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Page speed optimization is crucial for your WordPress website. With these expert tips, you can improve your site’s performance, deliver a top-notch user experience, and gain a competitive edge in search engine rankings. Implement these page speed optimization techniques to ensure your WordPress site loads quickly and efficiently, satisfying both users and search engines alike.
To put it simply, page speed is a tool that measures the time it takes a website to load completely. Wondering why would that be so important? There are at least two major reasons that need to be mentioned here. Firstly – user experience. The shorter the amount of time the website needs to load, the better the first time user’s impression – and the lesser the chance of abandonment. A study conducted in 2017 by Google and SOASTA Research shows that the bounce rate can increase by as much as 32% if the website takes 3 seconds to load instead of 1.
Furthermore, if the bounce rate is too high, Google might deem your website unfriendly to the user and prevent it from coming up in the search results. This brings us to the second reason why page speed is so important – search engines. The faster your website loads, the higher Google is going to place it in the organic search results – so page speed has a true impact on its positioning.
There are many different tools for page speed analysis available on the market. One of the most popular is probably Google’s PageSpeed Insight. It’s a free tool that analyzes the loading speed of any website based on its URL address. What’s more, the results are provided both for the mobile and desktop versions of the site, with regard in their different requirements.
Google provides results on a scale of 1-100 that represent your website’s performance:
However, it’s not just the result that’s most important here. You need to also pay attention to the recommendations that the tool provides.
The website loading speed is affected by many factors. Below you will find a list of the most important ones as well as a few tips on how to quickly optimize the results.
In order for the browser to render the website, it’s necessary to create a DOM tree as a part of HTML parsing. Because of it, whenever the browser detects a script, it has to stop and complete that process before continuing. In case of an external script, the browser must also stop to download it. The issue here is making sure that the HTML code loads firstand just then – JavaScript.
The easiest solution to avoid this problem is (in case of a small script) to inject the inline script or to use of the async and defer tags. Remember to place the script before closing the body tag.
This point refers to how the script is prioritized. Critical request chains are a collection of dependent network requests crucial to the page loading process. In general, the longer the chain length and the larger the sizes of downloaded files, the lower the site’s performance will be. To reduce the negative impact of this factor on the page’s performance, minimize the number of critical resources by suspending their downloads or tagging them as asynchronous. Critical resources should be moved higher in the structure.
Another recommendation that Google PageSpeed Insights can offer is to keep the number of queries and file sizes as small as possible – this means reducing their number and size to a necessary minimum for the site to function properly. In order to meet these requirements, you must first limit the number of web fonts, reduce the number of scripts downloaded from external sources and apply a so-called code bundling. In addition, you should make sure your file compression and optimization are done correctly – I will expand on this idea in the following sections in regard to the specific file types.
The essence of this process is to either compress the source code by removing unnecessary characters or to replace long variable names with equivalents (i.e. x, y, z). This change does not affect the functionality of the page itself, but only reduces the weight and size of the code. To minify the source code, use packaging programs such as WebPack, ParcelJS, or try online compressors and WordPress plugins, e.g. Autooptimize.
The implementation of this idea is based on two instances: the removal of unnecessary classes if they’re not being used in the given tab or the removal of the HTML code that’s not being actively used anymore so that it doesn’t load unnecessary files. In this case, it may be helpful to use ChromeDev Tools, which may indicate the amount of unused data (coverage) in the sources tab.
The main thread is what remolds the code into a website and takes care of all of the user interactions. The ways of fixing web performance described in this section are directly related to the aforementioned minification and removal of unused code. Furthermore, it is advised to utilize the memory cache during the implementation of this idea.
In order to minimize the loading time of the JavaScript, it’s necessary to reduce its size and make sure it’s not being executed as a part of the main thread.
A high-quality server is crucial for maintaining a good loading speed for your website. In order to keep that speed as high as possible, it’s good to make sure the server is in close proximity to the user. If that’s not an option, CDN (Content Delivery Network) must be implemented. Another important thing to remember is the load – the server cannot become overloaded with the number of websites running on it. Choosing the best hosting provider is also a thing one needs to take into consideration.
Graphic files are crucial to the loading page time. They need to be adjusted to an appropriate size and resolution before being uploaded to the website or the srcset attribute needs to be utilized if it’s impossible to load the correct image size.
To optimize the page loading process, you should also make sure that it loads only those images that are currently in the user’s viewport. For this purpose we use the native attribute loading=”lazy” (only for Chrome). You can also use ready-made JavaScript libraries that will load the image when it is detected in the user’s viewport.
To achieve a high test result, Page Speed requires effective image coding. It can be obtained by compressing images, maintaining the correct sizes mentioned before and by using new image formats, e.g. webp.
Google encourages us to move away from inefficient image formats such as *jpg or *png and replace them with modern formats, i.e. *avif or *webp. It will positively affect the test result.
Similarly to the aforementioned, Google encourages the use of modern video formats. *Webm and *mp4 are considered as the most effective. Of course you should also take care of their proper compression.
During the page loading process, text that has been styled with specific fonts will not be displayed until it is fully loaded.To reduce the waiting time and to enable an immediate text display (until the desired font files are loaded), use the font-display swap attribute.
To reduce the weight of files that make up a website, use a so-called GZIP compression. It allows you to scale the load down before sending it to the user. It also has a direct effect on increasing page speed. The most effective method is to add a rule in the .htaccess file or to use WordPress plugins like w3 total cache.
Each subsequent redirection slows down the page loading speed. To prevent this, you should precisely indicate links to the selected files’ current locations. It is particularly important to avoid redirects in resources required for your Critical Rendering Path (CRP).
Another way to increase page speed is to serve static files with an effective cache policy. The use of browser cache files will enable faster page loading on subsequent visits, as the user will not have to constantly download files that are already in the browser cache. The most effective method is to add rules (cache-control and expires) in the .htaccess file.
Having too many scripts from external sites can slow down the page loading speed. To prevent this, you should limit the download (i.e. including share buttons, embedy videos, iframes). If they are already used on the site and you can’t limit their quantity, it is recommended to improve their loading process by using the async/defer and preconnect attributes or to host them on your server.
As Google recommends, the total file sizes should not exceed 1600 kB. What should you do to achieve this state of affairs?
To avoid the above, limit the nesting of HTML tags. There should not be 1,500 nodes on one page at a time, one element should not have more than 60 nodes and the depth should not exceed 32 nests.
Google PageSpeed Insights is undoubtedly a useful tool both for programmers and website owners. It enables control over an important measure of web performance, which is the page loading speed. Most importantly, it offers recommendations dedicated to our website, that can significantly translate into a faster website. The consequence will be a reduction in bounce rate and measurable economic growth.
At Osom Studio, we understand the importance of optimizing your WordPress website for speed and performance. Our team of experts can assist you with implementing all the optimization techniques mentioned in this article. From custom WordPress development and speed optimizations to maintenance services and security audits, we offer a comprehensive range of solutions to enhance your website’s performance. Whether you need help with eliminating render-blocking resources, optimizing images, or implementing efficient caching policies, our experts can tailor our services to meet your specific needs.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to us – visit our contact page to get in touch with us and discuss how we can optimize your WordPress website for peak performance.
Let us know when you’re free, and we’ll schedule a short intro meeting online. We’ll go through the brief together, you’ll share your expectations and doubts with us, and ask us anu questions you want – no holds barred
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