Internet marketers have a blog as their home base and personal hub. WordPress, without a doubt, is amazing. Having a WordPress blog can be challenging as we move forward. Challenge #1 most people face is the speed of their blog or their loading time. It may be so slow that it takes longer to load a page or load is filled with errors... Not good at all. If this is the case, we could lose some old and new visitors who will rocket our bounce rates... Something we don't want to happen at all.
2 reasons why you want to Speed Up your WordPress blog:
1. People will go before they even get a chance to see how the page looks or read the post on that page. No matter how much value you give, people will not get the chance to see it because this site needs along so darn to load.
2. Your site speed is part of Google's algorithm, which will determine how well you rank on the search engines. It's not one of the main factors of Google's algorithm, but it's always great not to ignore the little things that can make a big difference later on. Google only protects its users and they don't want them to click #1 a place that will take about 5 minutes to load.
Here's a step on how to drastically increase the speed of your WordPress blog:
1. Disable unnecessary plug-ins
Plug-ins can affect the speed of your site. The more plug-ins you have, the longer it takes to load your page. Plug-ins take up a lot of memory, so it would be a good idea to disable some plug-ins that you needn't have on your blog. Take the time to check your plug-in. Look for what you don't need and deactivate.
2. Caching
Caching is very important for your site. That's when WordPress will cache a bunch of information also known as "database queries " Instead of initiating a new server request every time you get a new visitor on your site. This will reduce the amount of information/query, which results in a large increase in your site's loading time and decreased use of your server. In other words, it's pretty much a store of information about your site so when someone visits your page, it won't load the entire site every time.
For your site to properly start chaching, you will need a plug-in called "WP Super Cache " which is a free plug-in and Super easy to set-up. All you have to do is to install the plug-in and select Enable caching on the Settings tab.
P. S when making changes, be sure to disable this plugin and activate it after the changes made.
Caching is like taking a snapshot of your page, thus disabling the plug-in and activating it again after it is done so that the change will update and you have a new cache. It would also be good to clear your browser cache as well to see the new changes.
3. Get rid of the wretched spammers!!!
Spammers will slow down your site and they take up bandwidth. No matter how stupid and unreasonable the comments are, they actually hurt your site and will make it much slower. So it's our job to employ the best guards we have.
To do that, we will need another plug-in. I'll mention some but all you need is one. I personally use the "Growmap Anti Spambot plugin ". It works pretty well and so far, our spam has disappeared. Some do though, but that is very rare now. Another good plug-in that Akismet, which is a paid plug-in, SI captcha anti-spam, Bad behavior, and WP-ReCaptcha. Whatever you want is good. Blocking spammers will also drastically lower your bounce rate, which is really really good. When we don't have an active anti-spam plug-in, our bounce rate has 50-60%. Now with the plug-in, our average is well below 6%. That's a big difference!
4. Choose the right theme
Our theme actually affects the speed of our site as well. This is sometimes ignored. What we need to remember is that our theme is simpler, the sooner it will load. You should also know that the more images you have on your theme, the longer it takes to load them. The same goes for banner ads and some widget text. Try to restrict the image. Anyway, when it comes to a blog, the design should come 2nd. It's our quality content that is very important and should always be 1. The design will only redirect our visitors who might click something else and end up on a different site. Bye-bye to your site when it happens.
5. Main Page
Your Home Page should not be fully packaged with posts, pictures, videos, etc. If you want to speed up your site, you should start organizing your posts. We featured 10 blog posts on our home page and we used the "Insert more tags " tool which can be viewed on the toolBar when adding new posts. In this way, visitors can read a brief summary of your posts and click "Read More " to read the rest of the post. It will also reduce loading times, especially if you have a lot of pictures and videos in your posts. Take advantage of this feature. Say use 5 posts as a minimum for your home page and 10 as the maximum.
Doing this step will drastically increase the speed of your WordPress blog. After speeding it up you will, without a doubt, see more visits, experience higher conversion rates, better Alexa rankings, and lower bounce rates.
