How to Fix Pages that Have Slow Load Speed
How to Fix Pages that Have Slow Load Speed Website speed is important because your load speed is a search engine ranking factor. In 2018, Google has announced that your page speed is going to affect how high you are ranked on their search results page.
While this is not a major factor, Google tends to send people to websites that are fast and well-maintained. They don’t want to send their users to websites that are slow which is why website speed has become a ranking factor.
There are a few things that cause slow load speed in websites.
Firstly, WordPress itself is going to create a slower website than just a regular HTML website because there’s so much coding involved. It makes WordPress sites easy to use, create and maintain but that comes at a price which is slower load speed.
If you have this issue, the first thing I would recommend you to do is to rerun your audit; because there are cases where it could just be that the server got hung up. This can occur especially if you only have one or two pages that have slower load speed than others.
If you have about 25% of all your pages that are coming back with a slow load speed or more, then it’s something that you’re going to need to address.
To do that, the first thing you want to do is go to your WordPress dashboard and go to Updates.
Once you log in, Click on Updates on the left-side menu:
This section will show you what portions of your site need to be updated. The first thing you want to check is your version of WordPress. If you are running an old version of WordPress, then it is best to upgrade that right away.
Check whether the version of your WordPress is outdated:
Next, Look at the Plugins section. If you have plugins that need to be updated, then you’d also want to update those.
And then finally, Themes. If you see old themes that are not updated, delete them and only keep the new and updated ones.
Look at your list of themes and make sure they are up-to-date:
The reason you want to keep the newest one is in case something happens to the theme that you’re currently using, WordPress can then default to this one.
If you don’t have any other themes installed, your website will just completely break. That’s really the only reason for keeping any of those active.
Make sure everything is up-to-date.
Next, head over to the Plugins option at the left-side menu. How many plugins are you using?
Plugins are great as they extend the functionality of WordPress and they provide some cool features to your site. However, they tend to slow a site down too.
So my advice, if you have lots of plugins that you don’t necessarily need, try to get rid of them or do a little research when you’re choosing plugins.
Click on Plugins on the left-side menu to see the list of Plugins that you’re currently running:
We’ve created a video on how to choose the right plugins for your site because having too many plugins will only contribute to slow load speed of your pages.
Some plugins are bigger than the others and take up more space causing your website to become slower.
We’ve also created a tutorial on the best WordPress Themes that can help improve the speed of your website. Some of the drag-and-drop themes from the Visual builder category are great but they can slow down loading speed.
Your website host can also be a factor when it comes to website speed. There can be a significant difference between web hosts and the general rule of thumb is: the cheaper the web host, the slower your loading speed is going to be.
What some hosts do in order to make hosting cheaper is they put a bunch of different websites on one server and they will load it up until that server is essentially full until they can’t fit anymore.
You might think that you’re saving a lot of bucks on cheap web hosts, but you’re also compromising on quality and speed.
So again, check out our tutorials and recommendations on the best web hosts, plugins, and themes that can help improve website speed.
Lastly, if you want to check your current website speed, go to Google Page Speed Insights and type in your domain name including the https and www.
Insert it and click on Analyze. This will take a few seconds to run before coming back with a score both for mobile and desktop.
In the image above, it scored a 43 on mobile and is labeled red which puts it in the lowest category. This is actually not a bad score for mobile. I have never seen a mobile score in 90 to a hundred so if you’re over 50 on mobile then that should be good.
Google PageSpeed Insights Mobile Speed test result:
If you’re down in the single digits, then you should start looking at addressing some issues because that is a poor score. You might also want to start looking at a faster web host.
Desktop scores are usually a little faster. In the results below, we got a score of 85 which is great.
Google PageSpeed Insights Desktop Speed test result:
It’s quite rare to see a score of 90 to 100. I often see desktop ranges in the 40-60 score range. Even getting a score of 70 is already pretty good.
If you have a desktop score that’s below 20 then again, you’d probably want to start to think about going with a different web host. If you think that the web host is not the problem, then chances are, it’s going to be your WordPress theme. You’re probably using either a heavy theme or an old and dated theme. As themes get older, they tend to have problems.
So, those are the issues that you want to look at, Again, If you have any questions, check out our video tutorials on hosting, themes and plugins or submit a ticket so we can take a look at your specific issues at hand.