How To Optimize WordPress For Better Ranking and Site Performance

                      
Hello  WordPress Fans, here is another comprehensive WordPress Article from me to you. This ain’t my first, second or third article on WordPress and this should prove to you that WordPress is the Order of the day and at the same time you gotta believe me when I boldly tell you

that this article is what you really need when it comes to WordPress Optimization, and Focusing on optimizing your blog may and have proved so many positive results in different ways which you might not even know. It helps in so many ways like ranking, user experience and online money making [e.g, AdSense]
Most WordPress Fans face lots of issues regarding there websites and it makes most of em’ wanna quit the blogging world. There are some situation where by you WebHosting Company will suddenly shut your site down due to Over use of their resources and might urge you to consider upgrading your hosting plan to the best which can hold your site resource consumption. You might fall for this simply because you lack some knowledge about WordPress Optimization and most of this webhosting companies wanna use your ignorance[sorry] to make some extra bucks.

So If you allow me to share some useful hacks or tricks on WordPress Optimization, then I guess you gonna thanks me later on this because we gonna be troubleshooting stuffs which will result in decrease page loading time,  database optimization, memory/data usage problems and lots more.
Oops! OK, Lets Do This and before we move on, I would simply love you to check the current status of your site via some online tools for site metrics which I also use occasionally . They are GTMetrix, FeedTheBot[Now Varvy.com]  or Google PageSpeed Insight [Powered By Google Inc]. To do that just open those links and input your site URL and generate its report and you can either save the page or just leave it opened for you to refer to after implementing my Optimization Hacks.

Here Are My Take On WordPress Optimization

1.  Choose The Right Hosting Plan/Package
Most people miss it here in a big way. Why? , simply because they find it hard to do lots of research based on what their online presence would/might eventually turn to as time goes on. We can’t just say we jump into any webhosting companies website and go ahead to order things that might turn against us. I have seen some servers taking ages to process HTTP requests, High CPU consumption, memory and MySQL commands. Just like I recommended you checking your site’s performance with the above listed tools, they gonna give you the results you need in a jiffy.
Many Webhosting Companies are out there to make fame, names but they end up flopping because they didn’t provide what they flaunt. You might believe in seeing just characters like UNLIMITED in the hosting packages of your choice, but today I want you to know that no webhosting provides an unlimited resources to anyone. Believe me, Its all limited. Every resources provided has its own quota. Am not discouraging you going for them and am not saying Hosting Companies with Affordable Hosting Plan Price can’t offer a great Service but the only help which can be great for everyone is the Optimization  about any of your choice and If you really wanna enjoy WordPress, they offer Optimized WordPress based Hosting. Give a Shot To Arvixe and Hostwind .

 Hosting Servers may sometimes not be the cause as all the problems you are facing because we still have server been powered by very powerful and optimized hardware to meet up with every consumers need. So If they aren’t the cause then I think we should consider my next take on WordPress Optimization.
HOT TIP: If You feel your site is somehow pissing you off, I would advice you to make use of the tools above and test other sites who render your niches or even use almost the properties of your site [i.e themes, plugins] and compare its metrics to yours.
2.  Using A Fast and Optimized WordPress Theme
Yes, We all love cool design and I have recently wrote on Guides On Selecting Suitable Themes For Your WordPress Blog and you might also just found yourself on some blogs of which you gonna fall for its operation and yet you don’t know how to get such theme.. Now that we have seen the theme which we love, its also cool to run an optimization test on such theme by using its demo site’s URL.
I also want you know that choosing the right optimized theme for your WordPress site can as well save a lot of trouble. We have thousands of themes out there of which they lack proper coding and if you end up having them activated on your site, your site performance will draw backward and have a negative impact on loading time, speed and end user experience.
I think I said optimized? yeah. what I meant is that you need a well coded theme that has the following properties:
⇒Optimized For SEO
⇒Fast Loading Speed
⇒Optimized To Best Fit Any Device Display on PC, Mobile Devices, Tablets
⇒Ability to win the heart of search engine so as to rank better
According to my research, I figured out that about 80% of Internet users access the web through Mobile and here is a reason for you to optimized your mobile version. If your theme is not mobile friendly enough, you can consider trying Carrington Mobile Theme. Read How To Configure it Here.
3. Enable Gzip Compression and Check Its Status
Gzip is an advance technology which has been of great value to every website owner only if you need a faster speed to rank higher in search engines. Gzip Compression simply allow any accessed web page to be transferred to a browser at up to 60% of its original size and will force all browser to decompress the page and display to end users.
To Enable Gzip via WordPress. Simply add the following code below to your .htaccess file [Can be found in your WordPress Root Directory]

mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*

If you found the above coding stressful or too technical, then I have another option for you based on plugin. You can simply install the Plugin Called GZip Ninja Speed Compression . You can simply search through your WP Add New Plugin Dashboard. Install, Activate and That’s All.
After You are done with any of the above steps, we need to simply check if its working. Remembered I made mention of some online optimization tool? Yeah. Simply go to launch https://varvy.com/tools/gzip/ in a new browser tab and enter your site URL to test . Varvy.Com is not affiliated with Google but I boldly recommend the site. Its all you need . Thanks me later
4. Monitor The Use Of Plugins

Hmm. This aspect has a positive and negative impact on your WordPress Site. Its Negative effect is more than its positive effect, but we gonna be talking on some issues and fix.
Believe me, Plugins are simply one of the greatest cause of Website Malfunction which might end up resulting in Higher Consumption of your WebHosting Resources. I have seen so many people install plugins anyhow and I want you to know today that the more plugins you have, the more technical problem you gonna end up facing.
Most plugin has to connect to the database and trigger requests at all time and this will slow your site down and consume your limited hosting resources in time. According to my research, after theme issues are solved or looked into, the next thing you should do is to check on plugins that might cause issues with on your site. Yes, WordPress is flexible and that’s why we have Thousands of Plugin Coders in the Repo and do you know most of them were not coded well. Once this plugins reacts with your database or server response, it simply breaks the CPU due to regular processes and this can eventually shut your site off.
I Want you to learn from what I do when it comes to plugin. As for me, I might have installed varieties of plugins, but once I come across a particular plugin which can offer me the properties of about 3 to 4 plugins, then I rather have the former ones uninstalled. What do I mean? Ok. Lets take for example, the popular WordPress SEO Plugin, the Yoast Plugin which has at least almost all we need to achieve SEO. Yoast has the SiteMap ability for submission to search engine Optimization, now let me ask you, do you need need any other sitemap plugin? the answer is NO. So use plugins that has the features of about 5 other individual plugin.
HOT TIP: I am gonna be recommending a Plugin which I use. It brought to every WordPress Fan by Godaddy. its Called p3 Plugin Performance Profiler and with this plugin, its gonna walk you through how your website perform and also show you plugins that’s causing your WordPress Site Malfunctioning .
5. Ensure You Optimize Images at all Cost
I know everyone wanna display one image or the other within contents and if you remembered in my article which I wrote about Great Things to consider when Writing Blog Articles, I made mention that Images within article really help user experience and gives a better idea of what your content is all about or can even make a summary of a longer text.
Uploading images with no control over it is not good and can as well make your site loading speed crawl. Its observed that pages with huge image sizes will result to slow loading time when its request is been initiated.
Optimizing Your Images is another way to achieve WordPress Optimization Dream. Many photo editors easily grant you the opportunity to save your images and output them for web purpose. We have the popular Photoshop, Great.
Remember am not gonna just write on that but as well give Tips to help you achieve the aim. I have some plugins for you.
HOT TIP: Many Image Optimization Plugins are out there but I am going to be showing you some. Here is a good plugin recommended by a friend, its named WPSmush.it, it utilizes Its API to help compress, optimize and strips hidden, bulky information from your images, reducing the file size without losing quality. Thou I would advice you to use this plugin if your server is strong enough as its gonna be using resources to get the job done.
So I guess most of my reader will be troubled and wanna ask for alternatives. OK, Check Out another WebSpotted Plugin named LAZY LOAD and with this plugin your images will be loaded only to your site visitors when the image area is visible and will definitely help in enhancing your site loading speed. We have Others Like Bj Lazy Load,  Lazy Load Xt
REMEMBER: Treat Your Image Sizes Right From Start Before Uploading.
5. Enable Browser Caching
When it comes to CSS, JavaScripts, Images or let me just conclude and say anything that has to deal with your website, please know that changes occur ocassionally and putting Caching System into consideration will save you in a great way.
What’s Browser Caching?
Browser Caching does a great job and it simply allows your website end user to enjoy speed loading of your site. Once your vistors bookmark and visits your site well, this caching enables them to have a browser cached copy of your website any time they access it. This will definitely reduce queries initiated from servers to your users and save the user from recollecting the same webpage again ans again. :).
How Can We Enable This Features.
We can get this done technically and Plugincally[lol, My Own Vocab ]
And technically, we gonna be using our dear .Htaccess File [From the Sites Root Directory]
Simply Add the Below Code and Save Your File to Update.
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 1 month”


## EXPIRES CACHING ## Ok, Do you find the above Hard For you? then lets Go Plugincally
Installing Cache Plugins
Caching plugins grants the ability to control static HTML files instead of dynamic files and really helps a lot in the sense that it reduces a website Loading Time so far there wont really be any Command[PHP or MySQL] to be executed. I will consider the use of plugins because it has some other hidden feature of which other single plugin does. e.g, Minifying, Gzipping, CDN [Content Delivery Network], extra Caching Option and Lots More.
Just Like I Said Earlier, Caching your page is another great way to increase your site performance and am gonna be introducing you to some cool and great Plugins.
Here Are My Best Caching Plugins [Am Still Gonna Write On Them as Time Goes On ]
1. Wp Super Cache
2. Wp Fastest Cache
3. JetPack
4. W3 Total Cache
The above listed Plugins offers great improvements to your site like improving users experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content.  you will never believe they are totally free. WoW
6. Empty Trash, Reduce Post Revisions, Spams, Drafts, Trackbacks and Pingbacks
From all the above, they can as well slow down your site when they are not well controlled and monitored because they deal with your database storage.
From the default Wp-Config.php file which is always at the Root of Your Site’s FTP, I have come to see that the Revision on Posts and Trash has a unlimited numbers of days to spend before they go off, we can reduce it to like at least 2 to 3days or alternatively disable it so as to get the very best our Loading time and Site Speed. So you should be very careful with the number of drafts/trash and post revisions stored by your website.

To Reduce or Get Rid of Revisions, Simply include the Following Lines in your wp-config.php file
To Reduce:
define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 3 );
To Totally Disable:
define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, false );

To Get Rid Of Trash.
Remembered our ex version of WordPress? Version2.9 which introduced the Trash System style where by whenever any posts, pages,comments, media are deleted, they end up in the trash bin and this gives the ability to either delete them permanently or restore them. Its is cool in the sense that we might mistakenly delete any of our posts but at the same time, we care about our site performance. Trash can overload our database and this will have a negative effect and the bigger the database, the slower it reacts to requests
Trash here is just like our PC recycle bin and by default, WordPress is set to automatically delete trash after thirty days but we can beat this via our wp-config.php file by adding the following Codes.
To Reduce From 30days to 6days. USE:
define (‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 6);
To Completely Disable Trash System, USE:
define (‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 0);
It is slso important to regularly delete spam comments and unwanted pingbacks and trackbacks [Install No Self Pings or Disalbler Plugin] and if possible disable comments.
Lets Do This Plugincally
Another great way and option if you find the above too technical for you. To auto clean your WordPress database.
You can simply Install Plugins Like:
⇒ WP Optimize
⇒ Optimize Db After Revision,
⇒ WP-DBManager
Those plugins can automatically remove auto-drafts, spam comments, pingbacks, trackbacks and e.t.c. I will as well recommend WP-DBManager to be a very good solution for optimizing your entire database in a jiffy.
Conclusion: I have proved, experimented all this before writing and I guess its your turn to make up your mind on WordPress Optimization For Better Performance. In any case maybe none worked out for you, then I believe you change your webhost or simply upgrade to the next available plan that best fit your site .
REMEMBER: Monitor The Numbers of plugins . My only advice is you make use of Your .htaccess files or wp-config.php file tweaking to save the number of plugins