Have you noticed your website running kinda slow lately?
There is nothing worse than a website that takes forever to load and I have experienced this more times than I want to admit.
Not only is this a pain in the butt and can really get on your last nerve quick, but it can also have a serious impact on your rankings.
Not to mention that this could also damage your credibility and cause people to leave your site and never come back.
In the following post, I’ll be sharing 5 things you can do to speed up your site and sharing my personal experience with my own website and how I managed to speed things up.
Let’s get started!
5 Things You Can Do To Speed Up Your Website
1. Plugins- The more plugins you have installed, the slower your website will run. Depending on the function of each plugin will determine how much of a strain it will put on your server.
I personally only recommend 5-6 plugins max. If you have more than this, you might want to consider going over these again
Also keep in mind, that if a plugin comes with a bunch of fancy bells and whistles, just imagine how much of a strain this is putting on your server.
I like to refer to the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) method when it comes to installing plugins on your website.
2. Images- This plays a huge role in how fast your website loads and this consists of 3 underlining factors which I’ll list for you guys below!
- File Size- It’s of utmost importance that you try and keep the file sizes of your images at a minimum of 2 megs or under.
- File Type- PNG images seem to work the best for bloggers and this happens to be my file type of choice.
Why should you choose PNG file format or GIF or JPEG?
This particular file format supports lossless data compression and was designed to improve and replace the GIF file format. You can compress a PNG file down without worrying about losing any quality.
- Image Size- Even though you may be compressing your images, you still don’t want large images all over your pages cause these still have to load each time someone clicks on your website.
There are many image compressors available online that you can use to not only compress your images but also optimize them to load quickly on your site.
3. Hosting- There are a vast amount of hosting providers out there ranging anywhere from Go Daddy to Wealthy Affiliate.
Depending on what you’re looking for in a hosting company will determine what kind of hosting package you decide to go with.
Just keep in mind, if you try and go the cheap route you’ll get what you pay for.
These type of hosting plans usually involve shared hosting where they’ll cram several hundred websites on one server.
These include those companies that advertise hosting plans for $10/ month.
Can you imagine how much strain that’s going to put on the server having to load all these websites at once?
Definitely, not a good idea and I would advise you to avoid any kind of shared hosting and go with a more quality hosting package.
There are also a few other things that come into play when it comes to choosing a hosting company for your website which I’ll list for you guys below!
- Server speed- How fast is the processor that your server is on? The last thing you need is to get thrown on a slow server that can’t physically keep up with the demands of your website.
- Server Location- Another key factor that affects the overall speed of your site is the location of the server. Depending on where you live in the world, you should pick the location that’s closest to you.
4. Theme- Do you have a flashy and complex theme that has more bells and whistles than you’ll ever need and do you feel like you need a degree in computer science to master it?
This may look cool to you and you may think this will make your website stand out more, but people don’t land on your website because it looks cool.
As a matter of fact, they could really care less about how it looks!
They are here to read your content and get answers to their questions.
So how can a complex theme slow down your site Scott?
I’m glad you asked!
Depending on the complexity of the theme there is a good chance that your theme could have some bad coding in it.
This will make your hosting server work harder every time someone lands on your site and this could have a negative impact on the overall speed of your site.
Why do you need such a classy and complex theme to display your content in the first place?
You don’t!
This is something that I had to learn the hard way and my business ended up suffering dearly and this nearly wiped out my website altogether.
I thought having a professional and classy looking theme would help my website and take my business to the next level, but instead I ended up going backward.
This had a serious impact on my site speed, how my content was displayed to my visitors, and caused me to lose lots of traffic.
I would hate for you guys to have to go through this and this is where you can learn from my mistakes and avoid going down the same path as I did.
Once again, I like to refer back to the K.I.S.S method when choosing a theme to display my content and I think you guys should as well.
5. Check Your Site Speed- Did you know that Google has a tool that can measure the speed of your site?
Page Speed Insights is a pretty nifty tool that I use quite often to see how well my site is performing and get some insights on what needs to be fixed as well as learn how to improve my overall page speed score.
This grades your website on a scale of 1-100.
It groups your problem areas into 3 categories which I’ll list for you guys below!
- Should Fix
- Consider Fixing
- Passed Rules
I wouldn’t really spend a whole lot of time on this and only fix the basic things.
If there is something you don’t understand, don’t worry about it!
Chances are, that unless you happen to be a computer programmer, or have a computer science degree, most of these issues will likely be over your head.
Most of these issues are over my head and I’ve been involved in this industry for close to 4 years now. You should use this as a guide and try not to get too wrapped up in achieving a perfect score.
My Final Thoughts!!
There are many other factors that will determine your website speed and these are just a couple off the top of my head that I encountered over the past few years that I thought I would share with you guys today.
I could sit here all day and list things that you may be doing to slow your site down, but I’m not going to waste your precious time doing this.
Instead, I would rather point out the ones that matter the most so that you deal with these and get them resolved and continue building out your online empire.
Like I said earlier, having a slow website not only hurts your credibility as an online marketer, it can also have a negative impact on your rankings in Google.
Are you currently experiencing a slow website and feel like pulling your hair out at times?
Trust me, I feel your pain and now how you must be feeling about now and I know this can be a real nightmare.
Let me know all about it in the comments section below along with any other tips you can think of that wasn’t mentioned in this article.
Also, if you have any questions about anything I covered above, please feel free to leave them for me in the comments below as well.
Cheers
~Scott~