6 WordPress Speed Optimization Tips To Improve Page Speed

In 2010, Google announced that page speed is part of its search ranking signals. WordPress speed optimisation became an important issue for webmasters on the world’s most popular content management system.

WordPress is a great content management platform. No doubt, but one drawback is the site speed.

As a side note, this article is aimed at do-it-yourself bloggers. Consider it a quick and easy fix for WordPress speed and performance optimization.

If you’re a blogging superhero, this article might not benefit you. In this case, consider the premium WordPress caching plugin WP Rocket.

WP Rocket is the most advanced all-in-one WordPress caching plugin. You can check out my review of it here.

Despite this, it doesn’t affect this page’s performance or optimization tips.

After optimization, I achieved a decent GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and IsltWP page speed score for the blog homepage.

Take a look at yourself.

Pingdom Testing result for Cybernaira

IsltWP page speed result

GTmetrix page speed result

And a 99% grade result for Google Page Speed Insight.

As you can see, this is far from a fluke.

This results from months of hard work, research, small investment, and a few organized tools.

Although Google’s PageSpeed Insights score doesn’t necessarily mean much in the real world, it indicates that something is working.

Page speed is not calculated in points (0 -100) but in seconds.

So it is safe to say that the Google PageSpeed Insights score is based on website performance, not on the average page speed.

In essence, Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that helps you improve page speed by analyzing your web page elements, not a page speed measuring tool.

So let’s begin with the obvious.

What is Website Page Speed?

Website Page speed is the time it takes to load the entire content of a specific web page.

In some scenarios, it is described as the time to the first byte.

The time it takes for users’ web browsers to receive the first byte of information from your web server.

There are several tools to analyze website page speed scores; they can identify the causes of slow web pages.

I have listed some website speed test tools above, so let’s see.

Why Are Your Website Pages Loading Slowly?

To optimize your website pages for maximum performance, you must identify the causes of slow pages.

Discovering what slows your site pages is the key to making positive improvements that lead to long-term success.

In most cases, your website page speed testing tool reports will indicate where the problem is. But in all of it, much of the grammar will make no sense to you.

And for beginners, it could just be another jargon.

So let’s look at what primarily causes slow web pages without bogging you down in all the jargon from reports.

Website Factors That Cause Slow Page Load

External/third-party Script: Third-party scripts, such as ads, analytics, and fonts, significantly impact website performance.

Web Host: How good your web host server is also significantly impacts your website performance. If your web server is poorly configured or you’re running an outdated PHP version, your web pages will likely load slowly.

Poorly Coded Plugins: Plugins bring more functionality to your WordPress blog. But many of these plugins are poorly coded, and poorly coded plugins can impact your website’s speed.

Page Size: The total size of your website will significantly affect how fast your web pages load. Images and other hosted media, such as videos, can significantly increase your website’s overall size.

Here is a comprehensive post on optimizing WordPress images for maximum speed and size.

Insufficient Server Resources: This applies to websites on a shared hosting server. If other websites on the same server experience a traffic spike, your website may be affected and eventually run more slowly during this period.

These are just a few of the things that might cause your website to load slowly.

How Website Page Speed Affects SEO

Often, webmasters do ask.

Does website page speed affect SEO?

The short answer is yes; page speed does affect SEO. If it is not, Google won’t report in most of its website analytics reports.

The longer answer.

SEO is all about giving the best user experience. And since page speed is part of the user experience, it is fair to say that page speed will directly impact SEO.

Thus, page speed will indirectly affect search rankings. Since slow pages can lead to a poor user experience (higher bounce rate and reduced dwell time), they will affect SEO.

Now that we know how slow website pages affect SEO, the importance of speed optimization, and what causes slow web pages…

Let’s look at how to speed up WordPress pages without breaking the bank.

The tools mentioned here are what I used to optimize WordPress speed on this very blog.

You may find alternatives or better tools if something doesn’t work right on your end. WordPress has thousands of developers who create helpful blog functionalities with WordPress optimization plugins.

So let’s start with something you probably can’t do without online, and most importantly, that makes a HUGE difference in page speed optimization.

1. A Good Web Host

Everything being equal, your WordPress hosting will make the greatest difference to your optimization efforts.

There are many good shared hosting providers today, but the harsh truth is that if one or more websites on the same server experience a massive traffic spike, it affects every other website on that server.

So it doesn’t matter what you do on your website or how well you optimize it for speed. Other people’s success might lead to failure for your business.

The best route is managed WordPress hosting, where you don’t share server resources with other websites.

This blog is hosted on the NameCheap EasyWP cloud server. Since I upgraded from Stellar shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting, managing this blog has been easier.

EasyWP runs the latest PHP 8.0 Nginx server; notably, you don’t share server resources with other websites. So a noisy neighbourhood doesn’t affect your business.

NameCheap EasyWP and Cloudways hosting are the two managed WordPress hosting services I recommend to my blog audience.

They’re not as expensive as other competitors yet and provide one of the best services in managed WordPress hosting.

You can start with EasyWP for just $1 for the first 30 days to see how it works. Take EasyWP with our special offer here.

Or take Cloudways for a 3-day free trial and enjoy a 20% discount when you upgrade to a paid plan using our unique promo code “CYBERNAI20” at checkout.

2. Install Cache Plugin

WordPress posts are built on the fly, and they’re dynamic content.

Whenever a user requires information from your site, WordPress has to run the process, process it, and serve it to the user.

Practically, this is what happens on your website each time a user demands information from it:

Your web server will retrieve the information from a MySQL database and PHP files for every user who requires information on your website.

Next, it processes the information in HTML and sends it to the user’s browser.

This process can be time-consuming, involve many steps, take longer, and slow down your web pages.

You need a caching system on your blog to reduce these steps and deliver the user’s required info in a fraction of a second.

If you use a WordPress Managed hosting like EasyWP, you don’t need another caching plugin, which is built into your WordPress installation.

But if you’re stuck with a shared hosting server, you might need a caching plugin like WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, or W3 Total Cache.

WordPress’s caching system copies your website pages on first load and then serves those cached pages to users on subsequent visits.

This process reduces the number of steps between your web server and the user’s browser and can make your website pages load 2x, 3x, or even 5x faster.

While there are many WordPress cache plugins today, I only recommend WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache.

Though WP Rocket is a premium plugin, it undeniably offers more caching and optimization features for your money.

WP Rocket is a complete WordPress speed optimization plugin that provides excellent services to the following:

Once again, you can check out WP Rocket Review here. It’s in-depth with more visual information to help you decide what’s best for your business.

3. Image Optimization

Your website images significantly contribute to WordPress’s slow-to-load pages.

Although images bring beauty, life, and greater engagement to your WordPress posts and pages, they can do more harm than good if they are not well-optimized for speed.

The two main issues with images are their size and weight.

You want images to be responsive to the user’s device and to have minimal file sizes without sacrificing quality.

Images are not render-blocking; they’re loaded asynchronously. But if you have lots of pictures on your blog without maximum optimization, it could increase your blog’s overall size.

The best approach to image optimization is to compress the file size before uploading it to your post.

Today, you can use many free WordPress image optimization plugins—Smush, Imagify, ShortPixel, etc.

But here at CyberNaira, I used JetPack’s “Site Accelerator” features at the time of writing. And it has helped avoid installing other WordPress plugins so far.

Plus, it worked straight out of the box. No other configuration is needed. Just activate it, and you’re done; forget it.

JetPack Site Accelerator is an image CDN, editing, and acceleration service that hosts WordPress images on its servers. This reduces the extra load on your hosting server and serves your images to users worldwide.

If the user’s browser supports the .webp image format, JetPack will serve it.

To turn on JetPack Site Accelerator, hover your mouse on “JetPack,” then click “Settings” ===>>”Performance” tab.

That’s it!

JetPack now serves, edits, and optimizes your images from an image content delivery network. This is a great plugin that significantly reduces WordPress post-load time.

Among all the “free image optimization” tools I have used on this blog, JetPack has been the most effective, with significant improvement in page speed.

You might want to consider JetPack Site Accelerator limitations before making the switch. You can find them here.

4. Lazy Load Images

This is a process of loading images/videos on the page only when the users scroll to the viewpoint.

This is especially useful if you post images and video content.

As users scroll down to the viewpoint, your website loads the media content that becomes visible in the user’s browser viewing area.

Generally, you can use lazy load for every visual element on the page:

By default, your web page will attempt to load all images for site visitors.

Load time and bandwidth might not be an issue for visitors to your website on desktop computers.

But for mobile users, this process could be a huge concern.

The view area is much smaller, and loading images not in the view is just a waste of data and bandwidth.

Once again, I use JetPack Lazy Load on this blog. You don’t need any other configuration set up; activate, and you’re done.

Plus, you can customize how JetPack Lazy load works on different WordPress blog pages through the filters on this page.

5. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

You might run a speed test for your site, and the result should be in under 3 seconds. That’s commendable and not bad.

But this does not mean every user will access your site pages in under 3 seconds.

If your web host servers are in the UK, users in the UK will, in practice, experience faster load times than users in Brazil.

This is where a content delivery network like RocketCDN can help you speed up the distribution of your website’s static files.

Unlike dynamic content, static files are unchanging elements on your blog, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.

A content delivery network stores copies of these static files on servers worldwide.

When a user requests any of these files on your website, the CDN (content delivery network) serves the user from servers closest to them.

This process drastically reduces the time it could have taken to process the information from your host server, thereby reducing the load on your server.

I used Cloudflare’s free account for this blog when writing this line.

But if you host with NameCheap EasyWP and select the Turbo or Supersonic hosting package, you can enjoy a free NameCheap CDN and SSL certificate for your website.

6. Install Only Optimized Themes

For beginners, a blog theme with many bells and whistles can be tempting. You know, flashy animations, layouts, colors, widgets, etc.

But the thing is, many of these WordPress themes (especially free themes) are poorly coded and not well optimized for speed.

It is best to go with a simple blog layout and a clean, uncluttered theme, one free of bloated features.

I have used Astra themes for this blog and other blogs for years. It is well-coded, highly SEO-optimized, fast, and features state-of-the-art security.

In addition to the JetPack plugin mentioned above, other WordPress Speed Optimization plugins are used on this blog:

Autoptimize

I use Autoptimize for optimizing CSS, JS, and fonts on this blog. Although Autoptimize includes image optimization features, I don’t enable them since I already use JetPack Site Accelerator.

The main feature of Autoptimize is optimizing the site code. Mainly HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. And it does this more efficiently than most plugins.

Render blocking is a common issue on most WordPress sites that run third-party code. Autoptimize can help fix this problem.

Minimization removes unnecessary content or comments from your site’s code without changing its functionality.

This helps the code load faster and slightly reduces the blog size.

Block Bad Request (BBQ)

If you run a page speed test with GTmetrix, “Avoid Bad Request” is one of the standard error messages in the report.

I have tried several plugins for that, but this one works.

The good thing is you don’t have to go through any setup page. It only takes installing, activating, and you’re done. Forget it. 100% plug-and-play, forget plugin.

Here is the link to the Block Bad Request (BBQ) WordPress plugin.

WebCraftic Clearfy – WordPress Optimization Plugin

This one handles many optimization tasks; Clearfy is a multipurpose WordPress plugin.

Like Autoptimize, Clearfy also minifies HTML content and inlines critical CSS codes, but it does more than that.

Cleary provides a one-click option for the following:

WebClearfy has over 50 optimization features you may want to go through. But not everyone is helpful, and not every blog type benefits everyone.

So trade carefully, read, and understand what each SEO optimization feature means before activating. This way, you won’t break what you can’t fix.

Conclusion

While this article explains what I did to improve website performance in WordPress, every website is unique, so what works here might not work over there.

Use the details shared here as a starting point for your WordPress Speed optimization test, not as a complete, clear-cut process for your website.