Did you know that 53% of visitors abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? If your WordPress website is slow, you’re losing traffic, credibility, and ultimately revenue. Website bounce rates spike by 103% for 2 additional seconds it takes for a page to load.

You spend hours writing the ideal blog content, but your viewers leave before it loads. Isn’t this frustrating? Worry not, this blog will teach you how you can boost your WordPress site performance, which will retain your visitors. Improving loading times will increase search engine rankings, lower bounce rates, and increase conversion rates.

What Determines A Good Site? 

Core Web Vitals is how Google assesses a website. It analyzes these variables to determine the type of experience you provide your visitors. For example, Google will utilize page speed to determine whether your users are becoming dissatisfied with your slow load time. 

Core Web Vitals is divided into three components: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP analyzes how long it takes for your website to load from the first click of the link to the majority of its content. Here is how to read the LCP number range.

• 0 to 2 seconds – Good
• 3 to 4 seconds – Needs improvement
• 5 to 6 seconds – Poor

First Input Delay (FID)

This metric indicates how long it takes for a user to interact with your page. An interaction could be defined as picking a menu, completing a form, or using the search bar to find their preferred product. So, if your website is very interactive, this is a critical Core Web Vital that you should focus on.

• 0 to 100ms – Good
• 200ms to 300ms – Needs improvement
• 400ms to 500ms – Poor

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

It assesses your page’s visual stability while it loads. Simply put, if the images on your page shift about while the page loads, you have a CLS issue that needs to be resolved.

• 0 to 0.1 – Good
• 0.1 to 0.25 – Needs improvement
• 0.25 to 0.3 – Poor

There are multiple tools online that you can use to measure Core Web Vitals for ex. PageSpeed Insights by Google.

Ways To Do WordPress Speed Optimization (No Coding)

Making changes to your website can be a daunting task if you are a beginner, even more so if you are not tech-savvy. Rest assured, these tips won’t require you to do any coding.

Even still if you don’t feel comfortable doing it on your own, we at LDninjas offer a very affordable speed optimization service. We will handle all your optimization needs while you rest easy. 

Choosing a Reliable Hosting Provider

Your WordPress hosting service is probably one of the most significant factors influencing the performance of your website. A good hosting service uses optimized servers, caching, and CDN integration to improve load times. They allocate enough CPU, RAM, and bandwidth to manage traffic spikes without slowing down your website.

There are different types of hosting services available for you to consider. For a detailed guide on hosting providers, kindly refer to our blog here.

Optimizing Images

The engagement rate of posts with images is 650% higher than that of ones with just text. It is safe to say that images bring life to your content. However, using unoptimized images can seriously hurt your page load speed, doing more harm than good. 

Before using photos, we would always recommend using photo editing software to optimize them. A few examples would be, Canva, TinyPNG, Adobe Express, etc. 

To really highlight the difference, you can see the below comparison table of the file sizes using different image optimization tools.

WordPress Caching Plugin

Your website’s static HTML pages are created by a caching plugin and stored on your server. Your caching plugin shows the lighter HTML page rather than the bulkier WordPress PHP scripts whenever a user attempts to access your website. It would be as though the cache plugin was “saving” your content so that it would load more quickly in the event that someone attempted to visit your website.

There are many caching plugins you can find that are available, some of the well-reputed ones are, WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.

Choosing an Optimized WordPress Theme

An optimized theme is essential for a fast WordPress website. Good, lightweight themes improve site performance, but poorly unoptimized ones can slow it down even with other optimizations. Why and how does an optimized theme affect your site?

• Lightweight Code: Optimized themes have clear, efficient code that decreases bloat and server queries.
• Minimal Resources: They employ less CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, which speeds up site loading.
• Lazy Loading: Many current themes use lazy loading for photos and videos to load only visible information.
• Responsive Design: Optimized themes are intended to work fluidly across all devices (desktop, tablet, and mobile).
• Caching: Optimized themes work well with caching plugins like WP Rocket and minification tools speed up performance.

Uninstalling Deactivated Plugins

Certain plugins may be resource-intensive or heavily utilize the administrative-ajax.php file, thereby compromising performance. Deactivating plugins that you do not use can significantly impact your site’s performance.

It is very simple to remove plugins; all you have to do is:

1. Go to Dashboard
2. Go to Plugins
3. Locate and Select the plugin you wish to remove
4. Click on Delete

Updating Your Plugins

WordPress plugins are regularly updated with the latest performance and security updates. It is very crucial that you update your plugins to take advantage of those features. You can follow this guide “How to Install and Update WordPress Plugins” for a comprehensive tutorial on safely updating your Plugins

Advanced WordPress Speed Optimization

Every millisecond is crucial when it comes to your website’s performance. A mere fraction of a second can decide if the user will stay on your site or move on. To maximize your site’s potential, these changes are the way to go. 

Here are some more technical tips. For some of them, you’ll need to change your site’s files or know the basics of PHP.

Reduce Database Calls

There are many WordPress themes out there that are badly written, which is a shame. Because they don’t follow WordPress’s best practices, they end up calling the database directly or making too many requests that aren’t needed.

For example:

1. <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” dir=”<?php language_attributes(); ?>”>
2. <head profile=”http://gmpg.org/xfn/11″>
3. <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘html_type’); ?>
4. charset=<?php bloginfo(‘charset’); ?>” />

Whenever you see ^?php in your file, it means the beginning of a new database call

Don’t blame the developers of the themes for that. They can’t find out what language your site is in any other way. You can change these database calls with specific information instead if you are modifying your site with a child theme. It will reduce the database calls.

For Example:

1. <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” dir=”ltr”>
2. <head profile=”http://gmpg.org/xfn/11″>
3. <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />

You can look through your parent theme to find places like this where static information can be added.

Optimizing Database

Your WordPress database will include tons of unnecessary data after a while. Optimizing your database removes redundant data for better efficiency.

This can be done using plugins that allow you to clean your WordPress database by deleting those redundancies in your database. Things like trashed posts, revisions, unused tags, etc. 

You can use plugins such as Breeze, WP-Optimize, and WP-DPManager.

Disable Hotlinking 

Hotlinking involves embedding or linking to media files (such as photos, videos, or other resources) from another website or server rather than hosting them yourself. Hotlinking uses the URL of the file hosted on another site to pull it every time the site loads. Your server resources are abused when someone hotlinks your photos from your website.

If you don’t want people to hotlink pictures from your site, just add this code to your.htaccess file:

1. RewriteEngine on
2. RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
3. RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?ldninjas.com [NC]
4. RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
5. RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L]

* Change ldninjas.com with your domain.

Using Latest PHP Version

PHP is the main computer language used to make WordPress. Since it’s a server-side language, it’s put on your hosting site and runs there. PHP 8.3 is 42% faster than the versions that came before it. That will make your website run much faster, so you should use it.

With the Version Info plugin, you can find out what version of PHP your site is running. When you activate the plugin, it will show your PHP version in the footer of your WordPress admin panel.

Using Latest PHP Version

PHP is the main computer language used to make WordPress. Since it’s a server-side language, it’s put on your hosting site and runs there. PHP 8.3 is 42% faster than the versions that came before it. That will make your website run much faster, so you should use it.
With the Version Info plugin, you can find out what version of PHP your site is running. When you activate the plugin, it will show your PHP version in the footer of your WordPress admin panel.

If the PHP version on your site is less than 7, you should ask your hosting company to change it for you.

Conclusion

Remember, every second counts. A faster website not only enhances user experience but also boosts your SEO, increases conversions, and builds credibility for your brand. Whether you’re a blogger, business owner, or developer, investing time and resources into WordPress performance optimization will pay off in the long run.
Tinkering with website code and updating plugins and themes come with some risks. Why not let professionals take care of it for you? Whether you need help with SEO improvements, performance optimization, plugin updates, or security monitoring, our experts can handle it all. By partnering with LDNinjas, you can focus on growing your business while we ensure your website remains fast, reliable, and up-to-date.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main reasons for a slow WordPress website?

Some common reasons are big image files, too many plugins, slow hosting, code that hasn’t been optimized, and not enough caching.

What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and do I need one?

A CDN stores your website’s files on various servers around the world. The content is served from the server that is closest to the visitor, which speeds up the loading time. It is strongly suggested for improving speed.

How many plugins are too many for my WordPress site?

There is no magic number, but each plugin makes your site slower. Use only the most important, well-coded plugins. Check for and get rid of useless or unnecessary plugins on a regular basis.

What is the impact of third-party scripts on performance?

Third-party scripts (e.g., ads, analytics, social media widgets) can slow down your site. Limit their use and load them asynchronously to prevent them from blocking page rendering.

Will speeding up my website improve my SEO?

Yes, the speed of a website is a very important factor for search engines like Google. In search results, websites that load faster tend to show up higher.