The quick, easy and free way to speed up your WordPress website!
The intention for publishing this article is to inform WordPress users that are not super technical savvy, on a quick and easy method of speeding up your WordPress site. There are plenty of options out there, some free and some paid, and I will go into a few of those.
I look at this method as being a good temporary upgrade, while giving you time to decide on other alternatives that will give your website near perfect scores for loading speed optimization.
Why is your website speed so important?
Well, first of all, nobody likes a website that takes forever to load. Most visitors, and myself included, will bounce off a website that is taking more than 3 seconds to load. Call me a speed snob, but reality is, that a slow loading site is in big trouble from a visitor and traffic stand point.
Second, as I write this article, Google has officially made website speed a Ranking Signal to become effective for the upcoming months. So from a visitor experience and top Search Engine Optimization results, having a quick loading website is essential for surviving and ranking well in the SERPs.
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
Some Methods for Checking Your Website Speed
There are several free tools out there for checking your website speed. Most of these give you a grade based on several of the factors involved for better speed optimization. For the method I am using and suggesting, I used these 2 tools:
Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom Website Speed Test
My results after applying my free 5 minute method:
Unfortunately Google did not give me my speed grade, as they are now testing their Beta version of Insights, which I haven’t upgraded to yet. I will update the results for that as soon as I test on the Beta version.
Okay, so these scores are not perfect, but still better than many of the websites out there. I want to emphasize that this is the Free Upgrade. I used 2 WordPress plugins and the task was done in less than 5 minutes.
Image compression, website cache, and combining/minimizing files.
I have found these to be 3 of the most effective methods for greatly increasing website speed. Although there are several variables that come to play for website speed optimization, image compression, site cache, and combining/minimizing files, is a great start. I will be getting into a more in depth look at all the factors that affect your website speed, in my next article.
2 easy to install WordPress plugins.
First off, I installed the very popular cache plugin WP Fastest Cache. It has been downloaded and used by over a 1/2 million WordPress users!
So just download or easily install this through your WordPress dashboard. I checked off the following available free options:
This is the free version! For being free, this plugin does a fantastic job right out of the box. The web designers offer a paid version for just $39.99 that includes image compression and other great functions for increasing your site speed. For the low price, I highly recommend considering the premium version.
The second plugin I installed is the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin. Also, downloaded and used by over a 1/2 million WordPress users!
For this plugin, you can use the basic default settings, and it works just fine. They offer an inexpensive premium option as well.
Simple, quick and effective!
Well, there you have it. 2 very easy to install and use plugins. Both of these free, and very popular for a reason. They both offer inexpensive premium options as well.
Just by taking 5 minutes and using the free versions of the plugins above, my website became faster than over 90% of my competitors!
***I have tried several cache plugins that were tasking to set up, some did wonky things to my site, and were not as effective as the free version of WP Fastest Cache plugin.
These developers did an excellent job making this plugin very effective, and super easy for WordPress users to employ
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