Are you finding ways to speed up your WordPress Website?
You don’t have to worry because you are in the right place. In this article, we will share a list of ways through which you can boost up your WordPress website.
It is important to improve your website’s speed to get noticed by Google. Your page’s speed depends on various factors. You might need themes, plugins, and other tools to make your website look good. However, using these tools can slow down your page’s speed.
Read: 41 Content Marketing Tips & Techniques To Grow Your Business
So, what should you do about it? Well, there are plenty of ways to resolve this issue. With proper management of your themes, plugins, images, and other content on your website, you can increase your page’s performance.
How Your Website Speed Influences Visibility?
Hey there! Let’s talk about website speed. It’s super important for keeping visitors happy and coming back for more. Slow sites? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
You won’t be able to rank on the first page of Google if your site speed isn’t good. And, indeed, users won’t even bother to click on the second page for their results. You might lose a lot of visitors, traffic, and money when your webpage is slower.
Here’s the deal: faster sites mean better user experience and higher rankings on search engines. But how to check whether it holds the appropriate speed or not?
If you have a business site, slow speed impacts you in the following ways-
- 11% loss in page views
- 18% decrease in customer satisfaction.
- 7% fewer conversions
- 87% shipping cart abandonment
- 43% of shoppers going directly to competitors
Today, almost all people use smartphones to search for the information they need. If your page doesn’t load properly, they will ultimately discard the page and move on to the next one. This will affect your website’s overall growth.
According to the SEO experts, the top ranking sites have these things in common:
- Those websites have fast page speeds.
- Those websites are well-optimized and designed for speed.
- Those websites had very low bounce rates in comparison to second or third-page results. Fast websites and low bounce rates are interrelated with each other. When – page load time goes up, it increases the chance of someone bouncing from your site.
What Slows Down Your WordPress Website?
There a lot of reasons that are responsible for slowing down your website’s Speed:
- Bulky images and poorly-designed coding are some of the most common causes of slow pages. You need to optimize your images to boost up your site’s speed.
- Page size and weight are measured by page weight bytes. Your page size or weight should be under 500KB. Otherwise, you have to face the speed issue.
- Your speed can be affected if your web hosting server is not properly configured.
- A poorly coded plugin can slow down your WordPress website.
- External scripts like ads, font loaders, etc can also affect your website performance and speed.
What is a good page loading time?
Google recommended page load time is under two seconds or three seconds. According to Google’s latest report, most websites in every industry are lacking in achieving a good page load speed.
If we talk about the average load time for most sites in the tech industry, it is over eight seconds to 11 seconds.
However, you have to achieve the target of three seconds to rank on Google’s first page. Improving your website’s load speed can help you double your traffic and revenue.
How Can You Check Your WordPress Website Speed?
You might be thinking that your website is working perfectly on your computer. But it doesn’t mean that your site’s speed is normal. Because when you visit your website often, your website gets stored in the cache and Chrome loads it instantly.
Due to this, you would not be able to know about your site’s actual speed. Users from different locations will experience different speeds. So, you should always check your website’s speed with the help of a tool called the WordPress speed test.
It is a free online tool.
WordPress Site Types- Static or Dynamic
All WordPress sites are not the same. It is classified into two categories, static and dynamic.
Let’s discuss the differences between a static website or a dynamic website.
Static Sites- Static sites include blogs, small business sites, lower volume news sites, personal photography, etc. The data on these WordPress sites is not changing frequently and it makes them static. This is necessary because almost all the requests are served directly from the cache on the server at lightning-fast speeds.
Dynamic Sites- Dynamic sites include sites like community, membership, forums (bbPress or BuddyPress), eCommerce (WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads), and learning management systems (LMS). Dynamic means that the data on these WordPress sites are changing frequently. This means that the server transactions are taking place every few minutes or even seconds.
There are a large number of visitors and sessions on these dynamic sites. They visit the website to engage with something or someone. On the contrary, static sites have only a few visitors. They might stay for five or 10 minutes until they find what they are searching for.
Let’s now move on to our main discussion. Here, we are going to share 34 ways to boost up your website.
How To Speed Up Your Website In 2024?
1. Minimize HTTP requests– A web page’s load time depends on the different parts of the page such as images, stylesheets, and scripts. For these parts to load, an HTTP request is made. So, there would be more HTTP requests if there are many on-page components that will make your webpage slower.
You should first check how many HTTP requests your website makes. You can use the browser’s developer tools to find out how many requests are there if you use Google Chrome. You can follow these steps:
- Select the page you want to analyze.
- Click “inspect” and then the “Network tab”.
- If you are unable to find the network tab, you can expand the Developer tools sidebar accordingly.
- This process shows you three columns, the “Name” column, the “Size” column, and the “Time” column. The “Name” column includes all the files on the page. The “Size” column finds out the size of each file. And the “Time” column shows the loading time of the page.
- The better left column shows the number of requests the site makes.
With this information, you can reduce the number of requests which are not necessary. This will improve your website’s performance.
2. Remove unnecessary plugins and add ons– If you use blogging CMSs like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, you should check out for unnecessary plugins and add-ons. Because they can impact your website’s loading speed.
Plugins might help in enhancing your website’s functionality but you should be careful while using them. 
It has been proved that the plugins contribute to 86% of website load time. The quality of plugins matters more than the quantity of them.
If your website has 50 plugins and they are crappy, it won’t be able to load faster. But if your website has only 10 quality plugins, your website’s load speed will be much better.
So, it is important to reduce unnecessary plugins to improve your website’s performance.
3. Optimize and Reduce Image Size– You should always consider optimizing the images on your website. Images usually take much longer to load and use a lot of server resources especially if they are not optimized.
You need to reduce the size of the images and optimize them to achieve fast loading speed. So, how can you do it? 
There are various tools you can use, including, EWWW Image Optimizer( for WordPress users), Kraken (for everyone: Drupal and Joomla, WP Smush( for WordPress users).
EWWW Image Optimizer:
- This is the most popular tool for optimizing and reducing image size. It has been added to over 70,000 WordPress installations.
- It has features like automatic resizing, CDN support, WPML compatibility, and bulk image compression.
- This tool comes with both free and premium versions.
4. Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)– A CDN (Content Delivery Network) can help you in many ways. When you use other network servers, it reduces the load time for the users. So, if there are a large number of visitors, they all might face slow downloading speed. 
Similarly, those users who live far away from your server will also experience higher load times.
You can resolve these problems with Content Delivery Network. You can cache your site on a global network of servers. When a user’s browser requests files from your site, that request will then routed to the closest server by using a CDN.
A CDN can also help to improve those webpages that have a lot of images and other components. MaxCDN and Cloudflare MaxCDN are the two best options for CND services.
If you wish to have more features along with CDN services then you can choose Cloudflare. Security and optimization features are also offered by Cloudflare.
Now, let’s discuss how to set up a CDN using MaxCDN and Cloudflare.
To set up MaxCDN, you’ll first need to create a “pull zone”. Go to “Zones” in the admin panel and click “Create Pull Zone”. Then enter your original server URL, a name, and a label for your pull zone.
After creating a zone, you will get a URL for setting up a CDN. Copy that link. Then, you need to create a “content zone” with the help of the “manage” button. Click on “Settings” and enter different subdomains into the “Custom Domains” fields.
You can add and update seven domains in that field. Add your new CDN through your hosting provider’s DNS editor. You can find it under the “Domains” menu.
The last step is to enter the URL provided by MaxCDN. Set the type to “CNAME” and the custom domains you created. Repeat this process for all your subdomains.
And that’s all you need to do.
If you want to set up a CDN using Cloudflare, then you need to follow these steps. First, create an account by clicking the “Sign Up” option. Enter your domain and click “Begin Scan”. This will find out all your DNS records as well as subdomains. Then, you can simply figure out which ones you want to activate.
Select one plan to proceed. Click “Process and continue”. Then, you’ll need to update nameservers for your domain. You can discover your nameserver records by logging into your registrar.
Next, you will need to switch your preferences to “Use Custom Nameserver”. Copy and paste the nameserver provided by Cloudflare. After saving it, check whether you have installed your CDN correctly.
You’ll find an “Active” status code in the “Overview” tab. In the last step, you will need to verify that your SSL records are safe. Click the “Crypto” tab to check that they are in place. And you’re done.
5. Monitor your speed overtime– You should monitor your speed over time so that you can improve your website’s performance accordingly.
Your website’s speed can change from time to time as it depends on various factors. By checking the speed regularly, you can resolve the issues early on. Thus, it’s essential to keep a track of your website’s loading speed.
6. Install Google PageSpeed On Your Server– Google PageSpeed is an open-source module that helps to optimize your website speed. It also helps to make modifications to your server and files.
You can install it on your own if you’re tech-savvy or you can ask your developers to install it.
7. Reduce Redirects– Redirects are useful to remove issues with broken links. But they can also be responsible for slowing down your page’s speed because having too many redirects would create additional HTTP requests.
They should be removed by site owners to avoid problems regarding the speed of your website.
You can use Screaming Fog to eliminate redirects on your website. You can also run a site scan to find out the number of redirects on your site. After that, you can identify those unnecessary redirects, redirect chains and remove them.
8. Defer Javascript Loading– This is another way to improve your page’s loading speed. When you defer Javascript files, the rest of your content would load without any delay. 
You can easily enable deferred Javascript loading with the help of the WP Rocket plugin if you have a WordPress site.
On the other hand, if you have an HTML site, you need to place a call to an external Javascript file before the tag.
9. Enable browser Caching– When you visit a website, the parts of the webpage get stored in a cache. This allows the page to load faster when you visit it the next time. Because your browser doesn’t need to send another HTTP request again.
You can increase your website’s speed in WordPress by using the W3 Total Cache plugin. You first need to install it. Then navigate to “page cache” under “General Settings”. Go to the option “Enable” and you are done.
Many users have experienced 10x improvements in Google PageSpeed results after using the W3 Total Cache plugin. You will also see improvements in your website’s load speed in a short period.
But what should you do if you have a static HTML site?
In this case, you can enable caching in your .htaaccess file. Here, you can also set up what to cache and how long you want to store it. Static resources should have a cache lifetime of at least a week. Other resources like ads or widgets should have a cache lifetime of at least one day.
And for cacheable sources like JavaScript, CSS files, image files, media files, and PDFs, you should set a minimum time of one week or one year.
10. Update Your WordPress Site Regularly– You should regularly update your WordPress site as you will get new features and fix bugs and security issues. If you want to improve your website’s growth and performance, your plugins, themes should be updated to the latest versions.
Without updating the WordPress site regularly, you won’t be able to improve your website’s loading speed.
11. Lazy load your Images– You will benefit a lot from lazy loading. The lazy loading helps the images to load fast as they come to the screen. You can add lazy loading in the following ways:
- First, you need to install Optimole. It automatically adds lazy loading to your website.
- If you are using WP Rocket, you can change the lazyload settings. Click on the option “Enable For Images”. That’s all you need to do.
- You can also use a plugin called a3 Lazy Load. Install it and set up your lazy load for your website. It is a useful tool as it offers a lot of configuration options.
Lazy Loading is one of the most important ways to increase your website’s performance.
12. Use Excerpts on Homepage and Archives– WordPress usually provides full content of your article on the homepage and archives. It will make your homepage, categories, tags, and other archive pages load slower than usual. Your page views and visitors will also decrease due to this. 
But there’s a solution to this issue. You should set your site to display excerpts rather than showing the full content. For this, you need to navigate to “Settings” then select “For each article in a feed, show- Summary”.
13. Use a Theme Optimized For Speed– Many WordPress owners think that choosing a fast theme will automatically speed up your website.
The themes only load one CSS file, minified Javascript file, Google fonts request, and the Font Awesome icon font. It is important to know that all themes are not optimized. So, you should always look for a theme that doesn’t affect your website’s performance. 
Some impressive-looking themes with a lot of features like complex layouts, flashy animations, and others might hamper your page’s load speed. You should always add those features in a simple theme.
You can find well-coded and optimized themes on WordPress theme shops such as StudioPress, Themify, CSSIgniter.
14. Avoid Uploading Audio/ Video Files Directly to WordPress– Uploading Audio and video files directly to your site might slow down the loading speed. You might have to pay overage fees to your web hosting company for directly uploading audio and video files.
Your backup sizes would also increase because of them. It would become impossible for you to restore WordPress from backup.
To avoid these problems, you can consider using an audio and video hosting service such as YouTube, DailyMotion, SoundCloud, Vimeo, etc.
You can also copy and paste your video’s URL directly to your website. This will not impact your website’s loading speed.
15. Always Use Faster Plugins– Your website’s load speed can be increased if there are poorly coded plugins. You should always use faster plugins to improve user experience and website loading speed and performance. We are going to tell you some of the most effective plugins to use for your website. You can choose from these WordPress plugin categories:
- Soliloquy- Soliloquy is the best slider plugin for adding sliders to your WordPress site. Its performance is great and it offers a lot of features.
- WPForms- It is one of the best options to find plugins optimized to improve performance.
- Shared Counts-Shared counts is the fastest Growing plugin today. It helps in properly loading all the additional scripts.
- Envira Gallery- It is a great photo gallery plugin for WordPress. Other photo gallery plugins might slow down WordPress.
You should run speed tests before and after installing a plugin to analyze its impact on the website’s performance.
16. Divide Long Posts Into Multiple Pages– People indeed prefer reading long and in-depth posts. But a lot of images on your page might slow down the loading speed of your website.
You can split your posts into different pages to resolve this issue.
How can you do it? If you are using WordPress, you just have to add the <!–next page–> tag in your article where you want to split it into the next page.
You can do this as many times as you want to split your post into pages.
17. Minimize Database Calls-When there are so many poorly coded themes, they might make unnecessary database calls. These unwanted requests to the database will result in slowing down the server.
So, it is essential to reduce database calls to improve your website performance and speed. You can ask your developer to replace these database calls with your particular information.
18. Prevent Hotlinking and Leaching of your Content– Your content might get stolen if you have a WordPress site. This happens when other websites serve the images on your website directly from their URLs but do not upload them to their servers. As a result, you won’t get any traffic on your website. 
To disable hotlinking and leaching of your content, you can add a code to your .htaccess file from your website.
19. Optimize WordPress Database– Optimizing WordPress Database is necessary to improve website performance. If you are using WordPress for a long time, your database has already stored a lot of unnecessary information.
You can get rid of that data with the help of the WP-Sweep Plugin. It helps you to clean your WordPress database by eliminating trashed posts, unused tags, revisions, and other useless things. Your database’s structure would also get optimized by using the WP-Sweep plugin.
20. Use DNS Level Website Firewall– You should use a DNS level website firewall to block cyberattacks, hacking attempts, and malware. But some firewall plugins are not able to do this. They run on your website and they might allow attackers to reach your server before they get blocked.
So, using DNS firewall plugins such as Sucuri or Cloudflare will be beneficial for you. These plugins can easily block unwanted requests before they reach your website.
21. Use Latest PHP Version– This is another important thing you should consider to speed up your WordPress Website. The PHP programming language is used by WordPress. This language is installed and runs on your hosting server.
You need to make sure that you are not using the older version of PHP as it will impact your performance. You can check the PHP version by installing and activating the Version Info plugin. 
The plugin will show which version you are using in the footer area of your WordPress admin dashboard.
If you’re using an older version, you can ask your hosting provider to get the latest version.
22. Control Post Revision– Post revision is a significant feature in WordPress. When you change the content, a new copy gets saved in the database of the post revision. This increases the database size that can cause many problems.
You can control post revision by limiting the number of revisions, disabling them, or increasing autosave intervals.
23. Install a WordPress caching plugin– WordPress always runs a process to find the information, put it all together, and then display it to the visitor of your website. However, sometimes this process affects the speed of your WordPress website.
To resolve this problem, you can install a WordPress caching plugin.
Some of the best WordPress plugins include WP Rocket(premium) and WP Super Cache(free) plugin.
There are also WordPress hosting companies like Bluehost and SiteGround which provide caching solutions.
SiteGround SuperCacher
If you’re using SiteGround, you need to login to hosting cPanel. Then enable SuperCache under ‘Site Improvement tools’. The next step is to install and activate the SG optimizer plugin in WordPress. 
Bluehost Caching
On the other hand, if you’re using Bluehost Caching, change the performance settings. Go to ‘My sites’ and then ‘performance’ to turn on caching.
You don’t need a caching plugin if you’re using a managed WordPress hosting provider.
24. Check If the Website and the Database are in the Same Data Center– Your WordPress site and the database should be located in the same data center. This will create fetching posts and smoothly work with the database. As a result, it will enhance your website’s performance.
You should ask your hosting providers to find out the location of your server. You can also show your location during the signup process.
25. Host Google Analytics Locally– Google Analytics is an important tool to analyze your website’s performance. However, it can slow down your website when you have to load the files from an external server. You can load the files a bit faster by hosting Google Analytics.
How can you do it?
You just have to go to the Add-Ons menu. There you will see an option to enable Google Analytics hosting. Simply click on “Add-on status” to enable the hosting. That’s it!
26. Only load your Language’s Character Set– When you load a font in different weights, 
it creates multiple files on the website. And it might slow down your website’s speed and performance.
Similarly, the file size increases when there are more characters in the font. So, you should make sure to load only the characters that you need. And always load Google Fonts in the language that you use. If you only use the English language, you only need the Latin character set instead of the Latin Extended character set.
27. Split Comments into Pages– It’s a great indicator if you are getting a lot of comments on your page. But loading those comments might slow down your website’s performance. 
You can split your comments into pages by simply changing the settings. Go to Settings >> Discussion and check the “Break comments into pages” option. Click on the option to activate.
28. Remove Query Strings– Removing query strings from static resources is necessary because they can prevent URLs from being cached.
But with WP Rocket, you don’t need to worry about it.
You just have to activate the option “Remove query strings from static resources” under the “File Optimization” category in WP Rocket.
29. Slow Down the Heartbeat API– The Heartbeat API helps to keep certain features running in your browser. When you work on WordPress, it autosaves your post so that you can continue from there.
The API might slow you down a bit while you’re working on a post or using other features in your admin.
You can reduce the heartbeat API by changing the settings in the WP Rocket Plugin.
30. Turn Off WordPress Emoji Support– WordPress added emoji support in the 4.2 version. It loads a small Javascript file to make sure that emojis work on your device. However, it is not useful as it seems. Why? Because every device has an emoji font installed. 
So, it is better to remove emoji support to improve the site’s performance and loading speed. To remove emoji support, you need to go to settings in the WP Rocket. Next, click on the option “Media”. There you will find an option “Disable Emoji”, activate it and you’re done.
31. Disable WordPress embeds– WordPress automatically creates an embed box every time you paste a link from any site into your post. 
This embed feature slows down your website’s loading speed. Because WordPress loads an extra Javascript file that increases your page weight.
You can disable this feature in the WP Rocket settings.
32. GZIP Compression– GZIP Compression is a software application that helps in data compression. It analyzes your code and finds identical or similar strings. Then replaces them with a shortened reference.
It is a great software for reducing the page size and boosting your website speed. So, do consider checking it out.
33. Optimize Background Processes– Optimizing background processes is significant to increase your website’s performance and speed. These processes are scheduled tasks that run in the background of your WordPress site.
Some examples of background processes are:
- WordPress Backup plugin tasks.
- WordPress cron jobs to check for updates.
- WordPress cron jobs to publish scheduled posts.
- Search engines and other crawlers trying to fetch content.
Backup plugin tasks and excessive crawling can have a huge impact on your website’s loading speed than tasks like cron jobs for scheduled posts and updates.
You should make sure that your WordPress backup plugin only runs during low traffic time on your website. You should also adjust the frequency of backups and data that needs to be backed up.
To get more frequent real-time backups, you can use the SaaS solution. You also need to keep an eye on your crawl reports as they can cause your website to slow down.
34. Fix HTTPS/SSL Errors without Plugin– Switching your site to HTTPS/SSL might create some content errors. You can fix this problem by installing the Simple SSL plugin.
However, these plugins catch URLs first and then convert them to HTTPS. This might reduce your website’s loading speed a little bit.
35. Minify Code- Minifying code involves the process of removing redundant characters such as white spaces, line breaks, and comments from CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. These unnecessary elements contribute to larger file sizes, leading to slower loading times for web pages.
By minifying the code, the file size is reduced, resulting in quicker downloads and improved website performance. Several tools and plugins are available to automate the minification process, making it an easily achievable optimization step for WordPress websites.
36. Choose a Fast-Hosting Provider- The choice of hosting provider significantly impacts the speed and performance of a WordPress website.
It is essential to select a hosting provider that specializes in WordPress hosting and offers optimized servers tailored to meet the specific requirements of WordPress websites. These optimized servers are configured to handle the unique demands of WordPress, ensuring faster loading speeds, reliable uptime, and efficient performance.
By partnering with a fast hosting provider, website owners can enhance the user experience, improve search engine rankings, and achieve their business objectives more effectively.
37. Utilize Serverless Architecture: Traditional web servers can be costly to maintain and may struggle to handle sudden spikes in traffic. Serverless architecture offers a modern and cost-effective alternative by removing the need for dedicated servers altogether.
Platforms like AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions allow your WordPress site to dynamically scale resources based on demand. This means your site can automatically allocate more resources during peak traffic periods, ensuring optimal performance without breaking the bank.
38. Implement Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a cutting-edge approach to web development that combines the best features of websites and mobile apps. PWAs offer users a seamless and immersive experience, with features like offline access, push notifications, and lightning-fast loading speeds.
By implementing a PWA for your WordPress site, you can enhance user engagement and accessibility across devices. Users will enjoy a smooth and responsive browsing experience, leading to increased satisfaction and retention rates.
39. Opt for Headless WordPress: Headless WordPress is a revolutionary approach that decouples the back-end content management system (CMS) from the front-end presentation layer. This separation allows for greater flexibility and performance optimization, as you can use lightweight front-end frameworks like React or Vue.js to build fast and responsive user interfaces.
With Headless WordPress, you have full control over the design and functionality of your site, resulting in improved loading times and overall user experience.
40. Utilize WebP Image Format: WebP, a cutting-edge image format pioneered by Google, revolutionizes image optimization on the web.
Unlike conventional formats like JPEG and PNG, WebP boasts superior compression capabilities, resulting in smaller file sizes without compromising image quality. By harnessing the power of WebP, website owners can significantly enhance loading times and user experience.
Converting your website’s images to the WebP format and serving them to compatible browsers is a straightforward process that yields substantial benefits. Not only does it reduce image file sizes, but it also accelerates page loading speeds, contributing to faster website performance.
The adoption of WebP is further facilitated by the availability of WordPress optimization plugins that seamlessly integrate WebP conversion functionality.
By leveraging WebP image format, website owners can optimize their sites for speed and efficiency, providing visitors with a smoother and more enjoyable browsing experience. As a result, users are more likely to engage with the content and stay on the site longer, ultimately leading to increased traffic and improved conversions.
Conclusion: Top Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Website
We hope this article was informative and helped you in learning about different ways to improve your WordPress website’s speed.
Some of these techniques are technical and you might need a developer for them. But you should always try them out as they are quite effective in boosting up your WordPress website’s speed and performance. You will be astonished to see the results. You can always come here and go through the list again to find ways to reoptimize your website.
Also, make sure to check your website’s speed before and after trying out these techniques. In this way, you will find out those issues that are responsible for slowing down your WordPress website’s performance.