Last Updated on March 24, 2024 by Kundan Sharma
Do you want to reduce WordPress page loading time?
This helps your site to load faster and improve user experience. In May 2021, Google going to consider website speed as one of the most important ranking factors. In Search Console, you can see a tab called “Core Web Vitals” that shows the URL performance of your website for both Mobile and Desktop.
If you see poor URL’s in this tab then you need to improve your page speed. Otherwise, sooner or later you would be going to lose your ranking.
According to Google, a website LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) should be not more than 4 seconds, if it takes more than that time to load a website then poorly optimized for Google Core Web Vitals.
In this article, I’ll share with you some of the best ways how you can reduce your web page’s loading time.
Why Page Loading Speed Important?
Well, there are so many benefits of having a fast loading website, Here are the top 3 reasons why you should reduce your page loading time.
1. Higher Search Engine Ranking
If you want to see your website webpage in the top results in google.
Your blog pages should load faster, Google considers site speed as an important ranking factor.
More than 60% of the searches have taken place from mobile devices. That’s what too many websites using AMP ( Accelerate Mobile Pages) to load their website pages fast in mobile services.
You should have a fast-loading website to get a better ranking in 2024.
2. Increase Conversions
Do you know that per 1-second delay in page load decrease 7% conversion on a site?
If you want to increase your conversion rate then you should have to improve webpage speed.
3. Reduce Bounce Rate
Slow-Loading sites affect the user experience, nobody wants to browser around a slow site, normally propels don’t wait more than 5 seconds to load a site.
They simply bounce and click on another search result so, it’s very important you have to decrease your site load time that improves the bounce rate.
How to Test Website Loading Speed?
There are many tools out there in the market that allow testing website loading speed. You can easily find out your site loading speed using them.
Here I am going to share with two best website speed checker tools.
1. Google Page Insights
2. Pingdom
Check Website Speed Using Google Page Insights
First, Go to the Google Page Insights then add your site URL then click on the Analyze button.
It will show you both mobile and desktop version page speed.
Google Page Insights also suggest how you can improve speed up your site.
To improve site speed you can follow the step-by-step lab data to improve the page load speed.
Using Pingdom Website Speed Test
Go to the Pingdom tool then enter the URL of your site to test the page load time.
Next, click on the “Start Test” button.
Now you will see your site performance like grade, page size, load time, etc. Pingdom also suggests a list of data that helps you to improve page performance.
How to Reduce Page Loading Time in WordPress
1. Compress Images
Do you know that images are one of the most main reasons behind the increase in page load time?
If you randomly upload images to your WordPress site then it will definitely slow your site.
You should compress images before uploading them on your site. There are many ways you can compress an image.
But, here I am going to share with you the two best freeways.
Using Tinypng Website
It’s a free image compressing website that reduces the size of an image without decrease the quality.
To optimize your image, Go to the TinyPng then click on the upload image and select an image that you want to compress from your computer.
Once the image compressed then you can download and it’s ready to upload to a WordPress site. You can also see the image has compressed 75% which is great.
Using Smush it Plugin
The second way to compress images using Smush it plugin.
It helps to compress entire uploaded images at once.
Smush it comes with a both free and paid version, the free version is good enough to optimize WordPress images.
Let’s take a quick guide on how to use this plugin in WordPress.
First, go to your WordPress dashboard then hover to plugins then click on add new plugin.
There at the search box type Smush it now you will see plugin appear.
Next, install and activate the Smush it.
Once you have activated the plugins now you can compress all of your uploaded images in one place.
To do this, go to the Smush it from WordPress menu bar then click on recheck. As shown in the below image from here you can compress image through bulk option.
When you use Smush it plugin on your site, it will compress automatically all the images you upload to your site.
So, you don’t have to optimize images manually.
2. Use CDN
If you don’t know what is CDN then it’s a content delivery network that improves content delivery through their servers around the world.
A CDN provider quickly delivers your site content to your site visitor from their nearest server location.
Every blog should have to use CDN to improve its page load time.
There are so many free and paid content delivery networks like Cloudflare and KeyCDN. I have also written an article on some best CDN services which you can get to improve your site speed.
3. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Do you know that when we use many plugins on a site that affects the page speed? Most of the newbie bloggers install plugins randomly and won’t use them.
When you visit your install plugins page, you may have some of the plugins you have installed but not activated yet.
These are the unused plugins you should delete to free up your database.
To do this, checkmark all the plugins that are unnecessary and deactivated.
Then go to the bulk option on the top and select “delete” then click on “apply” remove them.
I always check my plugin area to remove unnecessary plugins that I have deactivated due to poor performance.
4. Use Less Number of Post on a Page
Do you know you can decrease page loading time just by doing a little thing?
If you reduce the number of posts on a homepage that helps your site to load faster. To do this, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Settings the Reading Page.
Now, You will see an option called blog pages show at most. Here you can select the less than 10 posts to display on pages.
I highly recommend you not show more than 10 posts on your blog. It can slow page speed.
You can see here I’m displaying just 7 blog posts on a page.
5. Don’t Use Display Ads
Do you ever notice, when you visit a site that placed tons of display ads on their pages looks like spam and also slows the site speed?
If you are using too many ads on your web pages to increase ad revenue then you making a big mistake.
It can be slow down page loading speed that affects the user experience. As you can see I haven’t monetized my blog with display ads.
If you want to use ads on your blog I highly recommend you to use only 3 ads on a page. This is also recommended by some ad networks like Google Adsense and Media.net.
There are so many ways you can make money from a blog without ads such as affiliate marketing, sponsor posts, creating your own courses, membership subscription, and etc.
6. Minify Your Codes
Sometimes site creates extra unnecessary codes on pages that increase page load time.
Minifying additional codes of webpages can improve the load speed. Don’t worry it’s doesn’t affect your page structure. You only minifying some extra codings.
W3 Total Cache is one of the best plugin out there that allows minifying codes.
Just go to the “plugins” area then click on “add new” plugin, There in the search box type W3 Total Cache then search the plugin.
Once the plugin appears, install and activate it.
Next, Go to the “Performance” area using the WordPress menu then click on “Minify”.
Here you can see 3 different code languages HTML, CSS, and JS.
Enable Minify all of these codes by checking the box that next to them. As shown in the image.
Then scroll down to the bottom and click on “Save All Settings”.
7. Upgrade Hosting
Maybe your current hosting not giving a high speed.
If you want to reduce WordPress page loading time you must have to switch to a premium fast hosting service such as Bluehost, A2 Hosting, and Siteground.
There are so many best and affordable high-speed hosting providers for WordPress sites.
Siteground is one of the best managed hosting providers with high-quality SSD storage and high-speed servers. You will get lots of features like free SSL certificate, Site Backup, 24/7 Customer Support.
Siteground offer 4 different server location around the world so you can choose a server that nearest to your potential audience.
The best thing about Siteground, they offer free site migration from your existing hosting provider which means you don’t have to pay any extra cost for transferring your site, the team will do it for free.
I have also written siteground hosting review that helps you to know why you should take siteground hosting.
• Click Here to Get Siteground Hosting at $3.95/mo
8. Pick Up a Better Theme
When it comes to optimizing site loading speed themes play a very important role. If you are using a heavily designed theme on your site that increases your page’s loading time.
You should use a premium simple and easy-to-use theme that loads faster.
You can go with themes like OcenWP, Astra, and GeneratePress.
These are some of my favorite themes. I have used all of them, on this blog I’m using OceanWP.
You can also get a theme from premium WordPress theme shops like Elegant Themes and MyThemeShop.
They offer beautiful themes with SEO Friendly Codes, Premium Support, and Regular Updates.
Here is the list of some best premium WordPress theme shops.
9. Use Lazy Load to Improve Website Speed
Lazy load is great for a website with many images, videos, photos, comments, and more other media files.
It does that instead of loading all the images and videos at once. it only loads & downloads files that are visible on the visitor’s screen.
So, as a user scroll down the page it loads images and other media files that are visible in the browser to the visitor.
To set up a lazy load in WordPress you can use Lazy load by WP Rocket. it’s a free plugin and can improve your page loading time
10. Make Sure Your WordPress Site is Updated
Your website’s speed can also improve by making sure that you are using the latest version of WordPress. It’s just as important as keeping your plugins and themes updated.
Keep WordPress updated adds new features fixes bugs, and secure against security issues that can expose your site and leads to poor loading time.
To check for the latest version, log in to your WordPress site and go to Dashboard » Updates. You can check for new updates and install them on your website.
11. Avoid Using Lots of Custom Fonts
Fonts can play a big role in boost your WordPress website speed.
Having fonts that render quickly can improve your website experience, as users won’t have to wait for the visual elements to load.
But using too many custom fonts can slow down your website. That’s why we recommend picking a single front for your website and use it throughout your design.
This will reduce the time it takes to load each custom font and provide a fast user experience.
You can use the Easy Google Fonts plugin to find free and premium custom fonts for your website.
Final Thoughts
You can follow these above-given ways to improve your site speed.
I have personally used these methods on my blog that helped me to reduced the loading time of my web pages.
I hope this post helped you to reduce WordPress page loading time. If you have any questions and suggestions, Let me know in the comments.
