This is 2022 and Page Speed is one of the most important things in Blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are many ways to make your blog load faster.
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The good news is that you can implement most of these fifteen ways to make your blog faster on your own. As you Optimize your blog, ensure to always test your Pagespeed speed using these tools.
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1. Good Hosting Service
Hosting is very important in page speed and for every blog. Buy a good hosting plan or upgrade to a faster one if you are facing challenges with the current hosting. You may want to check out the list of best Shared, VPS, WordPress, Cloud and Dedicated hosting services in the world right here.
My Best Hosting Service as at the time of updating this post is A2hosting.
2. Image Optimization
The bigger your images, the bigger the size of your blog pages and the slower your blog becomes. Resize and Compress Your Images Before Uploading. You can do this Manually or Optimize your Images using a good WordPress Image Optimization Plugin.
3. Caching And Minify
Caching is recommended for every blog. For WordPress blogs, there are so many good caching and minify plugins you can use. Utilise caching and minify to make your blog load faster.
Combine, Inline and Defer, Reduced the Size of your HTML, CSS AND JavaScript code (Minify) using either Autoptimize, Wp Super Cache, Wp Fastest Cache, Cache Enabler or W3 Total Cache. Ensure to use one Caching and Minify plugin at a time to avoid issues.
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4. Well Coded Theme
There are so many WordPress themes. In fact, there are millions of free themes out there. However, most of them are not well coded. Ensure to get a very good WordPress theme. You can search for a list of fast themes on Google.
I love and Recommend Genesis Framework and RedWaves Themes but they are not free. There are many nice free themes too. Examples of good free themes are Hueman, Weaver Xtreme and Point Theme. You can search Google, Yahoo or Bing for more.
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5. Avoid Too Many Plugins
Plugins enhance the functionality of every WordPress blog. However, they have side effects. Each plugin you install can impact your page speed. A question comes to mind, how many WordPress plugins should I Install? There is no specific number of plugins to install. The rule is that you should use only the plugins you need.
6. Update Your PHP Version
Newer PHP Versions are usually faster than older versions. Login to your WordPress, go to tools and click Site Health to view your PHP version. You should be using PHP 7.3 or above. Updating PHP version can be done in Cpanel. If you can’t do it yourself, then contact your hosting support to help you out.
7. Limit Posts Per Page
Showing too many posts on your pages can slow down your blog. Go to reading under settings in your WordPress admin to reduce the number of posts that appear in your home and other pages.
8. Limit Related Posts
Related posts after content is a very good idea. However, it should not be too much. Displaying more 10 related posts and each of them with excerpts and featured images can add to your page load time.
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9. Reduce Google Adsense Ads Unit
Google Adsense drastically reduces page load time and blog performance. This is because AdSense codes can not be cached. All AdSense codes make requests to Google server every time visitors open your pages.
The more your Google AdSense units, the slower your blog performance on speed testing tools like Gtmetrix, Pingdom, Webpagetest and Google Pagespeed insight.
10. Don’t Use too Many Images
Reduce the number of images you use per page. For example, if you have twenty images in a page or post and each image is around 500kB, the total size of images on that page will be around 10MB. You know how that affects your page load time right? So, Optimize Images…
11. Optimize Google Fonts And Analytics
Google fonts are good at one thing, slowing down your blog. You can combine them or remove them totally using Autoptimize Plugin, WP Rocket or any other plugin that does the job.
Google Analytics also reduces speed and performance. Optimize Google Analytics using Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS) Plugin.
12. Reduce Comments Per Page
Yoast SEO Plugin warns against pagination of comments but I am not a fan of that idea. If the number of comments on your posts ranges from one to fifty, then you don’t need to reduce the number of comments per page.
But in a case where you get above one thousand comments per page, then pagination is recommended. Imagine having two thousand comments including two thousand words article and images on one page?
13. Optimize Database
Once in a while, Install Plugins like Wp Sweep or Wp Optimize (use only one) to Optimize your WordPress Database. Be careful while optimizing so that you don’t delete unapproved comments when you have not moderated them. Database optimization involves removing revisions, transient options, trackbacks, trashed posts, trashed comments, etc.
14. Remove Unused Plugins And Themes
Don’t just uninstall the plugins you don’t need. Delete them totally. There is no need having more than five themes installed when you don’t need more than one at a time. Max of three themes are okay; Uninstall the other themes.
15. Use Cloudflare or CDN
Cloudflare has been helping lives for free. With a free Cloudflare plan, you can benefit from free SSL, Caching, Rocket Loader, Security and CDN features. If you don’t like Cloudflare, you can use MaxCDN. Quickly go through my article on Cloudflare Setup. Feel free to use other content delivery network aside cloudflare.
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Hope you found this speed optimization article helpful? Feel free to let me know how you feel by commenting below. Don’t fail to share this post with your blogger friends using the share buttons below.
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