When trying to position your website better, it’s crucial that the loading speed is as quick as possible. That way, people searching for something you’re trying to position for will find your site easier, since the search engine will take your website into consideration more readily thanks to this aspect and position it higher up. After all, loading speed is one of the most important things that Google crawlers inspect.
However, it’s not uncommon for creators to get overly excited with the use of plugins, especially when they’re working in WordPress. Of course, plugins are a truly great thing that allow us to further customize our website with ease. But, if you install just one too many plugins, especially those that haven’t been updated for months or even years, the chances are that they will only slow down your website and result in poor performance.
WordPress offers several plugins that can be very useful for increasing the loading speed and performance of your website. There are also some tools that let you know the loading speed of your website or blog including pingdom and gtmetrix.
Once you get the results of your loading speed test, you can also install certain plugins that will improve the speed and performance of your website or blog as well. If you’re not sure what plugins to look into first, consider the following.
P3 Plugin Performance Profiler
The function of this plugin is to inform you precisely which elements are the ones that have the greatest weight on your website, thus increasing the loading time. So, it’s recommended that this ends up being the first plugin you install if you want to improve the speed and performance of your website or blog. After analyzing the elements used on the page, the P3 Plugin Performance Profile will offer you a detailed report of each plugin installed to know how much they weigh and, if necessary, should be replaced.
WP-Optimize
WordPress tends to save the data of records and revisions that, in most cases, tends to be unnecessary, generating a weight for the website and the time of loading. In itself, this data is useless; therefore, the best option is to get rid of these records periodically with the WP-Optimize plugin. This plugin is responsible for identifying what are the elements that result in your blog or website loading slower, and allows you to eliminate them.
WP Super Minify
This plugin allows you to reduce the style data of your website/blog, since different JS and CSS files tend to be quite heavy, increasing the loading time. WP-Minify is responsible for compressing these types of files with the intention of optimizing the page in question.
WP Super Cache
When optimizing the speed of your website or blog, it’s essential to add a cache plugin. The function of this plugin is to transform dynamic pages into fixed pages, speeding up the navigation and avoiding multiple server requests. WP Super Cache carries out this work perfectly, and it’s also easily configured. After installing this plugin you will notice a notable decrease in the loading speed of your blog and other web pages.
WP SmushIt
The new website trends push us to be more visual in the design in order to attract users, which leads to accumulating a greater amount of weight on pages. This is an inconvenience when it comes to the goal to improve the speed and performance of your website or blog. Smush.it works on the image compression without affecting their quality, thus reducing the loading time effectively.
