{"id":40305,"date":"2020-10-22T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=40305"},"modified":"2023-10-05T03:11:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T08:11:05","slug":"speed-up-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/speed-up-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website in 20 Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Everyone knows that page speed is important. It\u2019s a confirmed Google ranking factor<\/a> on desktop and mobile, impacts user experience, and can have a direct effect on your bottom line.<\/div>\n

But slow WordPress websites are a common issue.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the mobile score for a page of mine in PageSpeed Insights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before optimization.<\/p><\/div>\n

If we run the entire website through Ahrefs\u2019 Site Audit<\/a>\u2014which shows page load time for all pages\u2014we see that this isn\u2019t the only slow-loading page either. None of them load massively fast, with an average load time of 570ms.<\/p>\n

Before optimization.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now here\u2019s that same page after around 20 minutes of page speed optimization:<\/p>\n

After optimization.<\/p><\/div>\n

And the rest of the pages in Site Audit:<\/p>\n

After optimization.<\/p><\/div>\n

The difference is night and day. The score from PageSpeed Insights is near-perfect, and every page loads pretty fast.<\/p>\n

In this guide, I\u2019ll show you exactly how I did this in a few simple and easy steps.<\/p>\n

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  1. Remove unused plugins<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Switch DNS providers to Cloudflare<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Install a caching plugin<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Minify your code<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Combine CSS and JavaScript files<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Eliminate render-blocking resources<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Lazy-load images and videos<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Optimize Google Fonts<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Enable preloading<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. Use a CDN<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Optimize your images<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    important<\/div>
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    Many of the recommended optimizations below use WPRocket<\/a>, a paid plugin for speeding up your WordPress website. I\u2019ve listed free alternatives where possible, but it\u2019s important to note that plugins can sometimes conflict with each other and cause issues. You should always test how they affect your site in a staging environment before pushing any changes to your live site. Learn how to set up a staging site here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

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