Tips to Increase Blog Speed – The number of blogs has skyrocketed over recent years. Today, many celebrities, politicians, and business owners have their own virtual diaries. WP-based blogs alone account for 70 million new posts every day. People browse a huge number of sites in search of news and useful information on a variety of topics. Many of them have dozens of blogs in their RSS feed, which they regularly read with pleasure.

On the other hand, for many, blogging is not just a hobby or a way to share interesting and useful information with others, it is also a source of permanent basic income. Running your own blog is not an easy task. It requires creative thinking, self-discipline, responsibility, and analytical skills. How to make your blog popular and visited? You will need to promote the resource. Blog promotion is impossible without search engine optimization. And the site’s loading speed performs a key role in this process. Let’s have a closer look at it.

Why is a Site Slow?

There are many factors that prevent your content from fast loading.

Low server capacity

A server, like a PC, may not have enough RAM, cores, or processor power to handle incoming data. How is it solved? If there are problems with the server, you just need to change the service provider, that is, your hosting.

Heavy files

It refers to everything from JS and CSS to fonts and images. All visuals on the site should be carefully minimized. It is one of the keys to fast page loading.

Slow CMS

This factor is relevant only if you are using a little-known engine. If you have a site on WP, Joomla, Drupal, and so on, there is no need to worry about their performance.

To evaluate the server response speed and data loading time, you can use Google Page Speed. This app will provide you with details about server response time and content display time, as well as basic errors that prevent fast loading. If the site is in the green zone, it is a good sign. But the yellow or red result alarms that it’s time to take some action.

How to Optimize Site Speed?

Your blog speed or performance can be improved. It is not as difficult as it may seem. Here are six methods that do not require special technical skills.

Use Efficient Hosting

Lack of hosting resources is the biggest problem for small blogs. Sometimes, it is more cost-effective to increase the speed of the disk system and CPU by switching to a tariff with advanced features. This is especially critical if your blog has many interactive features, visuals, and multimedia elements. Efficient hosting means increased disk space, bandwidth, high availability, tech support, and extra security features.

 Improve Codes

There are several ways of coding a site to boost its performance at no cost. First of all, experts advise placing the CSS code at the beginning of the page and placing scripts at the end of the page. It will enable the browser to start rendering the page even before all scripts are launched as they may not be fast at all. It is advisable to avoid inline CSS and JS code. In this case, browsers will cache the external resources, which will save loading time. Also, JS and CSS should be minified — you can do this using ready-made tools.

Use Caching Plugins

Blog owners often overdo with plugins, while it is not recommended to use more than ten. Extra plugins do not always slow down the site. But their constant updates are annoying and risky for resource security. Caching plugins is a great solution as they boost site performance. There is a huge variety of plugins. You need to choose an appropriate one for your blog. W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache will work well for WP-based blogs. JotCache is recommended for Joomla sites.

Use CDN for Downloading Popular JavaScript Libraries

Content Delivery Network consists of a large number of servers located around the globe. This technology uses certain metrics to choose a server that will deliver content to the client at the highest possible speed. Most often, it has the shortest response time. Besides, the browser caches JavaScript to avoid reloading the library. By reducing the distance between two points, you offload your server and reduce the time needed for your content to load. Another advantage is CDN image hosting and its ability to optimize the content: compress texts and illustrations. All images, JavaScript and CSS files are often migrated to the file uploader service, leaving only the HTML file on the main server.

Compress Graphics and Change File Extensions

The site loading speed can increase without affecting its visual appeal if you follow these simple content transformation tips:

  • Delete unnecessary pictures. Where possible, use text instead of heavy graphics.
  • Give preference to the JPEG format as it can be compressed without quality loss. Compression by 25-40% will make the image much lighter while there will be no visual distortion.
  • Don’t overuse PNG files.
  • Clean elements from digital junk (comments and unnecessary palettes).

Use Gzip for Compression

It is a simple method of compressing site files to save bandwidth and speed up loading. With Gzip, files are compressed into an archive, which the browser can download faster, and then decompress to display the content. However, there is a small nuance to take into account. This process can overload the server, so it is recommended to check the resource loading speed before and after enabling Gzip. You can check if compression is enabled with the PageSpeed tool.

Blog loading speed is a very important parameter if you want your resource to remain competitive. High speed will not only improve the flow of visitors to your blog but will also help you bypass competitors and reach the top of search results. We have described several simple methods to boost your website loading speed. However, even these techniques will effectively complete the task.