Wondering how to optimize your WordPress site to improve performance? Today, I would like to share with you some of the best optimization techniques to increase the conversions of your WordPress site.
Having a professional appearance is a must for every business!! And, that is only possible with an appealing website.
Remember that, Website is the reflection of your business. It represents who you are, what you deal in, which services you provide, which products you sell etc. So, there is a prominent requirement to have an online presence.
To make it happen, you need to have an outstanding platform. The web market has several platforms in its pocket for you. All have their different perspectives and meant for different object lines. Here, our advice is to choose WordPress, the most popular Content Management System. It is the best platform so far and is known to fit into all the business requirements.
Even if you have a start-up business or an established organization then WordPress is the best option to go with. Till now, this CMS has been used by millions of businesses to create a website. Surprisingly, WordPress powers almost 35% of all the websites with 60.8% of the market share.
There are many reasons that make WordPress the number 1 choice to build the websites. Some of them are defined below:
- This content management system is easy to manage; it has several customer-oriented features and functionalities.
- WordPress theme customization has become easy. The themes have drag and drop options and multifunctional plugins- when used smartly, can give outstanding results.
- WordPress is appropriate for every custom post, like, media, posts, media, and pages.
- It holds a large community. All the members are available whenever there is a need for any help related to the WordPress website.
- WordPress Content Management System costs less compared to any other CMS.
- The best part is- you do not need to be technical experts to understand WordPress. Understanding it is very easy; although, you can build a simple website on your own.
Best Ways to Optimize your WordPress Website
So, how you can optimize your WordPress site for performance? In this guide, we’ll explain 10 quick tips you can do to optimize your WordPress site and boost website performance and conversions.
01. Choose the Right Hosting Plan
When it comes to WordPress site optimization, choosing the right web hosting plan is essential. Reliable and high performing web hosting plays an important role in the success of your site. With so many choices, many simply choose the cheapest option.
However, almost everyone should see web hosting as an investment in your business. Because it’s the foundation of your website. If your home is built on a shaky foundation, it won’t last long.
There are several factors to consider when you are going to buy a web hosting plan.
Reliability and uptime –
This means how often your site is available online. Usually, web hosts promise you to provide 99.9% uptime. But, some web hosts like Cloudways, provides 100% uptime according to our experience. So, you need to stick with the one who provides best uptimes.
Bandwidth and storage –
Storage is the web space your hosting provider has allocated to your site. Also, the bandwidth is the number of page views that your hosting plan can handle. Most of common web hosting providers promise you unlimited storage and bandwidth.
Frankly speaking, there is no such thing as unlimited storage and bandwidth. As your site gets more visitors, your site’s performance starts to decline.
I’ve been using Cloudways since January 2016 for this blog. I happily recommend Cloudways to my readers because I am a proud customer.
Customer support –
24×7 expert customer support is essential. It’s something you don’t think about until it’s too late. For some reasons, your site may go offline and you can’t fix the issue. Every minute is money. In that case you should contact customer support for a quick fix. Your hosting provider must offer you the support you deserve.
We’ve shortlisted the best web hosting providers in terms of speed and performance test data. You can check it out before selecting one.
Our site, Woblogger has been hosted with Cloudways for more than 5 years. Check out our Cloudways review for more details. Also, you can find the 3 months free discount code to get started with Cloudways.
02. Website Speed
Your website speed impacts highly on conversions and traffic. The web page that takes more time to load is abandoned by the visitor and they prefer to stay on the website that has the best loading speed.
Generally, the mobile landing pages take 22 seconds to load; if taken longer (more than three seconds), then more than half of them prefer to move to some other website.
Google considers speed as a significant factor in website optimization; so, do not establish a poor customer experience. Below, we have mentioned the best ways to optimize the website speed. Optimize your WordPress site using these simple tips:
- Decrease file size by reducing them and link shared files to lessen requests.
- Reduce HTTP requests for the various sections of the web page, such as CSS, scripts, and images.
- Secure a suitable hosting solution.
- Perform JavaScript load after critical files.
- Consider JavaScript and CSS load concurrently.
- Lessen DNS lookup time
- Enhance server response time.
- Reduce image sizes.
- Support browser caching.
- Consider CDN.
- Do not include more redirects.
- Do not include more Plugins.
03. Use Appealing Images
Images speak for themselves. It reflects the intention behind the text included. You have to be smart enough when it is about using the images. They can either make or break the website. The inadequate images can ruin everything on the website and convert poor reflection of the brand.
You must know that the unique images are paid and cost you some bucks. But there are some sources that can provide you some notable images (inexpensive and free). Below we have mentioned some links from where you can get free image resources:
Flickr Creative Commons
It is the best link to get exceptional photos. From so many options, you can have an image that fulfills your requirement.
Free Images
It is also in the list of outstanding photography resources. This has a large diversity of royalty-free images.
Unsplash
One of the leading websites that have a plethora of free images that you can pick as per your requirement is Unsplash.
Other than that; there are Shutterstock, Adobe Images, Alamy, Getty Images, Picfair, Lovepik, Freepik, VectorStock etc. that you can leverage.
04. Update the Themes, Plugins and WordPress Software Regularly
You might get annoyed with the alerts regarding the regular updates of the software and the devices. Though, these messages can be easily avoided by the average user, but these are highly important.
And, when it is about WordPress, there is a dire need to update every bit of the website aspect. Ignoring them all to the extent cannot let you enjoy the new features. Especially the core updates, or the installation, or the new version of the WordPress plugins and themes have to get updated on time.
One of the most critical reasons for updating is security. All these assure that the website is secure for the new threats. Even though maintaining the regular updating process assures the fast speed of the website. The WordPress developers keep on improving the software to maintain optimization and faster speed.
05. Keep Logo as the Mirror Image of the Brand
The logo must reflect your brand, it is the value for your business. Keep your logo in such a manner that your business gets recognized with its icon. Hence, it has to be efficient enough.
The elegant and immeasurable logo implies the company with a class. The logo must symbolize the company and website professionalism. Hence, it is recommended to hire the professional WordPress designer to do the needful. You can hire them as per your budget required to get the perfect logo for your business website.
06. Quality Content
Now, there are many factors that you need to consider ranking the keywords- it encompasses the quality content, optimization, and getting the trusted links. With the evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Google core algorithm has gained more weightage.
The basic aim of Google is to know the context and serve results according to the searcher intent. All this converts the keyword selection and keyword research more essential than ever. The newbies must understand that there are some queries and the keywords that are improbable to rank.
The contextual relevance of keywords should regulate the search query. Here, our recommendation is to look after the updated ranking phrases and websites before spending resources and time in ranking the phrases. Until your landing page and website are equivalent according to the ranking, there are fewer chances of it befall.
07. Remove Extra Plugins and Themes
Removing extra plugins and themes is one of the best ways to optimize your WordPress site for several reasons. This will not only improve performance but also secure your site from hackers.
So far, you already understand how much it is important to optimize the website. In addition to that, it is also essential to choose the most active plugins and themes and always keep them updated. Above all, it is prevalent to remove the themes and plugins that are not at all required.
It is a part of website maintenance that you need to perform on a regular basis. If you acknowledge that the plugins and themes are not taking space when it is in an inactive state, then you are wrong. They are putting on the additional burden on the server.
Also, holding the undesirable content on the website creates confusion for the administrators. Deleting the plugins and themes do not take more time to complete the process. What you have to do is- remove the deactivated or non-essential plugins and themes.
Important: Some of the plugins accommodate extra data within, that cannot get removed even if you delete the plugin. These additional files have to be removed in the manual way.
Also, it is better to have a website backup before you start deleting the themes and plugins. It guarantees that if something goes wrong midway the process then you can head back to the backup version.
08. Include the Corporate Blog
We all know that WordPress was initially created as the blogging Content Management System. Adding a corporate blog can create a lot of attention to your website. Those regular customers or visitors will surely like this new addition to your WordPress website.
As per Search Engine Optimization, Blogging has the capacity to offer more visibility and ranking. Hence, get the best and recent topics that you think your readers will like on the floor.
If you, yourself is not a copywriter then you have to hire the one that might cost you some bucks. But, before hiring, look at their previous work, check out their reviews or rating, know about them from the previous organization they have worked with.
09. Consider Easy Fonts
The fonts have to be simple and easy to read. Otherwise, the visitors must be having a problem in reading and understanding the text written on the webpage. The Stylish and tacky italics is not a solution perpetually.
If in any case, you are doubtful about the fonts that you need to choose, then, accept only the Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, or Calibri. All these are the easiest fonts with more readability. Besides, you do not have to pay anything to use the fonts.
10. De-clutter the Website Layout
Less is always more- you must know this quote. This is the in-depth concept behind the professional website. While decluttering, you must neglect:
- Unnecessary pop-ups
- Over Advertising
- Autoplay music or video
- Excessive usage of social media button
Obviously, you want to have a professional website, not a live advertising campaign. Any of the abstraction distracts the viewer’s interest away from the website with the key content. Hence, there is no fun in cluttering the website with redundant data.
Wrapping Up: 10 Ways to Optimize Your WordPress Site
The website optimization is not more an option; it is significant. The search engine prefers to rank the website which is full-optimized. It is vital for the web site’s success and for you to stand out in the competitive world.
In this comprehensive guide, we have provided some of the best ways to optimize the WordPress website. After following all these website optimization methods, surely, your website will perform efficiently. Make your customers happy and improve your conversion rate.
We, hope, our article on how to optimize your WordPress site is beneficial for you. If you have some doubts related, then let us know in the comment section below. Suggestions are also welcome!!
Thanks for reading!!
Marie Thomas is an IT enthusiast with 7+ years of experience in developing WordPress websites. Currently, she is associated with WordSuccor – WordPress development firm in the USA. She loves to keep abreast of the latest technologies and tools in the corporate market and believes in sharing knowledge gained through experience. Connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
