WordPress is an amazing platform. Here at WebNet Hosting, we use WordPress to run our entire website including this blog that
you’re reading. Using WordPress makes managing our site extremely easy. However, once you get going with WordPress, install a few plugins, and load your database with pages, things slow down quite a bit!!
What does website speed have to do with search engine rankings?
A lot. You may not realize it, but your website’s speed plays a significant role in your search engine rankings. In order for Google to see the information on your blog, they use “Spiders” or “Robots” as we call them to crawl through your site. These spiders are searching for links, relevant keywords, and other information to help them figure out what your site is about and where to rank it in the search results.
If your website is slow, it takes the spiders more time to crawl the information. Think about it, if the crawlers have to go through millions of websites, they need to do it fast and efficiently. So the slower your website, the more time it takes the spiders to crawl through your site. This is why website speed is so important!
In addition to that, the speed of your site affects the number of visitors your site will get. Since there is so much content readily available online, users tend to scan through pages very quickly to see the information they want. If your page is taking too long to load, the visitors simply move onto another website. Look at the Infographic on how load times affects google rankings.
Now that you know the damage that having a slow website can do, let’s get started and find ways to effectively speed up your WordPress website.
#1: Test Your Web Site Speed
The first thing you’ll want to do is test your website’s speed. You need to see how your site is performing in Google’s eyes. My favorite tool to use is Google’s Page Speed Tool.
The Google Page Speed tool grades your site based on many different variables. It’s the first place you should start to see how your WordPress site’s speed is performing.
I generally think anything under 70 needs improvement. If you can get your website speed to be above 70, you are really attractive to search engines, as your website will be very fast to crawl.
Lets meet that goal and raise your website speed above 70!! The following tips will help you accomplish that.
#2: Make a Backup of Your WordPress
This is very easy to do. In order to make a backup of your site, I recommend using a plugin for WordPress called BackUpWordPress. This plugin is very easy to install and allows you to backup your entire WordPress database in just a simple click. You can even set crons so that it automatically backs up your database daily.
Prior to making any changes on your WordPress site, I highly recommend using the plugin above so that you have a backup to revert to if anything goes wrong.
#3: Clean up Old Plugins in WordPress
Lets first start with the basics.
Keep the number of WordPress plugins you use to a minimum. Downloading tons of plugins will slow down your WordPress blog.
Go through your WordPress site and see if you have any inactive plugins. When you come across plugins that you don’t need, remove them. You can easily find them again if you want to reinstall them later.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the old plugins, update your remaining plugins to the latest versions.
#4: Delete Old Comments
Another factor that can slow down your WordPress website is spam comments. If you have spam comments just left in your WP admin area, login and delete them. This will help in removing unwanted data in the WordPress DB.
#5: Find a Fast Web Hosting Provider
WordPress is just like any other CMS system; it is resource intensive. One of the main contributors of slow website speed is low performance hosting.
Remember, Shared Hosting (which usually sells for under $10-$15/month) is shared with many other websites. That is why it’s cheap and called shared. This type of hosting does not work well with database driven websites such as those ran with WordPress.
Depending on your budget, my recommendation is to either go with a Dedicated Server for WordPress, or purchase a VPS Hosting server for WordPress.
• A Dedicated Server is a great option if you have the budget to spend a few hundred a month for hosting. It’s secure, you have full control, and depending on your web host, setup can be easy if it’s fully managed.
• A VPS Hosting server is a small virtual server that is very affordable. The average cost is usually under $150/month. If purchased from a good web host, it is very easy to setup and can be very fast for WordPress.
A very good option is to host WordPress in the Cloud,
or also called WordPress Cloud Hosting. Cloud hosting is one of the
best ways to host a WordPress site. The Cloud means that your site does
not rely on 1 server for resources. It actually relies on hundreds of
servers that are interconnected. If you need more resources, your server
will automatically rely on the cloud for more resources. Look at the Benefits of hosting WordPress on the Cloud.
Our Cloud Hosting servers allow you to scale resources up and down as you see fit. So if one month you know your website will get low traffic, you can simply lower your bandwidth requirements and save time. The best thing about a Cloud server is that it’s very easy to setup and fully managed. We do the complete setup. You just have to upload your files, or have us install WordPress and migrate your site at no additional cost.
#6: Choose a Proper Theme
Choosing the right theme is very important. Some themes are slow and very resource intensive. Read the reviews on themes and make sure they are a good fit for what you need. Popular themes are easy to find and it’s easy to learn about them from other users in the community.
Many themes include SEO features already built in. It’s important to utilize these as it can help in your search engine rankings.
#7: Keep Your WordPress Updated
Keeping WordPress updated will not only help you in speeding up your website or blog, but it’s an important security measure as well. WordPress will give you a notification at the top of your WordPress admin which will let you know its time to upgrade.
Do a backup first, and then upgrade your WordPress when you see this notification.
#8: Update Your Images
It’s important to have limits on the size of images you upload. Remember, the bigger the size of the image, the longer it will take for users to download it. When a webpage loads on a computer, it actually is downloading it from the server. So make sure images are always compressed and to save them as JPG’s.
#9: Use a Cache Plugin
Caching is a great way to speed up your WordPress site. The good thing is that you can use plugins to handle your site’s caching. They are very simple and easy to use.
My favorite plugin is W3 Total Cache. It’s a very well-known and frequently updated Cache Plugin. Caching is one of the key elements in helping speed up your WordPress blog.
#10: Use a CDN
At
some point, you may have heard the term CDN or Content Delivery
Network. A CDN is a service that will download large pieces of your
website, such as images, and save it locally in worldwide global data
centers.
Let’s say you host your website on a server in Washington D.C. If someone in China wanted to access your site, the web pages have to be downloaded from your servers in Washington D.C to the user’s computer in China. This could take a few seconds. A CDN helps resolve this issue.
A good CDN such as CloudFlare (which we offer all of our users at no additional cost) will place a copy of your website’s images or other large files all around the globe. So when the user from our example above visits your site in China, the larger files such as images are downloaded to the user’s PC right away using servers in China. This enables your site to load faster no matter where a visitor is accessing it from.
A CDN is a great way to help increase the speed of your WordPress website.
Web Hosting in pakistan
Cheapest Web Hosting in Pakistan
you’re reading. Using WordPress makes managing our site extremely easy. However, once you get going with WordPress, install a few plugins, and load your database with pages, things slow down quite a bit!!What does website speed have to do with search engine rankings?
A lot. You may not realize it, but your website’s speed plays a significant role in your search engine rankings. In order for Google to see the information on your blog, they use “Spiders” or “Robots” as we call them to crawl through your site. These spiders are searching for links, relevant keywords, and other information to help them figure out what your site is about and where to rank it in the search results.
If your website is slow, it takes the spiders more time to crawl the information. Think about it, if the crawlers have to go through millions of websites, they need to do it fast and efficiently. So the slower your website, the more time it takes the spiders to crawl through your site. This is why website speed is so important!
In addition to that, the speed of your site affects the number of visitors your site will get. Since there is so much content readily available online, users tend to scan through pages very quickly to see the information they want. If your page is taking too long to load, the visitors simply move onto another website. Look at the Infographic on how load times affects google rankings.
Now that you know the damage that having a slow website can do, let’s get started and find ways to effectively speed up your WordPress website.
#1: Test Your Web Site Speed
The first thing you’ll want to do is test your website’s speed. You need to see how your site is performing in Google’s eyes. My favorite tool to use is Google’s Page Speed Tool.
The Google Page Speed tool grades your site based on many different variables. It’s the first place you should start to see how your WordPress site’s speed is performing.
I generally think anything under 70 needs improvement. If you can get your website speed to be above 70, you are really attractive to search engines, as your website will be very fast to crawl.
Lets meet that goal and raise your website speed above 70!! The following tips will help you accomplish that.
#2: Make a Backup of Your WordPress
This is very easy to do. In order to make a backup of your site, I recommend using a plugin for WordPress called BackUpWordPress. This plugin is very easy to install and allows you to backup your entire WordPress database in just a simple click. You can even set crons so that it automatically backs up your database daily.
Prior to making any changes on your WordPress site, I highly recommend using the plugin above so that you have a backup to revert to if anything goes wrong.
#3: Clean up Old Plugins in WordPress
Lets first start with the basics.
Keep the number of WordPress plugins you use to a minimum. Downloading tons of plugins will slow down your WordPress blog.
Go through your WordPress site and see if you have any inactive plugins. When you come across plugins that you don’t need, remove them. You can easily find them again if you want to reinstall them later.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the old plugins, update your remaining plugins to the latest versions.
#4: Delete Old Comments
Another factor that can slow down your WordPress website is spam comments. If you have spam comments just left in your WP admin area, login and delete them. This will help in removing unwanted data in the WordPress DB.
#5: Find a Fast Web Hosting Provider
WordPress is just like any other CMS system; it is resource intensive. One of the main contributors of slow website speed is low performance hosting.
Remember, Shared Hosting (which usually sells for under $10-$15/month) is shared with many other websites. That is why it’s cheap and called shared. This type of hosting does not work well with database driven websites such as those ran with WordPress.
Depending on your budget, my recommendation is to either go with a Dedicated Server for WordPress, or purchase a VPS Hosting server for WordPress.
• A Dedicated Server is a great option if you have the budget to spend a few hundred a month for hosting. It’s secure, you have full control, and depending on your web host, setup can be easy if it’s fully managed.
• A VPS Hosting server is a small virtual server that is very affordable. The average cost is usually under $150/month. If purchased from a good web host, it is very easy to setup and can be very fast for WordPress.
A very good option is to host WordPress in the Cloud,
or also called WordPress Cloud Hosting. Cloud hosting is one of the
best ways to host a WordPress site. The Cloud means that your site does
not rely on 1 server for resources. It actually relies on hundreds of
servers that are interconnected. If you need more resources, your server
will automatically rely on the cloud for more resources. Look at the Benefits of hosting WordPress on the Cloud.Our Cloud Hosting servers allow you to scale resources up and down as you see fit. So if one month you know your website will get low traffic, you can simply lower your bandwidth requirements and save time. The best thing about a Cloud server is that it’s very easy to setup and fully managed. We do the complete setup. You just have to upload your files, or have us install WordPress and migrate your site at no additional cost.
#6: Choose a Proper Theme
Choosing the right theme is very important. Some themes are slow and very resource intensive. Read the reviews on themes and make sure they are a good fit for what you need. Popular themes are easy to find and it’s easy to learn about them from other users in the community.
Many themes include SEO features already built in. It’s important to utilize these as it can help in your search engine rankings.
#7: Keep Your WordPress Updated
Keeping WordPress updated will not only help you in speeding up your website or blog, but it’s an important security measure as well. WordPress will give you a notification at the top of your WordPress admin which will let you know its time to upgrade.
Do a backup first, and then upgrade your WordPress when you see this notification.
#8: Update Your Images
It’s important to have limits on the size of images you upload. Remember, the bigger the size of the image, the longer it will take for users to download it. When a webpage loads on a computer, it actually is downloading it from the server. So make sure images are always compressed and to save them as JPG’s.
#9: Use a Cache Plugin
Caching is a great way to speed up your WordPress site. The good thing is that you can use plugins to handle your site’s caching. They are very simple and easy to use.
My favorite plugin is W3 Total Cache. It’s a very well-known and frequently updated Cache Plugin. Caching is one of the key elements in helping speed up your WordPress blog.
#10: Use a CDN
At
some point, you may have heard the term CDN or Content Delivery
Network. A CDN is a service that will download large pieces of your
website, such as images, and save it locally in worldwide global data
centers.Let’s say you host your website on a server in Washington D.C. If someone in China wanted to access your site, the web pages have to be downloaded from your servers in Washington D.C to the user’s computer in China. This could take a few seconds. A CDN helps resolve this issue.
A good CDN such as CloudFlare (which we offer all of our users at no additional cost) will place a copy of your website’s images or other large files all around the globe. So when the user from our example above visits your site in China, the larger files such as images are downloaded to the user’s PC right away using servers in China. This enables your site to load faster no matter where a visitor is accessing it from.
A CDN is a great way to help increase the speed of your WordPress website.
Web Hosting in pakistan
Cheapest Web Hosting in Pakistan
There is no Doubt in saying that WordPress is the King of all Content management Systems. As an open Source “Free” Web application CMS or in common words “Web site builder”, it lets users create powerful, Plug-in-innovated CMS platforms.
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