How to speed up a WordPress site. Obviously, the rule also applies to sites made in WordPress. The question arises: how do you speed up a site in WordPress?
First, you need to check how fast (or slow) your WordPress site actually is. There are many tools to check this parameter: we recommend Google Page Speed and GT Metrix. The ideal loading time is around 4-5 seconds on average, so if you exceed this value, get to work immediately. Otherwise, the SEO optimization will be compromised. Here are some useful tips.
Delete Unnecessary Plugins and Widgets
Check which plugins you actually need and delete (as well as disable them) the ones you don’t use. Don’t abuse widgets: they are comfortable and effective, but it’s best to replace them with a lighter HTML.
Compression
Zippate elements such as CSS, Javascript, and HTML code. Just enter this command in the ht access file:
# Gzip
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text / text text / html text / plain text / xml text / css application / x-javascript application / javascript
#End Gzip
Alternatively, place this string at the beginning of your page code:
<? php if (substr_count ($ _ SERVER [‘HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING’], ‘gzip’)) ob_start (“ob_gzhandler”); else ob_start (); ?>
On Gid Network you will be able to check if you have obtained the desired result: from the hypothetical 40 kb of weight now the site will have dropped to 8kb! The zip, in fact, reduces the weight by about 80%.
Minify CSS and Javascript
Thanks to services such as Minify CSS and Minify Javascript, the style and script sheet will be automatically optimized. Unnecessary spaces and comments will disappear, so keep a copy of the original if you want to edit it more easily in the future.
Optimize the Images and Use the Height / Width tags
Reduce the size of the images, lower the quality as much as possible and enter the width and height: by communicating the correct values of the images, the browser will already know them and will not have to ‘imagine’ them, slowing down the download.
Reduce HTTP
calls The more internal or external calls to the server are made, the slower the site is. To reduce them, combine all CSS and Javascript into one, don’t overdo it with menu items and internal links.
More HTML and Less PHP
Html pages are lighter. Therefore, where possible, replace PHP strings with HTML ones.
These are the questions that many companies or businesses ask themselves when their website is not visible on Google and the main search engines, thus becoming an empty and meaningless container.
But there is an answer to everything and obviously, these questions are no exception. Any freelance SEO should list the main reasons why a site is not visible on Google:
The title, description, and keywords of the site, the first data that search engines fetch and display in their results (when you search on Google for any keyword, the title and then the description of the site appear in the results it returns together with the web address), do not contain the right terms and are therefore not optimized. For example, the correct title could be “Shoe sale”, and the description should contain related terms with related keywords: “Sale of men’s and women’s shoes at competitive prices in Milan. Discover our offers now “
For example, if we talk about “men’s shoe sales”, the right URL is www.nomesito.it/vendita-scarpe-da-uomo/. In jargon, in this case, we speak of “pretty URL”.
The source code of the pages (HTML, PHP, asp, etc …) is not clean and lean. It could contain flash animations (visually impactful but not indexable) or be made with obsolete programming languages. In short, it does not respect the parameters appreciated today by search engines.
The site was not reported to search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).
The texts are not written correctly, professionally, nor properly formatted, or they are too small. They may contain either too many or too few keywords or even have irrelevant keywords inside.
The images do not contain an adequate and optimized title, the so-called “ alt ” command
It is not present on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Having a profile and activity page on social networks and populating it with interesting content helps both the positioning and the popularity of the brand.
