How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website for Better Ranking and Visibility in Search Engines

When you open a webpage in your browser and it takes an eternity to load, you know what it’s like. You may wait patiently for the first four seconds, but if nothing happens, you become annoyed and exit the page. When you left, the website lost a new customer.

In this post, we’ll look at the consequences of a slow-loading WordPress website for businesses, as well as what the optimal download speed for a website is and how it may be improved. This post will provide you with tips on how to improve the speed of your own WordPress websites.

Visitors will abandon your website if it takes too long to load

A slow-loading website is one of the most potent ways to drive away website visitors. People in today’s world are used to obtaining the information they require instantly. If your website is slow to load, visitors are more likely to abandon it before it is fully loaded.

According to a 2019 survey conducted by Unbounce, up to 70% of participants believe that a site’s download speed influences their willingness to buy at an online store.

According to a study conducted by Google in 2018, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32% when the loading speed of a web page goes from one to three seconds. The probability of quitting increases by 90% when the time is increased from one to five seconds.

Download speed has a significant impact on whether or not a visitor stays on a site. And if the bulk of your visitors don’t wait for your site to load, it won’t be beneficial. You lose a large number of potential clients who would have been impressed if your pages were faster.

The impact of page load time on search engine rankings

The speed with which a website loads has an impact on its search engine ranking.

Websites are ranked by Google depending on their relevance and user experience. Slow-loading websites cause visitors to leave quickly, signaling to Google that the website’s user experience is poor. The site will receive a lower ranking in search engines if the user experience is bad.

On the other hand, a site’s organic traffic and conversions are automatically influenced by its search engine ranking. As a result, a slow-loading website has an array of negative consequences that can only be addressed by increasing the page download speed.

What is a good web page load speed, and how can you measure it?

According to a study conducted by Portent in 2019, the ideal loading time for a website is less than 2 seconds. The number of conversions was the highest during this time period. Conversions decline considerably after 3 seconds of page download time, since a large percentage of visitors do not wait for the site to fully load.

Google considers download speeds of less than two seconds essential. According to a Google study, 53% of site users abandon pages that take more than three seconds to load.

As a result, you should aim for a download speed of less than 2 seconds. Google has indicated that it intends to achieve speeds of less than half a second. The more quickly the page loads, the better.

Even a small increase in site speed can significantly reduce bounce rates and increase conversions. As a result, it’s critical that you monitor the performance of your website and take steps to reduce the time it takes to load.

Three free tools for testing website speed are Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom Website Speed Test. Using these free tools, you can obtain an overview of your page speed and decide what measures you should take to improve it.

How can you make your WordPress website load faster?

You can boost the download speed of your website by making specific changes. Here are five quick ways to make your WordPress website load faster:

#1. Size of the media files

Reducing the size of media files is one of the factors that impacts a site’s speed and is reasonably simple to fix.

The number of images on a single page has a big impact on how quickly that page loads. The more large images you have on your pages, the slower the page will load. As a result, extra elements and graphics should be kept to a bare minimum.

Free software is available online that may be used to resize images. Your images should be under 150 kb in size, as this takes substantially less time to load, and your site’s speed will definitely improve.

#2. Selection of your Server

The importance of server selection should not be overlooked, as it has a significant impact on the website’s speed. Your site will load slowly if your server is geographically located in a remote location.

The number of visits to the website should also be considered while selecting a server. A shared server, for example, might greatly degrade the user experience if the site has a large number of visits in a short period of time. The server will slow down if a site has a large number of visitors at the same time. A dedicated server is the ideal solution for a high-traffic website.

It’s also a good idea to pick a server that scales up or down in response to the number of visitors. In other words, there is more server bandwidth on days when there are more visitors.

#3. Reduce the number of Plug-ins

The number of plug-ins affects the download speed of a site, as the site must also download the data contained in the add-ons. Therefore, you should remove any unnecessary add-ons so that you can speed up your webpage even further. You may also want to remove additional plug-ins for the security of WordPress websites.

However, be careful not to accidentally remove any add-ons that are vital to your site.

#4. Cache Utilization

Caching a website improves the loading speed of web pages. When a site is cached, the next time a site visitor visits your site, their device will retrieve site information directly from the cache. This speeds up the loading time of the website.

Various plug-ins are available for the WordPress website to help you cache for your next visit. However, it’s important to note that when you make changes to your site, you should remember to clear your cache to make sure the new changes are visible to your visitors.

#5. Use an external service to upload videos and large files

Videos are an excellent way to show products and services on a website, but they consume a lot of server space and power. As a result, videos and other large files should be uploaded to a third-party service like YouTube, where they can be embedded on your site. External services can significantly reduce the time it takes for a website to load.

Optimize your website for mobile devices

The majority of searches nowadays occur on mobile devices. This is why it’s critical to consider how well the mobile version of your website functions and loads. If your site’s mobile version isn’t simple and quick, you’ll lose a lot of potential clients.

Final words

The loading speed of a website is an important factor. Quicker websites will improve your conversion rates, lower bounce rates, and improve search engine visibility by providing a better user experience.