How is the speed of your small business website?
Not sure!?
Since it is very important for both users & Google, let’s find out!
* Go to Pingdom or GTmetrix & put in your url.
Is your load time less than 2 seconds? NO? Then you have some work to do to speed up WordPress! Of course there are specific recommendations in those reports, but here are some quick things you can do that apply to nearly every website . . .
1) Images
Without a doubt, you have some images that are too big. If they are just a little bloated, you can install & use the WP Smush plugin. There is a bulk feature & it should smush images as you add them as well. Be sure to check it every so often – you might have to do a couple images one at a time if it missed them.
If any of your images are larger than 1 MB, you will have to resize by hand in an image editing program. (I like Pixelmator.) Decrease both the resolution & the image size. For most websites, all you really need is 75 pixels/inch, with the biggest dimension being about 600 pixels (width or height, whichever is larger).
2) Install & use a caching plugin
WP Super Cache is good for beginners or W3 Total Cache offers more options for advanced users.
3) Install & use a database optimization plugin
WP-Optimize is good for beginners or WP-DBManager offers more options for advanced users.
Bonus Step! – Delete anything you don’t need
Click on each part in WordPress and tidy things up. Look for & delete spam, old plugins, old themes, old images, etc.
* Now go to Pingdom or GTmetrix again & put in your url.
How much improvement do you see?
If you still need to speed up WordPress even more, there are some fixes that take longer such as:
- Switch to a better host
- Switch to a better theme
Of course these are best done as part of a website makeover project – thinking you might want help with one soon? Or maybe you even want to hire someone to do the easy steps for you so you can focus on your genius work. Let’s talk about it.