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A Look at How to Optimise a Word Press Site for SEO

If you own a Word Press website and you’re concerned with its speed, or you’re just looking to get the best possible rankings by optimisation your website, keep on reading, because these are the topics that I am about to explore.

Your ranking performance will be affected by the speed of your site, so in this article we look at how you can reduce the speed of a Word Press site to achieve higher search engine rankings. The article will provide tips I’ve gathered from my 6 years of experience creating WordPress websites.

Let’s see how to optimise a Word Press website for SEO.

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Enable Gzip Compression – By enabling Gzip compression for your JavaScript files, CSS and images, the size of data that is transmitted between the users and your server will be decreased. By enabling this, before the content is transmitted, the JavaScript files, CSS and images are compressed by the server reducing their size, but more importantly, reducing the loading time of your website. The process is quite simple, but extremely efficient and I encourage you to enable it for your Word Press website. Find out how to do this from Google Developers.

Minify CSS and JavaScript – When the user visits your Word Press site, what happens is this: the user’s computer will send a request for JavaScript and CSS files, and the server will send it back. Of course, you won’t have a single user visiting your page. When there are more requests, there is more pressure on the server and your page load time is affected. This can be easily changed with many different tools that are available online. These tools are used to minify JavaScript and CSS files by removing unnecessary comments, double spaces, whitespace, empty new lines, etc. I strongly suggest you to do this if you want to reduce the page load time. Find out how to do this from Google Developers.

Enable Browser Caching – By enabling browser caching, you will allow the users of your Word Press site to store a cached copy locally, this way the loading time will be much faster as you are calling them from your computer, and not having to re-download them each time you access the website. If you need professional assistance to optimise a Word Press site for SEO, simply get in touch or, to find out how to do this yourself, visit Google Developers.

Install a Cache Plugin – When it comes to page loading time and its improvement, one of the most effective ways to speed things up is by installing a cache plugin such as WP Super Cache, for instance. Once you do this, instead of publishing dynamic HTML files, you will be allowed to publish static files. When there are no commands to be executed, such as MySQL command, or PHP one, the time that it required for a page to load will be significantly reduced. There are many caching plugins that are available for free, and some of the most popular ones are W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache.

Use CDN (Content Delivery Network) – Content delivery networks are the server networks. On all their location nodes, these networks will duplicate your website. What this means is that when a visitor request your website, it won’t be served by your hosting provider’s main data centre, but with the closest server location. One of the most popular CDN’s is CloudFlare.

Select the Right WordPress Theme – Choosing the right Word Press theme is crucial for the loading time. If you’re looking for a free or premium theme, I suggest you choose one which is properly coded, and when it comes to design, I encourage you to choose a responsive design. It will improve user experience, and it is also favoured by search engines. If however you’re after a custom Word Press theme, then you’ve come to the right place as we specialise in custom themes for Word Press and ensure all the measures mentioned in this article are applied to deliver speed optimised websites for our clients.

Conclusion

If you want to get the best possible rankings for your Word Press website, or want to improve the loading speed, there are a few things you should do; enable Gzip compression, minify CSS and JavaScript, enable browser caching, install a cache plugin, use CDN and insure you have a fast WordPress theme. By doing these things, your rankings and loading speed will significantly improve.

To speed up the loading time and get the best possible rankings for your Word Press website, pick up the phone and give me a call on 07 55 687 515.

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