Which WordPress speed optimization plug-ins should I use?

So you know a site can be slow, but don’t know which WordPress speed optimization plugins to use?

There is an incredible number of WordPress plug-ins that will help improve the overall WordPress experience and increase your website’s speed. WordPress is really good at allowing users to do this. With WordPress, it’s easy to add WordPress speed optimization plug-ins. They can be installed in less than 10 minutes. No need for code or any technical knowledge!

But there are so many WordPress speed optimization plug-ins available that are claiming they will make your site faster – how do you know which ones actually work? This is one of the most important questions when choosing a WordPress speed optimization plugin…

A good place to start is by looking at a plug-in’s reviews. Other users will always share their bad experiences with WordPress speed optimization plug-in reviews, but if a WordPress speed optimization plug-in has no reviews at all, that’s usually a bad sign. WordPress Speed Optimization Plug-ins with hundreds or thousands of positive reviews are most likely doing the job well and will help you get your WordPress site running fast!

But there is another important question to answer. Will WordPress speed optimization plug-ins make my WordPress site faster? The truth is there are 5 different categories of WordPress speed optimization plug-ins: some WordPress speed optimization plugins will make your site run faster, some WordPress speed optimization plugins will reduce the load on your server (by compressing the content) so it doesn’t slow down as many others. It is also possible WordPress speed optimization plugins may make things slower, WordPress plug-ins that add more code and files to your website, or Word press speed optimization plug-ins that might actually hurt the WordPress site.

The best way to tell which WordPress speed optimization plug-in is good and which WordPress speed optimization plugin is not? See how many people have downloaded it, if they are using it on their sites or blogs (is it active?). See if somebody already tried it out and posted a review about it. The reviews should not be from just one person but multiple users should post about their experience with the Word press plugin.

While plug-ins are a good start, you should strive to streamline your WordPress theme, take advantage of Google web speed tool recommendations, and using Google page speed extension. Of course, the Google PageSpeed extension is only useful if you have Google Chrome as a browser – [but most people do now].

Keep in mind that the more code there is on your website or blog, the longer it’s going to take Googlebot to crawl your pages. So reduce JavaScript, images (reduce their size), merge CSS files into one file, and so forth. Do not be tempted by short-cuts! If you find a plug-in that promises anything other than speeding up and optimizing the site or blog automatically then delete it regardless of how few stars or reviews it has. Theme optimization may be a very complex process, so it may be wise to hire a developer to help you with the work. Google recommends using Google PageSpeed Insights. It is a diagnostic tool created by Google engineers which provides you with detailed optimization suggestions. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test analyzes your mobile website and shows you how Googlebot sees it, including whether Googlebot understands that your pages are designed for mobile devices, as well as how Googlebot crawled the page.

The plugin helps resolve any mobile usability issues identified in Google’s test and then optimize the website or blog code accordingly to make it load faster – not only on mobile devices but also desktop PCs and laptops. For example, if Google recommends adding an Expires header to a file called logo.gif, this can be done through the plugin’s dashboard.

If you need help optimizing your site and plug-ins aren’t getting the job done, consider hiring a speed optimization agency like Spark Factory. Google itself also offers Google Page Speed Services, a Google Cloud Platform-based offering for websites and content owners who want to improve the speed, performance, and user experience of their sites.

Follow Google’s recommendations in that report (or by running your own Google Webmaster Tools account) to get started improving site speed.

By WordPress plugin, we mean core WordPress plugins only. They are free until you have 100k page views on your blog per month then it costs $5/mth ie: $60/year for the most popular premium WordPress plugins which can be downloaded directly from WordPress or can be downloaded from Google servers via IDM or other