Wondering how to speed up your WordPress website? Have you ever asked yourself “why is my website slow”? It could be that a few simple tweaks could help to improve your site speed.
Why it’s important to speed up your WordPress website
The main reason to speed up your website is that otherwise, visitors will hit the back button. The search engines also penalise you and you won’t rank well in searches if your website is too slow.
In this blog post, I’m going to share a few easy tips that you could put in place yourself to help speed up a site that’s slow to load. No coding required (phew)!
1. Check your media library
Size matters! Is your media library full to the brim like an overstuffed suitcase? Bursting at the seams with images and files?
Like packing a suitcase it can be a good idea to review your media library content. Do you need all those images and files?
When you pack a suitcase, you can usually fit more in if you take the time to fold your clothes. The same principle applies to your website’s media library.
Images and videos are often very large files. Did you know that there are free tools that you can use to significantly reduce their file size?
Ideally, you’d take the time to compress your images or pdfs before uploading them. This is also known as optimising your images.
How to compress an image
To compress an image, there are a couple of options available to you. You can compress it before uploading it by using a free tool called tiny png.
Don’t worry, if you have existing images on your website that you haven’t compressed, all is not lost. You can use a free version of a plugin called Smush to reduce the file size, even after they’ve been uploaded.
How to compress a pdf
If you have PDFs uploaded to your media library, you might be interested in finding out what you can do to reduce the file size.
Check out this post on how to compress pdfs before uploading them to your media library.
2. Embed videos on your website
Never upload videos directly to your website. When you do this it slows down the loading time for your WordPress website.
Instead, host your videos on an external platform. Upload them to a platform such as YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Adilo, Loom, or ScreenPal Copy the embed code or insert a link to the video (you can add a button if you like).
3. Check your plugins and themes
You can speed up your WordPress website by deleting any unused plugins. Keep your current theme and one extra theme as a backup. Delete any other unused themes.
4. Don’t choose your web host based on price
When choosing a web host, you might think it’s best to go with the cheapest provider. But if you skimp on hosting costs, it might actually be costing you more money in the long run.
A cheap host may provide shared hosting and that can impact on your site speed.
It might be worth researching the type of hosting you currently have and finding out if switching hosts could improve your site loading time.
I hope you found this post helpful. If you tried out any of these tips, I’d love to hear from you.
Remember that by making some simple tweaks, you can improve your site speed and make a better impression with visitors to your website.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in reading my other post: 6 Must-have Tech Tools For Online Business to help you to get your online business up and running.
