Ever wondered why your WordPress site has suddenly slowed down? How fast should your website be? And what is an accurate loading time? Well, these questions are crucial when it comes to have a better website ranking and engage with your potential clients. It is a well-known fact that the ideal load time for letting your site rank on the top should not exceed more than 3 seconds.
In this article, we will be looking at a few common mistakes made by the WordPress developers that can ruin your chances of getting higher ranks on the search engines and how you can actually overcome it.
Not Minifying the HTML, CSS and JavaScript files
We are aware of the code optimization for a website as it helps to remove all of the unwanted code from the HTML, CSS, and JS parts including the lines, comments, and white spaces. By taking the preferred actions, your site is much likely to improve its load time.
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How to resolve it?
A recent study has reported that when analyzed upon only 32% out of 150k websites have minified their JS and CSS files in order to improve their web performance. There are themes and plugins available in the market for minifying the files and improve your search results.
Redirecting to multiple HTTP requests
Your WordPress website is not a static entity, but it grows and changes as the time passes by. That is the reason why we need to keep a neat structure to maintain the health of the website.
How to resolve it?
It is well experienced that the more links your site is redirecting, this delays the load time of the users who are waiting to land on the desired page. To get a piece of detailed information on how you can avoid landing page redirects, here’s a quick guide.
The Static page Resources are not well cached
All of the HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript files that help to make your pages appear attractive and effective are defined as the static resources or core resources for every website. But this can be urn out into a quick burden on web performance if you do not prefer to cache them.
How to resolve it?
The very first method is trying to make the web pages load faster by caching them with the help of premium caching tools. WP Rocket is one of the best cache plugins that make your site run at a faster speed.
Not optimizing your Images
This is one of the bitterest topics for all people who want to deal with web performance optimization. But there is no other way around and hence before uploading any new images or reconsidering the old ones, you need to check whether they are perfectly optimized for a quick loading page.
How to resolve it?
To get an appropriate image optimization, you need to implement some essential tips on how you can boost the image loading process. Try to reduce the image weight, resize them as per the real size requirement on your pages and apply for the LazyLoading scripts.
Going for Cheap hosting options
When we speak about the hosting provides, cheap and free sounds tempting. But have you given a thought on how badly it can affect your website? Well, a cheap hosting plan comes with a lot of restrictions that end up hurting your website and oblige you to upgrade to an advanced plan.
How to resolve it?
When it comes to selecting a hosting provider, you need to look in an account of a few features such as company reputation, hardware, scalability and extra supporting features as per the needs of your site.
Using a traditional version of PHP
PHP is used as a server-side coding language for all of the WordPress websites. It is an evolving code because the more efficient your PHP version is there are higher chances of your website to perform faster.
How to resolve it?
Just by updating your PHP support version to the latest version, you will notice a big difference. The latest version of PHP 7.3 was released in the year 2018; so check if your website is compliant with it.
Not checking Website speed on a regular basis
Many website admins make this mistake collectively but it can strongly result in bad results. Once you get to know how to check your website speed, it is vital to do it on a consistent basis.
How to resolve it?
Speed testing should be repeated on regular intervals or at times when you are installing any new theme/plugins, advanced features or making changes in your code. This can help to get an idea of the factors affecting your speed. You can use a range of tools available in the market form free to premium versions of them.
Wrap Up
Here, we come to the end of the article. We hope you have learned about how you can avoid these mistakes to improve your website Performace and rankings. Keep Learning!