Effective Ways to Optimize your WordPress Website Using Free Plugins

Building a website is one thing but making your website easily accessible to visitors and the target audience is another important thing. If you are creating a website using WordPress, then there are lots of plugins you optimize your website with. With these plugins, you can be able to optimize your website’s images and scripts for making your website load faster.

What to do

Before you start installing the plugins which I will list below, there are things that you need to do manually after a website design completion.

Remove inactive pages

The first thing to do is to get rid of inactive pages. This means you will need to delete all pages that are irrelevant especially if you have used a theme and its demo contents.

Remove external links

If you have used a theme and its demo content, it’s possible that there will be some external links especially for images and other multimedia contents pointing to different sources. These links need to be removed and all multimedia content required should be uploaded into the WordPress “media”.

Reduce media attachments sizes

When upload media content such as video and images, reduce the content using any image resize tool of your choice.

Remove unused plugins

Plugins that are not in use should be deleted completely. Aside from that this will reduce the length of time it takes to load unused scripts, it will also make the website less vulnerable to attack, because outdated and unused plugins might have potential vulnerabilities.

Update and upgrade

It is very important to upgrade the CMS core when there is an available update. Outdated plugins should be updated immediately the is an available update that is compatible with the CMS core.

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Generate Sitemap

This is a practice that is commonly ignored by many developers. It is important to generate a sitemap after completion of a website project; search engines need a sitemap for proper indexing of a website’s structure.

Search engine submission

Submitting your website to search engines is very vital, it is actually the first step of search engine optimization (SEO). Do not forget to upload generated sitemap when submitting your website to search engines.

 

Use Plugins for optimization

Some free plugins you can use for optimizing your WordPress website is as follows:

  1. WP Rocket

This plugin is a choice if you are looking for a one-stop all-in-one optimization. WP Rocket minifies CSS and JS, it lazy-loads images, and it is absolutely good for caching. This plugin is also user-friendly and very easy to configure.

  1. WP Fastest cache

This is a free cache plugin which is user-friendly and also easy to configure. It supports CloudFlare integration and has some good rating.

  1. W3 Total Cache

This is a popular cache plugin for enhancing the load speed of a WordPress website. It has an array of useful options and also supports CloudFlare.

The cons of this plugin is that it is typically for intermediate/advanced WordPress users and uninstalling this plugin will require more than just deactivating and deleting.

  1. WP Super Minify

This plugin combines and compresses JavaScript, HTML and CSS files, reducing websites load time. If the plugin is compatible with your WP theme, then it worth installing, else you might have conflict issues.

  1. WP SmushIt

Images can slow down the load time of a website, therefore the optimization of images is very important. This plugin will resize, optimize and compress images, making a website to load faster. It comes handy when you are creating a portfolio website.

  1. BJ Lazy Load
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BJ Lazy Load will optimize your images including resizing them and replacing the content with a placeholder.

  1. P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)

This plugin will evaluate your plugins, detecting which of them has a significant impact on your website’s loading time. With this, you can free your website from bad plugins.

  1. WP-Optimize

Every website accumulates unnecessary data over time, and WP-Optimize will help you trash those unnecessary files, spam, post revisions and other junkies occupying your database. Cleaning up your database junk files will definitely increase website load times. It also has an option for scheduling database clean-up and optimization.

  1. All in One SEO

When you talk about optimization, search engine optimization should also be mention. The All-in-One SEO plugins is a one-stop for SEO. It helps you create keyword and other SEO tweaking. It supports Google Console and Google Analytic integration.

  1. Learn Website Design

Soutech offers professional website design training in a conducive learning environment. The Soutech website design training comprises website design and web development together, structured to turn anyone into a pro web designer within a month.

Click here to read more and enroll.

 

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Author: SouTech Team
Soutech Ventures is primarily an Information Technology Firm, which was created to be the numero uno in business promotion development & implementation, eBusiness & IT systems integration and consultancy industry of the Nigerian Economy and to partners worldwide. Our Core strengths are - Tech Trainings and Certifications - Data Analytics and Cybersecurity Solutions - Software Development & Deployment for SME & Govt. - Tech Internship, HR & Partnerships
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