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INTRODUCTION

Have you ever had that one moment where you are staring at your Phone, Waiting for the webpage to load?

You’ve got full signal, but the website just won’t load

What do you do next?

You exit or click the back button, isn’t that Right?

Now here is how it works,

Retain user Attention

0-1000ms = Task Focus

1 Secconds+ =Context Switch

10 Seconds+ = They’ll leave your site

Guideline to determine your site

Below 1 second = perfect
1-3 seconds = above average
3-7 seconds = average
7+ seconds = very poor

Bounce Rate determined by Load Speed

These days most of the people coming to your website are gonna be from Mobile devices

Here is a live Proof data from Statcounter and mobile searches is clearly dominating it, followed by Desktop and then Tablet

The reason why you want to load your website fast especially the mobile version is that the slower it loads, the more you are gonna lose on customers and revenue

Amazon did a study and they found out that every second they delay their website loads, they lose 1% of their revenue

Recently Google has announced that starting in July 2018, it will release an update that will prioritize mobile site load time in its ranking algorithm.

That means Google will finally use mobile page speed as a ranking factor in their mobile search results.

So, now everything points to “the faster, the better”.

Now that we know that your site load time is very crucial

How To Increase Your Website Speed

1) Google AMP Framework

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source program from Google aimed at making a “better, faster mobile internet”.

What Amp does it that, it ensures your website loads extremely fast on mobile devices

If you are using WordPress, there is a lot of Plugins to make your website AMP Compatible

The Benefits of AMP

• Reduces Your website load time
• Boosts Your mobile ranking
  

AMP can really offer some powerful benefits — reduce load time, better user experience and hopefully more revenue

Related Post: How to Properly Setup Google AMP

2) Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

By having your media files hosted on a content delivery network is one of the best ways to speed up your site.

How CDN Reduce Your Website Speed?

CDN basically stores a cached version of your content in multiple geographical locations named PoPs thus, minimizing the distance between the visitors and your site’s server.

Again, When a website uses a CDN, a visitor requesting it will only load the core HTML from the origin server.

All the rest of the static content such as CSS, javascript, and images – are loaded from a separate server – the one which is optimized 

By doing this it reduces the load speed on your server because it is handling less processing.

Since CDNs have your duplicated content all over the world it is more likely that the visitor can load these files from a server that’s more closer to them.

Thus reducing your webpage load speed

Related Post: How to Set Up and Integrate a CDN

3) Use A Caching Plugin

Caching is a really complex technology but does one simple thing really well: it makes your website load really fast.

The role of caching in WordPress can never be underestimated when optimizing your website

What is Caching?

Caching is the process of creating a static version of your content, and serving that to the visitors

For example, when a user returns to a Website or a WebPage that they have recently accessed since the browser has stored the user’s activity, it will pull those files from the cache instead of the original server 

Here are some of the Best Caching Plugin:

• W3 Total Cache 
• WP Rocket
• WP Super Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• Comet Cache
• Cache Enabler
• Hyper Cache

4) Use A Good Theme 

Your theme choice can be a factor in load speed as well.

So, in order to prevent lots of page speed issues in the first place, you should opt for a good theme/design.

Related Post: 35 Best Free WordPress Blog Themes designed by theme designers that have taken speed into account

5) Optimize Images For Speed

As they say “Images Speaks a thousand words and bring life to your content” and in turn help in boosting engagement.

But if your images aren’t optimized, it could do more worse than help

So, If you’re using WordPress, there are many plugins that will automatically compress your images use the smaller sized version on your website.

Here are some of my favorite tools:

• reSmush.it
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Compress JPEG & PNG images
• WP Smush
• ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Or You could also do the way 

Go to Compressor.io

After you have uploaded the image, it will then show you the information about how much the file was reduced

After you’ve downloaded the new image file, you can upload it to your site.

6) Server

Hosting with a professional configuration can be of big help in many ways as well as in your website load speed

Your web hosting company and the server it chooses to place your website on can have a major impact on the speed

If the web server is fast enough, the web page that you are trying to access 

If you are targetting a specific country or area, better choose a hosting in that area

The location of the server hosting your website has a direct effect on the loading speed of your website.

Because If the location of the server is closer to people, they will access it quicker.

Bluehost is my recommendation

Save 66% + Free Domain

(Click here )

Related Post: Bluehost | Unbiased Review

7) Minimize HTTP Requests

HTTP requests are how browsers ask to view your pages

Every time it sees a request for a new element (images, stylesheets, scripts) it sends another HTTP request to the server.

The more images, scripts, CSS, Flash, etc. that your page has the more requests will be made, thus load slower

Related Post: How to Minimize HTTP Requests to Increase Website Speed

8) Defer JavaScript Loading

Defer JavaScript tries to defer JavaScript execution until page load.

It prevents the file from loading until after other elements have loaded. 

If you are using WordPress, there is a plugin called WP Rocket

It will easily enable deferred JavaScript loading

Adding the attribute defer to the <script> tag should also do it. E.g.:

<script src="http://example.com/test.js" type="text/javascript" defer></script>

<script async src="siteScript.js" onload="myInit()"></script>

9) Clean Up Your Database

With WordPress sometimes your database can get very messy very quickly due to Deactivated plugins, saved drafts, post revisions, etc.

But there is a plugin called WP-Optimize that will routinely delete all of the stuff you don’t need that’s is cluttering up your database.

10) Enable Compression

Compressing your files is one of the easiest ways to increase your website speed

If you’re not sure if your site has Gzip enabled, go to checkgzipcompression.com to check

It’s Free, Just enter your site’s URL, and if you have Gzip enabled, you’ll see something like this:

If you don’t have Gzip enabled, install a plugin called W3 Total Cache

In W3 Total Cache settings, Check the box next to “Enable HTTP (gzip) compression.”

It’s that simple

Or you can do the other way by simply adding the following code into your .htaccess file:

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

11) Minify Your Codes

Your website contains a lot of files, including your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

You need this code to be as clean and fast as possible.

However, The problem is that this code was written to be read by humans.

Meaning It includes large extra white space, HTML comments, CDATA sections, etc

This type of elements is not needed in order to run the code.

By removing these elements will help in decreasing your page size, speed load time and reduce network latency 

A great way to help speed up your code is to minify it.

If you are using WordPress there is  a plugin called Autoptimize to help you with that

To do manually you can use simple online tools like Will Peavy minifier to minify your  HTML and any CSS or JS

12) Prioritize Above-The-Fold Content

Split your CSS style sheet and Put your slow-loading widgets which are mandatory below the fold.

Having your site above the fold (top of the page) load faster and allowing the rest follows on is a great way to improve the user experience

For example, your article is about 33 Best Free WordPress Themes. Normally, a user’s browser would need to download all of those images before displaying anything on the page.

But With lazy loading, it can load the content within view first, and then load all of those photos after the top part loads

If you are using WordPress, Download Lazy Load Plugin

You just need to install and activate it

The plugin will automatically detect when an image is visible for a user, and load it.

13) Fix All Broken Links

Broken links are bad for your website and you better to avoid them.

They are also a drain on your bandwidth

Go to Google Webmaster Tools to check and fix all the 404 errors 

You can also tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog SEO Spider to go in-depth and audit your 404 errors

14) Keep Up-To-Date

Update your site elements regularly and is also recommended for security reasons

Old code can also slow your site down too

Upgrade the elements of your blog as needed and it can also increase your website speed

15) Keep Your WordPress Site Updated

Update your WordPress frequently.

With Each update, WordPress may have new features, improve security and fix bugs.

Not updating may reduce your site load time and also make you vulnerable to security threats

16) Ad Network JS

The More ads you display on your website the more it will take time for your website to load.

By displaying Multiple ads it can earn you handsome bucks but at the cost of speed and time.

Serve minimum amount of ads as possible 

17) Pop-Ups

Pop-Ups can also reduce your website load speed

18) Uploading Videos Directly To WordPress

You can upload the downloaded videos but the recommended method is to copy and paste the video’s URL directly into your post

19) Social Buttons

By using social buttons, it can also add up to the page load speed time.

Before adding all the social media buttons, just choose the one best suited for your target audience

The most common being Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest

Try to minimize the social buttons, the fewer the faster the website performance.

20) Turn Off Pingbacks And Trackbacks

Trackbacks and pingbacks would increase the level of Spam you’ll see.

Many people will be pushing their websites by using your website to propel their own sites.

It will simply increase the number of requests that are made and clog up your database 

However, on the bright side, your website will get mentioned on other websites which are good for SEO and also a great way to increase your traffic when someone mentioned your website.

21)  Reduce The Number Of Plugins You Use On Your Site

As we have learned that plugins are crucial to improve your WordPress site. 

However, as they say, ” too many cooks spoil the broth”.

But too many installed plugins can also cause some troubles

Plugins are usually the biggest culprit that slows down your site

Check and if there are any plugins that you’re are no longer needed or essential, just delete them.

To check your site installed Plugins which are causing issues on your site. 

You need to install the Plugin Performance Profiler Plugin

There is an irony right there, isn’t it?

This plugin will create a profile of your WordPress site’s plugins’ performance by measuring their impact on your site’s load time.

22)  Monitor Your Speed 

Now you know that there are many factors that affect your site loading speed

So, you need to monitor regularly to keep a check on them, in that way you can fix them as soon as something goes wrong

There are many sites to monitor your site speed

Some of my favorite tools are GTmetrix and Pingdom Tools

For this Example, let use Pingdom

Enter your URL, Choose your location and click on Start Test

Below You will find a list of suggestions for improving your site’s performance

23) Monitor Mobile Page Speed

As we mentioned above, Google will start prioritizing mobile site load time in its ranking algorithm.

So, it’s important to pay attention to how well your site loads on mobile devices.

Go to Google Page Insights 

Enter your URLs and click on analyze

Similar to Pingdom it will also show you a list of recommendation to increase your site load speed

Next, there is also another tool from Google

Simply just go to Google’s Test My Site to check your page speed. 

Enter your Url and click Ok

CONCLUSION

If your site is slow, you’re sure to be left out

With mobile users expected to take over desktop usage in a short time, it’s very crucial to fix your site speed.

Internet users are more and more less tolerant to slow web pages than they’ve ever been

Choose some from the above methods and implement it

Even if it’s a small step, it can help to reduce load time 

That’s it! 

I hope this helped you even a little bit to learn some tips to speed up your WordPress site and boost performance.

Go to Pingdom RIGHT NOW and Comment down below your site score? If you like this article Share it with your Friends who are struggling to increase their website speed!