are examples of popular and regularly updated WordPress plugins that can help you
improve your WordPress loading speeds. There are dozens of other plugins, however, that can
speed up a WordPress site. Some might meet your needs better than others.
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4 Factors For Choosing The Right

WordPress Optimization Plugin

Not all WordPress plugins are

created equal. (In fact, some aren’t
even created well.) 

If you’re on the hunt for a plugin

that matches your particular needs,
consider the following:
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Reviews Versions Active Installs Conflicts

When choosing WordPress plugins,
consider both the star rating and the
number of reviews.
A five-star rating doesn’t mean much
if there are only one or two total
reviews.
Just because a page speed optimization
plugin looks useful doesn’t mean that it’s
being maintained and kept up-to-date. 
Review how recently the plugin was
updated and what versions of
WordPress it’s compatible with.
If millions of WordPress websites are
using a plugin, it doesn’t automatically
mean that it’s the best thing out there.
However, it does increase the likelihood
that it’s been tested and improved
through real-world experience.
Too many plugins can lead to
conflicting features and functions
on your website, which can
cause loading errors and other
issues.
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What to Remember When You

Choose a Plugin
You’ll need to choose between one of two paths to avoid these problems. You can use single-purpose
optimization plugins for specific tasks, like minifying JavaScript or caching files. Or you can integrate an all-in-
one WordPress page speed plugin that solves your needs from one central hub.

That said, if we’ve learned anything today, it’s that less is more. If you already have external systems helping
you optimize images, cache files, or minify files, layering extra plugins onto your WordPress account might be
more of a hindrance than a help.
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Final Thoughts on Speeding Up Your

WordPress Site
If you're frustrated with your website, remember that site speed issues are common, and lots of businesses don’t even know they have these
problems. It's also important to remember that you have more power than you might think.

But the most important takeaway from this guide should be diligence.
 
(Or vigilance. Maybe “diligent vigilance”? Sorry, moving on...)

• Scan and test your WordPress website regularly. 

• Track your loading speeds and identify bottlenecks that slow down your site.

• Work with your team to develop best practices that keep your pages running as fast as possible.

In the end, maintaining a fast-loading WordPress website one part science, one part art. Keep it up and watch those engagement and
conversion rates climb! 

Good luck  👋😊👍