How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website?

TLDR: Optimize WordPress speed by managing themes, plugins, web hosting, using PageSpeed Insights, caching, CDN, and image optimization.

This article is a summary of a You Tube video “How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website?” by Rank Math SEO

Key Takeaways:

1. Theme and Plugin Management: Excessive or poorly coded themes and plugins slow down your WordPress site. Optimize or remove unnecessary ones.
2. Web Hosting: A slow web host impacts site speed. Choose a reliable and fast hosting provider.
3. External Sources: Loading elements from external sources like Google Fonts, Google Maps, and ads can slow down your site. Minimize these where possible.
4. Page Optimization: Optimize all pages of your site, not just the homepage, especially those ranking for important keywords.
5. Core Web Vitals: Focus on improving Core Web Vitals metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
6. PageSpeed Insights: Use Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze and improve site speed. Prioritize mobile speed as it impacts desktop performance too.
7. First Contentful Paint: Ensure the first object on your website loads quickly (under 1.8 seconds) to avoid high bounce rates.
8. Image Optimization: Optimize images using plugins like Imagify or ShortPixel or manually with tools like Kraken.io to reduce file size.
9. Caching: Implement caching plugins like WP Rocket to store versions of your site and serve them quickly to users.
10. Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use a CDN like Cloudflare to distribute content across various servers worldwide, reducing load times.