Increasing Website Speed Via Personal Training

byJonah-Love

1.2K followers

Updated 2 years ago

I've been working on one particular website after having it reviewed by a guy called Vitaliy G and Jay. Most members at WA know them for their excellent approach to teaching us via video links, websites and training posts across the whole of the Wealthy Affiliate platform. My quest was all about Increasing Website Speed

Increasing website speed is crucial for Google to rank us higher above our competitors, therefore knowing this I tend to look at things differently after correspondence with fellow members and admin here at Wealthy Affiliate who helped me improve my websites.

Step One

The first thing that came to mind was to write down everything that was explained to me and make a stance to get through the improvements quickly which at first seemed mind-boggling but doable. The first step was to transfer my website across to Generator Press. I knew about it, heard people talk about it, however, I never took action until now.

Crossing over to GP was amazing First, log in to your WordPress Dashboard. Next, go to“Appearance > Themes” in the menu on the left. Near the top, you'll see an “Add New” button, type in Genretaor Press and click that button. You'll see GeneratePress appear. download it and activate it. That's it done. Nothing I previously had was missing during the transfer so I was happy about that and from here on in I was working towards increasing website speed.

Step Two

The next task was to reduce the number of pictures I had implemented into each post at the top. I deleted them all apart from one which is the first training picture that describes what my website is about. It's just a picture with a few words.

I was sceptical about this because over the last two years I have used pictures a lot, however, the truth is they slow down your website. With this done I loaded my website up in Google and, there it was in a second. It doesn't take a lot of time to get this done at this point. It took me one evening to Increase my Website Speed.

Being a visual person I always thought looks were everything, however, I have changed my state of mind and now look more for tidiness and speed both seem to happen with Generator Press. I no longer need pictures all over my website just content and a continuous flow of posts that relate to my niche.

Step Three

Check progress by loading each completed page after each change on your mobile phone. This is crucial to know if you have been successful or not. Check the content, headings and the reduced amount of pictures and think about what your audience may think. Does your website load fast enough to keep them occupied with content? i was extremely happy at this point with my website.

Step Four

I removed the sharing and social media plugin and I am so glad I did because I think there are enough ways to share content already in WA via the share a comment thread and the comments interface where we can comment and earn points to comment on websites we choose.

I really think it's important to reduce the number of plugins you have for major improvements for increasing website speed overall. Believe me, at this point I knew where I was going wrong after asking for assistance in the first place and getting the help I needed. I was worried about losing my social media buttons but now I understand how they can slow down your website.

I also reduced my widgets that were there for the show such as the subscription page with coming soon on it. I knew this had to go from the first moment of getting help and I have learned that anything that means nothing to our audience does not need to be there.

Step Five

I have learned, by adding more categories will help my customers navigate to what they want to read quickly.

So now you have all the alterations in place and you have noticed traffic starting to appear on your website it is time to test the water. Believe me, you will see the difference after a few weeks.

Step Six

Finally, go to your WA homepage and click on websites then view details on the website you are working on and conduct a speed test on each page with the SiteSpeed+ tool in accelerator mode. My desktop reading was ok but mobile phone speeds which are crucial let me down.

I decided to test my site speed again and it improved, but not much, therefore I clicked on SiteSpeed Extreme which uses the same technology as the SiteSpeed Accelerated but takes optimization one step further. Almost all pages are reading a speed of 90/100 some more almost 100/100.

I trialled the speed alterations by clearing my cache after doing lots of work on the website and could not believe how pages loaded up on desktop and mobile phones. They are lightning-fast now.

So that's it folks a few simple steps and your website will be ranked far better in Google to get referrals and it's all because of a great community we have at Wealthy Affiliate with those who are eager and willing to help out by increasing website speed for us via training.

In Friendship

Stephen