Sites that load quickly will keep customers longer on your site and will prevent them from leaving or even leaving before they started. Many turnkey sites or site builder setups unfortunately do not pay any attention to site speed optimization. This while you should.

Now I did talk about technical SEO and speed optimization before, but in a larger context. In this article – which is under constant change – I will focus on only site speed optimization tweaks.

Client Side Optimization

Client side optimizations are optimizations done that influence the way the browser of the user loads your site. Tweaks that can be done without touching the server, but ones that focus on tweaks to your site and often your site theme or template.

• gzip compression – in .htaccess of Nginx conf
• expire headers – in .htaccess of Nginx conf
• image optimization – using various off and online tools
• concatenation of css and or js to lower amount of files to be downloaded (with HTTP/2 not needed as much)

Server Side Optimization

Server Side optimization is just that. What can you do to make your server work better for your site? Often on shared hosting your server side options are limited, but on managed hosting or a VPS or Dedicated server you do have quite a few options:

• on page caching – caching php request and storing them as static files
• database query caching – anticipate most populair database requests and store them in advance
• RAM/ CPU usage – often you just need more of it

WordPress Optimization

Talking WordPress specifically here as it is the largest CMS on the web. So what can you do on a specific WordPress level here?

• only use plugins when needed and even remove inactive ones
• prune and replace bad plugins by better ones or theme code
• solid caching plugins – Rocket WP is awesome
• page builder – better / smoother options – Visual Composer sucks
• WP Cron – Inefficient on high traffic sites
• Custom Themes – tend to be way better than an allround multi purpose theme