12 Blazing Speed WordPress Blog Tips

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No one likes to hang around for a website to load which is why it’s very important for your WordPress blog to be fully optimized and running fast.
 
Google loves a speedy blog and your visitors will be more than happy to return.

1. Caching

A caching plugin will take a “snapshot” of your blog and serve this light version to your visitors instead of making loads of requests from the server. If you update something, the cache plugin will update the snapshot so everyone can see the fresh content without hogging the server with multiple requests.
W3 Cache
 
ways to speed up wordpress blog
 

2. Picture Formatting

Always try to use the smallest format possible for the picture. If it’s basic colours go with GIF. For real life pictures you’ll probably need the quality of JPG. Play around with Photoshop, JPG, GIF and PNG formats to get the best balance between file size and quality. Or a free editing software like GIMP will do the trick.
GIMPshop
 

3. Image Sprites

For your logo and other regular images you may find it more optimal using image sprites. An image sprite is a collection of images put into a single image. Websites with many images take a long time to load and generate multiple server requests. Using image sprites will reduce the number of server requests and save bandwidth.
W3schools Image Sprites
 

4. Image Optimizing

Once set with your images and pictures, you’ll want to optimize the actual file using WP Smush It. By removing the unnecessary data and colours that aren’t being used you’ll greatly reduce the file size.
WP Smush it
 

5. Hosting

It’s no good having a great engine if the car body and wheels are falling apart. I recommend finding a host that offers the CPU, memory, and Apache-server power you deserve. Yoebo provides all of these features to many WordPress users for free..
Free WordPress Hosting
 

6. Theme Template

Choose your theme wisely as some can be badly coded leading to security errors, memory leaks, and heavy malware that slows your blog to a standstill. If in doubt you can always create a child theme and modify the default template that comes with WordPress. Yoebo has worked with WordPress and design for over 8 years..
WordPress Theme Design
 

7. Database Clean

Your database holds all of the technical information your blog needs to run. It also contains a lot of junk (revisions, spam, old plugin data etc.). Over time this builds up and hogs your response time. Luckily there’s a plugin that can easily backup, clean, and optimize your database and MySQL.
WP-Optimize
 

8. CSS Optimizing

I don’t want to preach developing to you but always try to reduce your CSS code. If you have 3 div blocks all with the same inline code then you should put these styles into a single class. Having clean CSS will minimize page size and load times. Here’s a source for optimizing your style-sheets.
CSS Clean
 

9. Validate HTML

Your blog may look cool to you but is it fast-fine and dandy in other browsers? Not all errors can be fixed but use a validation service to try and correct as many markup problems as possible. By using correct markup you’re putting less strain on a browser resulting in a faster page speed.
Markup Validation
 

10. Java Optimizing

Javascript adds brilliant functionality to a website but alas it can be heavy and slow. The plugin below makes your website faster by packing and grouping JavaScript and CSS into a single file which is placed in the footer of your blog; reducing http requests and allowing the content to be fully loaded first.
JAVA Bundle
 

11. Plugins

I’m not saying “lose all plugins”, but if you have a list of disabled plugins these are still putting a load on your server. Time to disable and delete those not being used. Take a look below to see if any plugin is causing a hang-up (FaceBook & Twitter buttons are very slow).
Page Speed Test
 

12. Compression

By using a compression plugin I’ve managed to save a whopping 74% in bandwidth. This saves me money and loads Yoebo faster for you. The below plugin compresses your site HTTP into a GZIP file which Google recommends for faster loading.
WP HTTP Compression
 
This is an ongoing project post that will be updated regularly. So stay tuned and subscribe. If you would like a super fast WordPress blog incorporating all of the above please check out Yoebo’s design service.

The Power of Free Marketing

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Most think you have to sell something or physically perform a service to actually make money. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact; some of the most profitable companies in the world (Facebook, Google) make money form a free-service business model.
 

In my mobile car washing days, before internet marketing full-time, I was always trying to get my foot in-the-door of a dealership. Having a contract with a big car dealership meant regular work. Approaching these dealerships was very hard as they never had time for cold-callers and nobody like being sold to. I had to figure out a way to get their attention so instead of saying “I wash cars, do you have time to discuss using me as your main cleaner?” I’d simply introduce myself and my company, and say “Do you have any vehicles you’d like cleaned? I’d love to give you a FREE demo.” After doing a quick/great job I’d simply leave my business cards and wish them a good day.
 
Getting my foot in the door was the first step of my business approach and I stood out from the rest because unlike the other 20 valeters that had been there that month.. I offered them something completely different and FREE.
Power of FREE Marketing
 
eHarmony and Match.com are all major players in the dating niche and all offer a paid service to find your partner. Mingle2 offers a completely free dating service and within its first year of launch had thousands of members and was aquired by a rival company for a lot of money.
 
Imgur founder, Alan Schaaf, noticed many of the big players in the photo-sharing/hosting niche were doing a crappy job. He decided to put together a free image host that was powerful, easy to use, and free. Imgur was instantly popular.
 

How to monetize FREE

Although your main service is free, there’s still plenty of ways to monetize and make a profit.
Advertising (the obvious choice). If you get enough traffic you can make a lot of money through advertisers. For mainstream websites try Google Adsense, for blogs try BuySellAds.
Upgrades. Gumtree (free classifieds from the eBay family) offers you an easy way to sell your stuff for free. They make most profit from listing-upgrades; extended ads and bold titles etc.
Affiliate Marketing. you can always let others sell on your webspace to your visitors via affiliate marketing. Pick a related product from Clickbank and get a commission for every sale or head over to NeverBlue and find a suitable CPA ad.
 
Start looking for niches, services and apps that you can dominate with Free.

Googles Ugly Penguin Update

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Barry over at SEroundtable pointed out that some honest theme designers were being targeted by Googles Penguin. It seems the credit link found in the footer of most WordPress themes will trigger the penguin and destroy your (theme designer) rankings in the search index.

google penguin update

OK they’re not exactly natural links in Googles view but should the designer be credited? I think they should. It’s not as if they’re hiding hundreds of spammy unrelated keyword links or buying backlinks by the dozen. They’re honestly helping people and just trying to get a little backlink juice.

 

I always thought Google would put steps in place to stop the spammers only if it meant those steps couldn’t be used against honest webmasters. What’s to stop someone from releasing a couple of themes all with the same anchor-text links pointing to the competition? Googles bitchy Penguin is flawed!

 

There’s a similar issue going on over at WebmasterWorld.

 

Also, Google is destroying these sites that have footer credits linking to them but in every footer is also a link to WordPress with the anchor text exactly that. I don’t see them guys having any issues or being de-indexed though. Hang on.. does Matt Cutts use WordPress? hmm.

 

Seriously, Google, start focusing on the real spammers or auto-crappy blogs that always use the same script to scrape garbage content etc.