How can I speed up my WordPress website?

Nobody likes having to wait long for a web page. It's very common: websites that get bigger over time and gradually become slower. It is even possible that visitors will leave your website because it is too slow. This can cost your turnover!

Do you want to make your website faster with just a few simple steps? Then read on.

Content of this article:

• Why is a fast website so important?
• Why is my website slowing down?
• How do I measure the speed of my website?
• Is WordPress Fast Enough?
• The right web hosting
• Optimizing your content
• Caching Plugins

Why is a fast website so important?

Having a fast website is very important. In other words, not having a slow site is even more important! A slow website means you lose visitors. Not only this, a slow website also has negative consequences for your ranking in Google and other search engines. For example, a fast website helps to achieve higher positions in Google.

Why is my (WordPress) website so slow?

A slow website can have various causes. The most common causes are: large files (images), slow web hosting, a large number of plugins, too many scripts (Javascript, Fonts, etc) and not using caching.

If your website has to do with at least one of the above causes, this will be noticeable in the speed of your website.

How do I measure the speed of my (WordPress) website?

You can use various tools to determine the speed of your website. With the help of these free tools you get a speed score and some points for improvement to help you on your way. For example, I often use Google Pagespeed and Uptrends.

By only entering your domain name, you immediately get an indication of the speed of your website and the most important points for improvement to make your website even faster.

Is WordPress fast enough?

This question is asked regularly, and for a reason. Many WordPress websites are built using a well-known or widely used theme, which can be bought for a few bucks. These premade themes are intended for all types of businesses and anyone who has no knowledge of creating websites.

The problem with these themes is that they are often built using page builders and often offer many more options than necessary. A large part of the unnecessary options are then still loaded without using them on your website. This is at the expense of the speed of the website.

Fortunately, these page builders are getting better and more minimalistic, so that the influence on the speed is only minimal for some. A good example is Elementor, now one of the largest page builders.

The right web hosting

Choosing the right web hosting is very important for a fast website. There are various options such as Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated Hosting or Cloud hosting.

For a small (local) website, standard Shared hosting is usually sufficient. This costs a few euros per month but will never be lightning fast.

Shared hosting is no longer recommended for larger websites. Then choose a VPS, dedicated hosting or Cloud Hosting.

Personally, I have good experience with Cloudways. Via Cloudways I was able to cut off an average of one second of the loading time by just switching hosting, even on websites that already had a good loading time.

Would you like to test this for free? Which can! Cloudways offers a two-day free trial with One-Click WordPress installation and a migration service. This way you can perform a speed test within minutes to see if it works for your website! More information about this hosting, here you will find a review of Cloudways.

Optimizing your content

Large files such as images, scripts and stylesheets can make your website very slow. These files can often be a lot smaller. For example, you will already receive recommendations for which files this is the case via the above speed tools.

If you have never compressed a photo, chances are that the file size (the number of KBs or MBs) is too large. In this case, it is important that you optimize images to make your website faster.

Make your website faster with a Caching plugin

Good Caching can have a lot of influence on the speed of your website. The term Caching may still be new to you, so I'll give a brief explanation.

What exactly is caching?

When opening a web page, it must be generated for you. With a lot of static content, this is unnecessary because the page is the same for every visitor.

Caching stores these web pages so that they can be displayed faster on your next visit.

This may all sound very technical, but implementing good caching in your website is certainly not. This is very easy with a good plugin like WP Rocket. WP Rocket allows you to enable or disable caching with just one switch.

With the above tips you can make your website faster within a few hours. Most of the tips can be used for all websites, even without WordPress as a CMS.