If you are reading this, probably got the same problems I have and it is a headache for everyone, because if your website loads very slow, then visitors leave your site or do not come at all to see your awesome content. I’ve spent the whole day just testing and decided to document everything on How to make your blog load faster.
It takes 7 seconds to make the first impression, but if your website loads slow (e.g. 3-4 seconds) then you’ve got only 3 seconds to impress visitors and hook them to read.
Some visitors don’t wait at all and after 2-3 seconds press the back button while the website is still loading.
You may see bounces via Google analytics as well, which is not good if you care about this, look at your blog as a business. After all, this is a huge factor looking from an SEO perspective, because big Google does not like slow-loading websites at all!
I still use shared hosting + wordpress, because I don’t see a reason to leave, as I am not over limits yet. I am not geeky at the code to modify all things manually, so I did install plugins, which helped me to improve overall loading performance.
Yes, all of these plugins will work differently according to the WordPress theme, plugins, specific blog post, but if you want to test yourself,- here are the list of these and my results as proof it is working.
How to start optimising your blog to speedup?
First of all, I’ve used the Google page speed insights tool to check the speed of the home page and couple blog posts.
Then I’ve install these plugins:
- Smushit – This plugin is resizing, optimizing, compressing your images. You can bulk optimize your existing images,- this function can save you loads of time. On a settings page do enable function to auto optimize images for new uploads (image quality not affected).
- Wp super cache – This plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After HTML file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
- Autoptimize – Makes your site faster by optimizing CSS, JavaScript, image loading, and Google fonts (if used).
How to optimise your blog for mobile
According to Statista, 48% of traffic comes from mobile devices.
Mobile traffic is huge and I can see this even from my friend’s behavior, which uses mobile phones or tablets only,- while 5 years ago laptops and PC’s were #1 for them. Today the same people make purchases, fill out documents, watch videos, listen, read-only on the go…
That being said, on top of that, I have installed the AMP plugin plus Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP.
AMP is accelerated mobile pages and the plugin worked like a charm in one click.
Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP plugin ensures all AMP codes works fine on every blog post
After activating these I’ve run a test to check if all is working fine according to Google,- here is the AMP testing tool if you want to try.
After you will finish all of this process, do not forget to test on page speed insights again to see if your blog loads faster, also check at least a couple of blog posts if they are not affected visually,- that’s because some plugins may conflict with each other an may not fit (I’ve had any issues with this).
For a noob, this may look overwhelming, but it is not! This is not rocket science just to install these plugins and go through simple settings of each as you do not need to write any code. Once it’s done,- it’s done for a long time and will improve your site speed guaranteed!
