If you’re looking for simple but effective ways to improve your site speed, then this article is for you! The below suggestions are all quick, easy wins that can help improve your site speed and Core Web Vitals. As a bonus, most of them require zero technical know-how. So read on and get ready to do some site speed spring cleaning!
A few notes before we begin:
- After making any changes to your site (i.e. adding plugins, enabling a CDN, etc), make sure to double check that the site is still loading and functioning correctly in an incognito window.
- To learn more about Journey ads and site speed, here’s an article that goes in depth about our technology and our most frequently asked site speed questions.
Easy wins to help improve your site speed
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Use a caching plugin. Caching plugins help more quickly deliver your site’s pages to users, which can help performance significantly. If you don’t already use a caching plugin, most of them are free and you can set one up in just a few clicks!
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Use a CDN. Many CDNs like Cloudflare are free and provide another layer of caching to make your site even speedier.
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Do a plugin audit. Looking over your plugins and removing any you don’t use or that are redundant can be a simple and effective way to improve performance. For example, you should only need one social share plugin or block library plugin. Even if a plugin doesn’t appear to be slowing things down, trimming your plugin list from 30 to 10 can make a huge difference. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a great article on how to do a plugin self audit.
- Optimize your images and use a Next-Gen image format like WebP. If you see notices in Google Pagespeed Insights referring to images, try out an image optimization plugin to reduce file sizes and convert your images to a Next-Gen format. Next-Gen image formats provide better image compression and quality than older formats like JPG or PNG, and you can convert your images to WebP with a plugin like ShortPixel or Imagify.
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Use web safe fonts. Web safe fonts are typefaces that come preinstalled on the majority of devices, meaning they don’t need to be downloaded when a user accesses a page. Custom fonts and Google fonts can slow things down far more than web safe fonts, even when served locally. Some popular web safe fonts are Arial and Georgia, and you can check out a list of web safe fonts here.
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Disable Comment Avatars. Those small avatars in your comment section can slow things down a surprising amount! You can check if they’re enabled and disable them if so under Settings -> Discussion in Wordpress.
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Enable GZIP or Brotli compression. This allows the server to send smaller files, which has a positive impact on site speed. You can check if your site is using GZIP or Brotli compression by running your site through this compression testing tool. If it’s not, contact your host to have them set that up for you.
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Avoid using iFrame embeds. WordPress 5.7+ lazy loads iFrames, but they are going to slow things down a significant amount no matter what. Some examples of embeds that significantly impact speed are Youtube videos, Instagram embeds, map embeds, calendar embeds, and so on.
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Avoid tracking scripts. Similarly, tracking scripts like Facebook Pixel, Quantcast, and HotJar are some of the heaviest scripts we see on sites. So if you can live without them, it can make a big difference for your site speed.
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Disable Recaptcha. Recaptcha scripts are heavy, so if you’re using a Recaptcha and can live without it or can accomplish the same functionality though an alternative approach, you should see an improvement in site speed.
- Don’t use page builders. Page builder plugins and themes can make customizing your site easier, but they add a lot of extra code to the site’s HTML that can result in a big hit to your site speed. The majority of them also aren’t compatible with Journey ads. Most modern themes have plenty of customization options while being relatively lightweight, so we suggest shopping around for one that suits your site’s needs without hurting performance.
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Use Grow and Hubbub for your user engagement needs. Grow not only allows you to collect valuable first party data from users – it’s also a lightweight full user engagement suite that includes subscribe widgets, search functionality, social sharing, recommended content, and more. Hubbub is also a great option for adding pinterest and social share buttons to your site without sacrificing site speed.
- Examine your hosting service options. A fast and optimized hosting service is paramount to having a speed performant site. If you ever experience long server response times or downtime, it could be time to consider a new hosting service.
And that’s a wrap! Hopefully some of these easy wins will give you a place to start when it comes to improving your site speed.
Also, please keep in mind that you should still feel free to use most of the plugins and tools that add value to your blogging experience – the most important thing at the end of the day is finding a balance between these tools you love and having a well-optimized site.