After spending countless hours trying to figure out how to speed up our WordPress website and make it load faster, we installed a combination of 7 plugins that made a HUGE difference. This combination of plugins made our WordPress website load much faster on mobile and desktop devices.
1. Asset CleanUp Pro
Asset CleanUp Pro is our top plugin choice to speed up WordPress websites.
This plugin is used to scan webpages and detect loaded assets. All you have to do when editing a page/post is just select the CSS/JS that are not necessary to load, this way reducing the fat that slowing down your loading speed. For example, if you use WP Forms on your website, turn on the scripts supporting WP Forms on pages that don’t have a form. Not loading scripts on pages without forms will speed up the page loading time.
Although it can be time-consuming, you will need to review every webpage and decide which scripts to load or unload. But, if you have the patience and determination we guarantee this plugin will speed up your WordPress website.
We encourage you to consider upgrading to Asset CleanUp Performance Pro for $47 for faster speed.
2.Accelerated Mobile Pages- AMP for WP
According to a study, over 50% of Google search queries worldwide are conducted via mobile devices. Therefore, ensuring that your WordPress site loads quickly and looks great should be a priority. Fortunately, the Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin makes this task much easier.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin for WordPress adds Accelerated Mobile Pages functionality to WordPress websites. AMP is extremely user-friendly, and builds on existing platforms and frameworks. Plus, it’s fully compatible with WordPress.
When someone visits your website on a mobile device, the page will load faster when this plugin is installed, speeding up load times. AMP also provides great experiences across both mobile and desktop for website visitors.
3. Async JavaScript
Async JavaScript stops Javascript from rendering above-the-fold which slows down loading speed. It does this by deferring the Javascript. Async JavaScript gives you full control of which scripts to add an ‘async’ or ‘defer’ attribute to or to exclude to help increase the performance of your WordPress website. Rendering-blocking Javascript impacts your page speed, user’s experience and ultimately your ranking within search engines.
We also recommend adding the following scripts of the head of our webpages:
link rel=”preload” as=”script” href=”critical.js”
link rel=”canonical” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/”
It’s important that you add the “<” before each line and “>” at the end of each line, and change “yourwebsite.com” to your domain name. Preloading critical.js significantly increases loading times and the speed of WordPress websites.
4. Autoptimize
Autoptimize makes optimizing your WordPress website really easy. Use the Autoptimize plugin to:
- aggregate and minify
- cache scripts and styles
- inject CSS in the head of your webpages
- inline critical CSS
- defer aggregated CSS
- move and defer scripts to the footer
- minifY HTML
Although you can optimize and lazy-load images with the Autoptimze plugin, the Shortpixel plugin performs and optimizes images much better. If Google Page Speed Insights alert you that Google Fonts are loading slow, use the Autoptimize plugin to optimize your Google Fonts, async non-aggregated JavaScript, remove WordPress core emoji cruft and more.
Autoptimize CriticalCSS
If you have an older version of the Autoptimize plugin, we encourage you to upgrade the plugin or install Autoptimize CriticalCSS.com Power-Up. This plugin complements the Autoptimze plugin and makes WordPress websites load even faster! Autoptimize version 2.7 and above includes the critical CSS functionality, so there is no need to add and install this power-up any more.
5. Perfmatters
Perfmatters is a light-weight plugin that is designed specifically to speed up WordPress website and page loading speeds. This plugin is easy to use with simple turn on and turn off sliding buttons. The plugin cost $24.95/year but it’s definitely worth the small costs to ensure your website visitors have the best experience.
Brian Jackson, one of the brothers behind Perfmatters was fed up with all the free plugins available that miss the mark on speeding up WordPress websites. Therefore, the plugin has critical features that many plugins are missing.
After installing the Perfmatters plugin and turning off components, it’s important to audit your website. The audit will ensure your website is still working properly. With the right components turned on and off, you will see faster loading times of your WordPress website.
6. ShortPixel Adaptive Images
ShortPixel Adaptive Images resolves image related problems that slow down WordPress websites. We tested several major plugins to optimize our images and ShortPixel outperformed them all. After installing the plugin and optimizing images we saw a significant decrease in page loading times.
Images are important elements of any website but they often slow down pages. With the ShortPixel Adaptive Images plugin, you can have big, beautiful images without sacrificing page speed.
7. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel Image Optimizer compliments the ShortPixel Adaptive Images plugin. Have a lot of images that need compressing? ShortPixel is an easy to use, lightweight, install-and-forget-about-it image optimization plugin that can compress all your past images and PDF documents with a single click.
New images are automatically resized/rescaled and optimized on the fly, in the background. ShortPixel Image Optimizer is also compatible with any gallery, slider or e-commerce plugin.
“Avoid placing images at the top of landing pages to increase page speeds. Place images below the fold, in the middle and at the bottom of webpages to provide the best user experience to your website visitors.”
Global Advertising Charity Network
Further Reading
