Who doesn’t want a tool that improves both speed and performance? Well, GTMetrix has come to the rescue. Any website taking more than 10 secs to open can send the visitors of a page to competitors. Therefore, a quick response is important. A fast site will increase the number of visitors. Also, it will keep the audience hooked to the content they are looking for.
Improvement in the GTMetrix score can also rank up your site in the SERPs. In this article, we will look at some simple steps to improve the GTMetrix score and optimize your WordPress site. The GTMetrix tool can work on customized as well as non-customized themes of WordPress.
To improve the GTMetrix score, you need to follow a 5 step formula. So, let’s get started.
How to Increase the GTMetrix Score
Step 1: Activate UpdraftPlus
You need to optimize the system as the first step to improve your score. But before that, make sure you have proper backup and restoration of your WordPress posts and content. UpdraftPlus can help you deal with that. It is a tool that can backup all your WordPress installs along with plugins, themes, and databases.
Here is the whole process of how to do it:
- Install and activate UpdraftPlus.
- Go to your WordPress site and select the settings option. Under that, you will find UpdraftPlus Backups. Next, a page will appear, and you will find the backup now option.
- Select that. A small window will appear with two checkboxes- “include the database in the backup” and “include any files in the backup”.
- Tick both the options. Once you are done with it, the backup now button will appear again, below the checklist.
- Click on that, and all your WordPress data will be backed up. In case of an emergency or if your system is infected by a virus, you will still have all your data.
Step 2: Scale your images
WordPress has a hub of images and themes. Therefore, if the GTMetrix score asks you to serve scaled images, then all you need to do is:
- Figure out the maximum display size of the image,
- Resize the whole thing to the maximum display size and
- Compress the image
If you face the warning, try inserting a smaller sized picture as WordPress. You can also optimize the image into larger dimensions than the given size in a warning. Image optimization refers to adjusting the image in a way that works for the site as well as the GTMetrix processor. efficiently.
Step 3: Install and activate WP Smush
Once you are done with the image resizing, you need to install and activate WP Smush. Go to your WordPress site and go to the media section. The new menu option will be listed under that. Select the same and click on the option of WP Smush. A small pop-up will appear on your screen, having three checkboxes. “Thumbnail”, “Medium” and “Large”. Tick all of them.
Make sure that you enable the “auto- smush images on upload” button and also adjust the size of the image you want.
The next step is to stack up all your images in the media library under “bulk smush 50 attachments”. It has a free and premium version. The free version has limited access to the bulk smushing. For stacking up more images, you need to keep revisiting the page.
Step 4: Activate and install WP fastest cache
Install the WP fastest cache and activate it. Go to your WordPress website and select the option of WP fast cache.
You will be asked to activate the following things:
Cache system
Caching allows speed in the performance of the website. It also minimizes the time taken from the search engine to your website.
Preload
- Selecting this option will take you to the pop-up, which will lead you to the page telling what pages are required for caching.
- Tick all of them and keep the “pages per minute” at 4, then click OK.
- If you get a warning from the hosting service, then you need to reduce the page per minute number.
Logged in Users
Make sure you have logged in to your account to see what pages are cached and what are not.
Minify CSS
It slows down CSS loading and also reduces file size.
Minify HTML
It also slows down the HTML process and minimizes the file size.
Combine JS
Insert your Javascript files into a single folder and then minimize the number of HTTP requests.
Combine CSS
Combine the CSS files into one folder, staking them up together, and reduce the number of HTTP requests.
Gzip Compression
You can stack a lot of files together and minimize the pages. The smaller the size of the pages, the faster is the downloading speed.
Browser caching
It gets you through with the Leverage browser caching.
After ticking all the boxes, just click the submit button at the end of the page.
Step 5: Analyze your site
You are supposed to analyze your site once again (you can do it via GTMetrix.com) to check your website performance yet again. The difference you should look out for in your WordPress are listed below:
- Onload time is also known as fully loaded time.
- Requests in the inbox
- Total page size
- Page speed or YSlow score as said
- Optimization of the images
- A decrease in the requests of HTTP
- Enabling the Gzip programming
- Serve scaled images
You will see the difference; however, the performance may vary as each installation of the WordPress, hosting environment, and plugins are different and can affect differently on every system. With all the changes in the system, you can also share your work with the world through social media platforms like Facebook and youtube.
If you liked this article, also read:
How to Install and Setup WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
Best WP Fastest Cache config to boost your WordPress site speed.
Conclusion
So here we come to the end of our formula of how to improve your GTMetrix score. All of the above steps work great and surely improves the performance of the WordPress site.
Once all the steps are followed perfectly, it will add a touch of elegance to your site, and your GTMetrix score will be almost perfect. Now, get and check out all the steps to get your perfect score for the WordPress site. By improving the score, there are high chances of your website ranked up on the SERPs. Go and try it out now.
