As a WordPress user, you’re probably always looking for ways to speed up your site. After all, a faster site means happier users and lower bounce rates. While there are plenty of plugins that promise to speed up your WordPress site, not all of them live up to their hype. In this article, we’ll show WordPress speed optimization without plugins.
What is speed index in website performance?
The speed index in WordPress site performance is a measure of how fast a website is loading. It is the percentage of total page load time that is spent on the critical elements of the page. Speed index (SI) is a common measure used by webmasters to identify areas where optimization can be done. By using the speed index parameter in Google PageSpeed Insights, you can get real-time insights into how your website is performing.
How can I improve my WordPress website speed?
How do I optimize my WordPress speed? Well improving the WordPress website or lowering the page load time of a WordPress site depends on many factors like the size of PHP files, themes, plugins, media files, hosting, etc.
If a website loads in 12 seconds that means the site is too slow to load and Google will not rank this type of site. Most of the WordPress themes contain unnecessary data in their PHP files that slow down the WordPress website speed.
And server response is an important factor to load a website faster. It hampers website performance when a PHP file tries to do too much at once. But an experienced web developer can overcome these hurdles and make their website load faster.
So, of you want to speed up your WordPress website and increase organic traffic, you must do several things.
You can improve your WordPress speed using plugins, but that is not the perfect solution. WordPress speed optimization without plugins is a more complicated process, but also much more effective.
In this article, we will discuss how to optimize WordPress speed without plugin.
What are website optimization tools?
Website optimization tools are software that allows you to analyze your website and make recommendations on how to improve its speed and performance.
There are many tools available in the market like Google PageSpeed Insights, YSlow, and GTMetrix.
These tools help you analyze the loading time of your website, identify the slowest files, and recommend optimizations to make your website faster.
Using website optimization tools is a more complicated process, but also much more effective.
WordPress speed optimization without plugin
To optimize your WordPress website without plugins, you have to work for many purposes. Below we have discussed how to reduce the page load time of WordPress website without plugin.
#1
Firstly, you have to choose a great WordPress theme that is fast-loading, light-weight, and has a lot of themes to choose from. Choosing a better WordPress theme will reduce your effort on WordPress website speed optimization. Besides premium themes, there are many free WordPress themes, but they are not well-optimized for loading speed. You can check premium WordPress theme shops to get a better theme.
#2
Secondly, check the PHP configuration file. Ensure that the max memory limit has been set appropriately. You must choose a good WordPress hosting provider to host your site. And make sure that the speed of your server can handle the PHP configurations.
#3
Hosting is an important factor in website speed. For best performance, if you can afford VPS hosting, it will give you the best speed performance than shared hosting. You can choose any of the well-reputed managed WordPress hosting companies for that.
#4
You must have to use CDN for better website speed. To choose the best CDN provider you have to check their speed, speed level, disk space, bandwidth, and so on.
#5
Using images and videos on your website is a great idea. However, it is better to not use too many images or videos because they can increase server response times. Another important part is, that you have to use small-size images of good quality.
WebP format can be the best option for a faster website. If you publish videos on your WordPress website, use the MP4 video format instead of MP3 or JPG formats. It will give you better quality and faster loading time. How do I optimize images for WordPress?
image optimization is one of the most important things you can do to speed up your WordPress website.
There are a few simple tips you can follow to optimize your images for WordPress:
1. Use the largest image size possible that still meets your resolution requirements.
2. Use lossless compression when possible.
How do I optimize images in WordPress without plugins?
How do I optimize an image for Web without losing quality? You cannot optimize images in WordPress without plugins. In that case, you can optimize your images with lossless compression by tools like GIMP, Photoshop, or other online tools.
And finally, convert it to WebP format, then get the images uploaded to WordPress. These images you can use to any website other than WordPress.
#6
You have to follow the best WordPress SEO practices, you can get it from WordPress SEO consultants. These include keyword optimization, schema information, and structured data markup. Because they will impact your website speed. You have to ensure that your website is optimized to crawl by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex.
#7
Minifying CSS and JS files is another important step. To avoid server response delays, you must make sure that your CSS and JS files are less than 100 KB in size. JS files are most important, so you have to do more work on them. It will increase WordPress website loading speed.
#8
Google fonts play an important role in WordPress site speed. You have to select the right font like Optima, Montserrat, Lato, Open Sans, and so on. These Google fonts are lightweight and will not slow down your website speed.
#9
The website design is another great factor to consider for speeding up your WordPress site. Using clean, elegant, and minimalist website design will increase your website speed. Using background images/videos or heavy sliders will slow down your WordPress site. Try to design your site simple but pay more attention to the quality of your content and services.
#10
Using HTTPS on WordPress sites will help to improve website speed. To load your site faster, you must use HTTPS. You have to enable SSL for that purpose. With an encrypted connection, the website load time will be faster. You can choose any of the well-reputed SSL hosting providers for that purpose.
#11
Fixing the Broken Links is another essential step to improving your website speed. Using redirects, 301 HTTP response codes, and error pages will help your website to load faster. By fixing the broken links, you can avoid multiple loads on your website.
These are the major parts to optimize which can help you for WordPress performance optimization. You have to follow these tips and tricks to speed up your WordPress website. If you want to be an expert in WordPress website optimization, there are many WordPress speed optimization courses around, you can choose from to enroll.
How to optimize or speed up your WordPress website in a few minutes?
Optimizing a website in a few minutes is not but a joke. But if you want to know a different way other than the above-discussed methods of WordPress speed optimization without plugins, we will suggest you use some WordPress plugins for speed optimization. What is the best WordPress Optimizer Plugin? Here are some good WordPress speed optimization plugins you can choose from:
WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Minify, WP Smush, BJ Lazy Load, WP-Optimize, Autoptimize, ShortPixel, Lazy Load by WP Rocket, Cache Enabler, Asset CleanUp, Compress JPEG & PNG Images, WP YouTube Lyte, Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket, OMGF, WP User Avatar, AMP For WP, EWWW Image Optimizer etc.
Will deactivated plugins slow down WordPress?
Deactivating plugins always reduces the size of your WordPress site. That means less plugin ensures better load time of the website. So every WordPress site owner should use plugins as less as possible. It will increase the website speed a lot. But who has limitations and needs to use plugins to speed up a WordPress website, he should be very careful and choosy to use plugins and configure them well to get the better performance.
How do I make my photos SEO-friendly?
How do I optimize images for SEO? Do image ALT tags help SEO? SEO-friendly images mean high-quality images that are optimized for search engine visibility. Firstly you need a unique image for SEO. If you do not have unique images, you have to modify them and make them unique.
To make an image SEO-optimized, you have to perform the below tasks:
a. Keep size in below 50KB
b. Save in WebP format
c. Optimize filename with keyword
d. Optimize alt tags with keywords
e. Optimize image title with keyword
f. Add image structured data
g. Using site maps
For a WordPress website, You can use WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your images for better SEO. There are many SEO plugins that you can use to optimize your images.
Does WordPress automatically optimize images?
When you upload a JPEG image to the WordPress site, WordPress automatically compresses the image up to 90% to make it smaller. This optimization happens as soon as the image is uploaded, without your intervention. option when you upload a new image.
How do I stop WordPress from resizing images?
There are a few different ways to stop WordPress from resizing images. The easiest way to disable the default WordPress image sizes configuration is from within the dashboard GUI. To do that, you have to go to Settings from the WordPress Dashboard, then go to Media, and then trace the Media Settings after that go to Image sizes. In image size settings, just delete all the image sizes and type zero and click Save changes, the task is done.
Should I compress images before uploading to WordPress?
How do I optimize images in WordPress without plugins? Image compression is not mandatory, but you may make the image unique and keep the size under 50KB then save it in WebP format before uploading to WordPress. Like this, you can manually optimize images for WordPress and you won’t need any other compression.
How do I optimize an image for the Web without losing quality?
How do I reduce image file size without losing quality? How do you optimize images for Web and performance? Well, you may use photoshop to resize the image and save for web it in JPEG format under 50KB. Then you may convert the image into WebP format. It will lower your image size and won’t lose the image quality. To convert in WebP format, you can get many free online converters.
Is TIFF better than PNG?
For SEO PNG format is better than TIFF format because of its low file size. But the recommended format for the best SEO practices in 2022 is WebP. Both formats have their own advantages and disadvantages. PNG is better when you want to use transparency, TIFF is better for print.
Why is PNG bad for SEO?
PNG file format is not recommended for SEO because it is large in size which impacts badly on WebPage loading. Plus, it also lacks in quality when compressed.
Is PNG or JPEG better for websites? Is JPG or PNG better for SEO? Ofcourse, JPEG is better for SEO than PNG. But the best option is WebP.
Which plugin is best for image optimization?
Using plugins for image optimization is not recommended. Because plugins optimize all images for the same configurations. Also, sometimes plugins can be conflicting and cause problems. It is better to optimize images manually.
Still if you want to use WordPress plugins for image optimization you can use WP Smush, Tiny PNG, Ewww image optimizer etc.
Is WP Smush good?
WP Smush plugin is one of the best WordPress plugins for image optimization. It can compress your images without losing quality.
Is Tiny PNG safe?
Tiny PNG is another reputed plugin for image optimization. It is very safe and it doesn’t contain any viruses or malware.
Is Ewww image optimizer free?
No, Ewww image optimizer is not free. But it is a good plugin for image optimization and it is free to try.
Is WebP good for SEO?
WebP format was invented by Google as a better alternative to JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. WebP is one of the recommended image formats by Google. WebP compresses 26% of image size than PNG. WebP is a new image format that is recommended for SEO. It is lossless and has better compression than JPEG.
How do I use WebP in WordPress?
To use WebP in WordPress, you first need to install the WebP plugin. Then you can use the WebP conversion feature in the WP Smush plugin.
What is a good page speed for SEO?
Does Page Speed affect SEO? Page speed is the most important factor for SEO. A fast page speed will help your website load faster and improve your ranking in search engines. Even if you have a great website with content, design, and SEO, and the page speed is bad, your site won’t rank on google well. The best page speed of a website is considered as 2 seconds or below 2 seconds. Fast loading pages are the key to success for SEO. So, the better search engine ranking deserves a lower page loading time; even than 2 seconds.
How do I check my WordPress speed?
How can I check my website speed for free? WordPress website speed test can be checked at gtmetrix.com or pingdom.com. Here you can test speed not only for WordPress but also for any website.
How do I fix the first-byte time in WordPress?
To fix the first-byte time in WordPress, you can use the w3 Total Cache plugin.
TTFB can have a significant impact on your overall page speed, so it’s important to keep an eye on it and optimize it to improve your Core Web Vitals grades. Google recommended Time to First Byte (TTFB) is below 200 ms.
The major reasons for slow TTFB are Network latency, High web traffic, Server configuration and performance, Dynamic content, and DNS response time. TTFB can be measured at GTmetrix.com, Pingdom.com, and KeyCDN’s online Web Performance Test.
There are many ways to fix the first-byte time, such as:
Ensure the fastest web hosting, Using Caching tool/plugin, using Gzip compression, Database optimization, Using CDN, updated themes and plugins, reducing queries, using premium dns service, and keeping the PHP version updated.
If you can take care of the above matters, you will be able to reduce the TTFB for sure.
How to speed up a WordPress site on mobile?
To speed up the WordPress site on mobile you can follow the below tasks:
- Allow only necessary content for mobile visitors
- Optimize images with WebP format
- Keep the website design simple
- Always keep updated on the WordPress theme and plugins (use plugins as less as possible)
- Use a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, or WP Rocket and configure the caching plugin well.
What should you avoid when developing a search-optimized website?
A search-optimized website must avoid the following:
- Plagiarized content
- The tendency of placing many ads
- Using hidden text or links
- Keep tracking of spamming user-generated contents
- Using of Cloaking
- Negative SEO
- Black-hat link building
- Buying links instead of earning links
- Using guest posting as a way to stuff links
- Misusing anchors to float
- Exchanging links
- Relying on automated comments to get links
- Creating PBNs
FAQ
If you are interested to generate organic traffic from search engines, you need to optimize your website. The most important factors for SEO are good content, on-page optimization, and backlinking. These are the three pillars of SEO and if any one of them is not done well, your website will not rank well in the search engines.
To speed up website optimization, you can use Google’s Tools. You can also use a content analysis tool to help you identify where your website needs improvement.
Should you use Alt tags? How do I write an Alt tag for SEO? Well, alt text is essentially a text description for an image. It can be used on your website to provide a more detailed or concise description of the image, which can help improve SEO.
Google’s developed image format WebP is the best format for SEO.
WordPress helps you keep all the information in your photos when you upload them onto your website. It will also extract the Exif data to make it available for plugin developers, so they can make the most of your photos. As WordPress uploads images, it automatically creates several differently sized versions of the image in addition to the Full-Size image.
I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.