A slow web site or blog can cause poor search Google rankings, reducing your online reputation 

One of the best ways to improve a poor online reputation or to boost a good one is to add new content but if your web site is slow, it could be for naught.

I worked with a client that was trying the “DIY” approach and was writing daily blogs to fix their web reputation.  Sounds good—until after a few months of no change.

One major problem was that the WordPress site they were using was slow, and as a result, all the good content they generated was not being seen when searching online.  Basically, their blog campaign was invisible.

If you think about it, it makes sense: a search engine wants to serve up good sites for their users, full of information that people want.  If a page is “spammy” or doesn’t come up quickly, readers will just go elsewhere.

So, here are six tips to speed up a site.

1. Check Site Load Speed

First, start by testing your site to see how it is working.  Try GTmetrix, which is free and offers suggestions on how to make improvements. Just enter your URL and see the results.  If the page speed is slow look at the recommendations.

2. Use a Good Host

Host your site with a good provider.  This is not the time to use your uncle’s free server in the basement.  Instead, go with a mainstream, large company with a good performance record.

3. Use WordPress as a Blogging or Site Platform

WordPress is a great platform for blogs or sites, and I highly recommend it.  Besides the general ease of creating a good looking site for free or low cost, it has many helpful plugins or mini-applications that would be costly if coding from scratch.

4. Size Images Correctly

It’s tempting to be sloppy when creating images and not size them correctly but it could slow your page to a crawl and this is usually the number one offender. 

Be as efficient as possible with your images, and try to keep them small.  Don’t be lazy and change the dimensions to a smaller size in HTML or in WordPress when uploading.  Instead, if a smaller size is necessary, go back and make the file size smaller. 

Compress images on WordPress using the WP Smush.it plugin too.

5. Remove Bad Code

Poorly coded pages can be a drag on speed.  If you are using WordPress, delete unused plugins; if using HTML, have your web master review the code or look at yourself if you are tech savvy, and clean up unused or unnecessary lines.

6. Use Caching Tools

For our purposes, a great plugin to speed your WordPress site is W3 Total Cache.  It addresses many of the issues that show up on the GTmetrix site and is a huge help in reducing page size, organizing JavaScript code, among other things.

After completing these six steps, check the speed again.  If it looks good, continue publishing content and you should see better rankings by Google, which should in turn should improve your online reputation.