Why Should You Optimize Your Website – 5 Methods, Many I Bet You’ve Never Done

There are so many ways that you can optimize your website, methods that will help your site to rank in search results, that I am betting most of you have never thought to do more than 2 of the following 5 (if any!).

1.) If you are using WordPress CMS (content management system) may need to have the tables optimized so the information you have entered into your website can be retrieved quicker by your visitor’s web browser. This will help your site to load faster.

The older your website, and the more plugins and/or themes you have added and deleted the more necessary this step will need to be done. Reason is that when deleting, some information within the WordPress table will most likely have been left behind.

2.) You should always remove old revisions from all of your posts and pages. What do I mean by this?

Well, each time you either Save (or WordPress autosaves) a post or page, you will find that Save listed below your WordPress dashboard editing box, listed under revisions (see image below).

I discovered this issue last year, when merging two websites into one new domain. Some of my older websites had hundreds of revisions listed. These revisions are unnecessary, and they weight down your website, so, be sure to get rid of them ALL.

3.) Remove spam by deleting it permanently … and always empty your WordPress trash bin too, as these areas works to weigh down your website loading time too.

4.) You should always reduce the size of your files sent from your web server wherever and whenever possible by installing a creditable cache plugin. This plugin should also offer you a means of minifying cascade style sheets (css) and javascript (js) files … and some themes work okay when combining some of these files, while other themes do NOT … so ALWAYS test, test, test.

Using a good cache plugin will help reduce page loading time for repeat visitors and improve your website’s ranking in Google search results.

5.) And now the big one that will seriously improve your website’s ranking; optimize all of your website images. This is a MUST DO. Personally, I prefer to manually optimize my images using tinyjpg.com. However, there are plugins you can add to your WordPress (WP) site that will do this for you automatically, when uploading your images.

My preferred choice of WP theme to use optimizes my images, and I STILL prefer to manually optimize them first. I’ve received compliments regarding how quickly my websites load, and have even been asked what my secret is. Well … I’ve shared my secret(s) with you right here in this post.

BEST TIP: Always back up your website BEFORE performing any changes like those listed here. There are several plugins available to be used. My preference is with All-In -One WP Migration by ServMask.

Fixing Steps 1 through 3

Steps 1 through 3 can easily be done with a plugin of which you can find doing a Google search. My personal favourite is WP-Optimize.

More SECRETS: I do NOT use Auto Clean-up Settings because ANYTHING could go wrong. I prefer to back up my site EACH and EVERY time I use this plugin … and .. you can easily remove this plugin once you’ve completed optimizing your website. DO make sure to remember the plugin name for the next time you need to use it. I make a habit of cleaning up my sites on a regular basis to continue improving their loading time.

For those of you who prefer NOT to use yet another plugin … AND … you know what you are doing when working with your database tables … all you need to do is log into your PHPMyAdmin to manage your database tables. The following video will help you do the optimizing.

If you found this post helpful, please DO share it.

Credit for Header: image by © Iqoncept | Dreamstime.com – Optimize Word Billboard Perfect Revising Optimization Search Cap Photo