Web site speed is one of the most important factors to grow your small business online. WordPress is an easy open sources content management system that is used by millions of bloggers and top brands. Many WordPress hosting companies provide one click installer to setup WordPress blog in a few minutes.
Starting a stunning WordPress blog is easy but optimizing your blog speed could be challenging for the beginners. In this guide we have shown you the three easiest ways to increase your WordPress blog performance.
Why do Blog Speed Matters?
Blog performance is the most important thing that every blog, online stores, social networking sites needs. Blog speed is all about retaining your visitors. If you are a blogger then you want your visitors to stay on the pages and read the post. If you have an online store then you want your customers to purchase the stuff. If the information in the blog or checkout process in your online store does not load immediately then your users will switch to another web site.
Free Tools to Check your Blog Performance Score
1. Google Page Speed Insight
2. GTmetrix
Google Page Speed Insight
Google Page Speed Insight: This tool is used to check your blog performance score provided by Google to help you to optimize your blog for speed. It will show you detailed reports and tell you what you need to do to increase your blog speed.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix: It is also one of the free tools that analyze your blog page’s speed performance. GTmetrix uses pagespeed and Yslow to show your blog speed score and generates the reports where you can improve your blog loading time.
Check your blog performance score using any one of the tools above. You will find the reports of your blog performance which you need to optimize and increase following below methods.
How to Increase WordPress Blog Performance
As you know WordPress is easy to manage, there are hundreds of plugins in the WordPress directory to optimize your blog speed in a few minutes. Here you will find three easiest ways to increase your blog speed without hassle.
1. Best WordPress Hosting Provider
Are you hosting your small business blog with a WordPress recommended hosting provider? Visitors do not want to wait more than 2 seconds to find the service whether it’s a blog post or online stores. They will switch to another web site that loads fast. One of the first things to speed up the blog is WordPress’s recommended web hosting provider.
There are some Web site hosting companies that are recommended by WordPress officially. WordPress hosting providers have optimized server resources that will reduce your blog loading time and increase visitors that bring more sales to your online business. Web site hosting providers such as BlueHost, Siteground and Dreamhost are the best providers that are powering millions of WordPress blogs across the world.
2. Auto Minify HTML, CSS and Java
If you have chosen the best WordPress hosting server then you need a few more things to do in your WordPress blog. WordPress blog pulls the information from your web server and shows to your visitors. There are some unwanted HTML codes that a blog loads at the beginning which will eat your server resources and slow down your blog. You need to remove all the unwanted codes that exist in your WordPress blog which you can do by installing the popular Autoptimize plugin available free in the WordPress directory.
The process of removing those unwanted HTML code from your blog is called Minify. It will erase all the unwanted scripts from your blog that will increase your blog performance instantly.
How to Minify HTML, CSS and Javascript?
WordPress plugins are the best pieces of software to add additional features to your blog. There are thousands of WordPress plugins built for different purposes to help grow your small business online. Autoptimize plugins are built to minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript easily in a few clicks.
Login to your WordPress dashboard and click on plugins then Add new. On the right side you will see a search box where you have to search for an autoptimize plugin. You will find it at the beginning of the page, click on the Install Now button and activate it.
Once activated you need to click on the settings at your left WordPress panel then Autoptimize. In the Autoptimize setting page, select Optimize JavaScript Code under JavaScript Options.
In the same page below, select Optimize CSS code under CSS options. Likewise, select Optimize HTML code under HTML option and click on save changes and empty cache button. It will remove unwanted scripts from your blog and increase your web site speed dramatically.
3. Image Optimization
Blogs without images have a high bounce rate. Images in your blog post are one of the best ways to engage your blog’s visitors. Unfortunately unoptimized images will take lots of server resources that will slow down your blog performance.
Optimizing your blog images will reduce its size and convert it to a web format which will make images to load faster and increase your blog speed instantly.
Again, all you have to do is install a powerful plugin named EWWW Image optimizer. Install and activate EWWW Image Optimizer plugins by going to Plugins then Add New.
After activating, Go to the WordPress dashboard and click on Settings then EWWW image optimizer.
You will see the EWWW dashboard where you have to click on the Bulk optimize link.
The link will take you to the optimizing pages where you have to click on the scan for unoptimized images button. In a few seconds, the plugin will pull entire images of your blog.
Once the scan completes, you need to click on the Optimize 123 Images button. Optimization may take a few hours depending upon the sizes and the number of images you have in your blog.
That all, now you can use the tools Google Page Speed Insight or GTmetrix to see the increased blog performance score. We hope this guide on three steps to increase your blog performance is helpful. You may also like to see WordPress tutorials to get more tips and tricks that helps you to grow your small business online.
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