Here are some tasks that you can perform to improve the page speed of your WordPress website and make your site SEO friendly.
Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin can significantly improve the speed of your website by caching your website’s pages and serving them to visitors more quickly. Popular caching plugins for WordPress include W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and WP Rocket.
Optimize images: Large image files can significantly slow down your website. You can optimize images by compressing them using tools such as TinyPNG, Imagify, or Smush.
Minify CSS and JavaScript files: Minification involves removing unnecessary characters such as white space, comments, and line breaks from your website’s CSS and JavaScript files, making them smaller and easier to load. You can use plugins such as Autoptimize or WP Minify to achieve this.
Enable Gzip compression: Gzip compression is a method of compressing files on your website’s server before sending them to visitors’ browsers. This can significantly reduce the size of the files and speed up your website. Most hosting providers allow you to enable Gzip compression from your control panel.
Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers that can help deliver your website’s content to visitors more quickly by storing your website’s files on multiple servers worldwide. Popular CDNs include Cloudflare, MaxCDN, and KeyCDN.
Choose a high-speed hosting provider: The speed of your website can also be affected by your hosting provider. Ensure you choose a high-speed hosting provider with fast servers, good uptime, and features such as server caching and CDNs.
Reduce HTTP requests: Each element on your website, such as images, CSS files, and JavaScript files, requires an HTTP request to load. The more requests your website has to make, the slower it will be. You can reduce the number of HTTP requests by minimizing the number of elements on your website, combining files where possible, and using CSS sprites.
Use a lightweight theme: Choose a lightweight and well-coded theme for your WordPress website. Avoid bloated themes with unnecessary features and functionalities that can slow down your website.
Limit the number of plugins: Every plugin you install on your website adds additional code that needs to be loaded, which can slow down your website. Only install necessary plugins, and make sure to regularly review and deactivate any plugins that are not essential.
Use lazy loading: Lazy loading is a technique that loads only the elements that are visible on the user’s screen, deferring the loading of other elements until the user scrolls down. You can use plugins like Lazy Load or WP YouTube Lyte to enable lazy loading on your website.
Optimize your database: Over time, your website’s database can become bloated with unnecessary data, which can slow down your website. Use plugins like WP Optimize or WP-Sweep to clean up your database and optimize its performance.
Use a lightweight slider: Sliders and carousels can significantly slow down your website, especially if they are not well-coded. Use lightweight slider plugins like Soliloquy or MetaSlider to reduce the impact on your website’s speed.
Minimize external requests: External requests to third-party websites, such as social media platforms or analytics tools, can slow down your website. Minimize the number of external requests and use asynchronous loading or defer loading these requests to improve your website’s speed.
By implementing these tasks, you can significantly improve the page speed of your WordPress website.
