If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, it’s essential that your site loads quickly. Without taking the proper precautions, you can end up with a blog that is slow and a real hassle for your readers.
Plus, did you know that your websites speed can also affect your SEO with Google?
So not only are you losing your readers, but you’re also losing your rankings in the Google search engine. These tips will show you five ways to speed up your WordPress blog.
5 Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Blog
1. Update WordPress
Right now, I want you to make sure that your blog is updated! That includes your WordPress installation, theme, and plugins.
Of course, always be sure to create a backup before performing updates. You must keep your WordPress installation, theme, and plugins up to date.
With each new update comes performance and stability improvements, which means a faster blog for you!
2. Optimize Your Images
Before uploading your images to WordPress, please be sure to resize them. I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve seen where the blogger is uploading full-size images to their media library. This isn’t necessary.
Uploading large photos will slow down your blog, especially if you’ve racked up a lot of images. I use TinyPNG to compress my pictures before I upload them to my blog. Another option is to use the WP Smush plugin. Both TinyPNG and WP Smush compress your images without losing the image quality.
3. Limit the Number of Posts Per Page
Having too many posts displaying per page will slow down your blogs load time. Even more so if you have a lot of image-heavy posts. I recommend displaying a maximum of 5 full posts per page. Or even better, instead of showing full posts, display post excerpts instead.
This will require your readers to click on a “read more” link to view the entire post. Doing something as simple as reducing your posts per page, or creating post excerpts is an excellent step to take towards reducing your blogs loading speed.
4. Limit the Number of Plugins
We all know how awesome WordPress plugins are, however, having too many plugins installed can slow down your blog a great deal. If you want to know which plugins are slowing your site down, I recommend installing the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) plugin.
You can go ahead and remove the plugin once you’re finished. Because as I said, you don’t want to have too many plugins. 🙂
5. Use a Caching Plugin
Caching your content can significantly reduce your blogs loading time. I use and recommend the WP Super Cache plugin. Caching plugins work by temporarily storing your site, which allows files to be delivered to your visitors faster. Before installing a caching plugin, contact your web host to see if they cache your blog by default. If they do, installing a second caching plugin may do more harm than good.
There are lots of things you can do to speed up your blog; however, these are tips that can be implemented right away and are beginner-friendly. If you would like to know the load speed of your blog, I recommend visiting Pingdom.
The great thing about this site is that if you hit the “Performance Grade” tab after submitting your URL, you will find recommendations for speeding up your website.
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