Posted on March 11, 2022 / by Webmaster / in IT knowledge base

How to optimize a WordPress website for Google ranking?

Everyone knows content is the king on the frontier of search engine optimization (SEO/ Google Ranking). To get views, you need to provide information or answers that are relevant to what the users are searching for. Apparently every website, be it a DIY, template-based WordPress websites or highly custom made websites is doing their best, pouring in a lot of resources to make extraordinary contents in order to fight for a top spot on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). But there is one big contributing factor that has always been overlooked. It is that you need to deliver you page fast.

In this article we’ll talk about boosting WordPress website performance.

Two seconds is the longest the average internet user expects to wait for a page to load

Website performance measures how quickly the pages of a website load and display in the web browser. It is a vital cog in the user experience wheel. A slow loading page will inevitably give your visitors a bad time. As an internet user, you must have experienced that yourself.

Google cares a lot whether its users are getting the best experience. They had factored page loading speed into its ranking algorithm many years ago. Since then businesses must make their website fast on all devices.

Although there is no definitive benchmark for how fast a website must be. The most authoritative opinion is perhaps coming from Google. In 2010, Google stated that a web page must load fully within two seconds for a positive user experience, and this is still widely referenced today.

Simple things that you could to do to optimize your WordPress website

Although it sounds scary. There is not too much works indeed. Within hours, your website will be revitalized with what it needs to load fast. Let’s examine a few basic and simple things that you could do to optimize your WordPress website:

1. Managed WordPress Hosting Service/ Dedicated Server

The web host you choose to power your WordPress site plays a key role in its speed and performance.

WordPress hosting is very similar to web hosting. The only difference is that the servers all meet the latest hardware and software requirements to run this hosting platform. This allows the platform to integrate seamlessly into the server and process data requests through the Internet quickly and efficiently.

With a bigger pool of technical resources, top WordPress web hosting companies normally wouldn’t lag behind in providing support for the latest PHP when they are released. This is important. It means you can always run your WordPress website on the most up-to-date PHP version. Not only is the newest version the most secure, but they also offer many performance improvements. The developers behind it are using better caching, asynchronous processing, etc to eliminate any known or potential bottlenecks and improve code performance.

The next thing you may consider is to upgrade your web hosting to a dedicated server if you are using a shared one. With its single-tenant infrastructure, large amount of space (storage), and extensive processing power ensure you don’t have to worry about issues from sharing resources with and slowing down by other customers.

2. Caching

Caching is the process of creating a static version of your web page and delivering it to your visitors; so they don’t have to wait around for it to load. There is a number of WordPress plug-ins to choose from. Many of them are free. They are easy to install and essentially require no complex setup and configuration. The result is almost instant.

3. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN servers are sometimes also referred to as POPs (points of presence). It is a network of servers located around the globe, designed to keep and deliver copies of your WordPress website’s content. By loading a website from servers that are closer to the user, it reduces the latency between the website’s host and the user’s browser. And hence speed up the loading.

Many CDN providers do not just give your website a performance boost. Along with some useful WordPress website optimization tools/ services, it is very common for them to bundle DDoS Protection, Firewall, and even image optimization in their package as well. It is this easy to set up, all-round security and performance package make CDN the natural choice for optimizing WordPress websites.

4. Image Compression

(Hi-resolution) images are larger in size than plain text. They take longer to load and can slow down your website. Shrinking their file size can eventually improve your website speed. But optimizing every single image sounds like a lot of work. Particularly you might have already had hundreds of images uploaded and being used.

Luckily for every WordPress problem, there is a Plug-in. Such image optimization plug-ins optimize your images by automatically compressing them, keeping their quality and using the smaller sized version. In the blink of an eye, your website is lighter and faster.

5. Lazy Loading

Rich media such as (hi-resolution) images and videos are a must-have for every modern WordPress website today. Unfortunately, they can be heavy and very often they are the biggest contributors to page load time.

Using a Lazy loading plugin is another simple solution to optimize page speed without getting rid any of the rich media in your WordPress website. Lazy Loading avoids unnecessary downloads or code execution by identifying non-critical resources and deferring loading them until they are needed. Thereupon it loads the images and videos only when the user reaches that section.

Again many free plugins can implement the lazy load script on videos and images. You don’t need to go through each media in your library to add the script manually.

Other technical SEO mistakes

We have covered how a sluggish website would give their users a negative experience. We’ll continue to discuss the other most common technical SEO issues which have the largest impact on organic traffic when corrected.

Mismanaged 404 errors

This happens quite a bit on eCommerce sites. When a product is removed or expires, it’s easily forgotten and the page ‘404s’. The best practice is to set up a 301 redirect from the deleted page into another relevant page on your site. This will preserve the SEO equity and make sure users can seamlessly navigate.

Not optimizing the mobile User Experience (UX)

Google’s index is officially mobile first, which means that the algorithm is looking at the mobile version of your site first when ranking for queries.

XML Sitemap issues

An XML Sitemap lists out URLs on your site that you want to be crawled and indexed by search engines. It’s important to optimize properly, particularly on large websites with complicated architectures.

URL Structure issues

As your website grows, it’s easy to lose track of URL structures and hierarchies. Poor structures make it difficult for both users and bots navigate, which will negatively impact your rankings.

Issues with robots.txt file

A Robots.txt file controls how search engines access your website. It’s a commonly misunderstood file that can crush your website’s indexation if misused.

Misuse of canonical tags

A canonical tag (aka ‘rel=canonical’) is a piece of HTML that helps search engines decipher duplicate pages. If you have two pages that are the same (or similar), you can use this tag to tell search engines which page you want to show in search results.

Misuse of robots tags

As well as your robots.txt file, there are also robots tags that can be used in your header code. We see a lot of potential issues with this used at file level and on individual pages. In some cases, we have seen multiple robots tags on the same page.

Not leveraging internal links to pass equity

Internal links help to distribute ‘equity’ across a website. Lots of sites, especially those with thin or irrelevant content tend to have a lower amount of cross-linking within the site content.

Errors with page ‘on page’ markup

Title tags and metadata are some of the most abused code on websites and have been since Google has been crawling websites. With this in mind, site owners have pretty much forgotten about the relevance and importance of title tags and metadata.

Wrapping it up

As search engine algorithms continue to advance, so does the need and skill for technical SEO.

Many of the tasks required for WordPress website optimization can be done by using a plug-and-play plug-in. In most cases you don’t need any IT expertise at all. Yet we have to take note that plug-ins are made by different developers. They may have compatibility issues, particularly with your WordPress theme. And any wrong-doings with the xml sitemap and robots.txt can be disastrous. So you have to be very careful. You always need to check it thoroughly in a separate test environment. And do a proper full backup of your website before carrying out an upgrade or any new installation.