Website optimization on WordPress
Before we move on to optimizing WordPress, we need to decide on a template. Or check the current one if you already have a website and are using it. Since if the template does not support the functionality we need, then the settings of the engine itself will not be enough for us to configure it for promotion.
When choosing a template, pay attention to the amount of heavy graphics, textures and other elements that can significantly slow down the site’s loading speed. The less each page weighs, the better. Yes, the Internet speed of many users is now high. But at the same time, do not forget that many people use the Internet from smartphones. Therefore, you should not overload the page with heavy elements.
Later in the article we will look at how you can speed up website loading. Including how to compress images so that they weigh less and load faster without losing quality. However, if the template is overloaded with graphics, it will ultimately slow down the loading speed.
Theme responsiveness for mobile devices
Depending on the topic of the site, the number of users with mobile devices can reach 50%, or even more. Therefore, optimizing themes for mobile devices today is no longer a pleasant bonus, but a mandatory requirement for websites.
You also need to take into account the variety of mobile devices and their resolutions. The site must display correctly on all popular resolutions. And this:
1280px and more for computers;
1024px – tablets in landscape orientation;
768px – tablets in portrait orientation;
480px – mobile devices in landscape orientation;
320px – mobile devices in portrait orientation.
Yes, despite the fact that most smartphones now have a much higher resolution than 320px, there are still many such devices. And websites also need to be adapted for them, because… this increases the number of visitors.
Setting up an SSL certificate
As for setting up an SSL certificate, it is mostly not configured on the WordPress side. First of all, you need to get the certificate itself.
In fact, it allows you to connect a more secure connection so that user data is protected. And yes, this is the same HTTPS in the browser line. This is why we need an SSL certificate.
SSL certificates can be paid or free. The free certificate is only valid for 3 months and must be renewed manually.
Often this functionality is provided free of charge on hosting. Therefore, it is quite simple to enable this option.
Installing the main mirror
Just like duplicate pages when switching to an SSL certificate (with HTTP and HTTPS), a site may have duplicates when opening a site with and without WWW.
We have just dealt with the duplicates that arise as a result of the operation of the SSL certificate; now we will resolve the issue with the second option.
First of all, briefly about the options with and without WWW. Today there is no practical difference between these two options.
Previously, the WWW prefix was used to indicate that a web resource was located on the World Wide Web. But now all websites are on the World Wide Web. Therefore, the information need for this console has already disappeared.
Another thing is that your site may already be indexed, and one of the versions is defined by the search engine as the main one. For this reason, you can choose the option that is displayed in the search results.
Although this is not critical, because we will simply update information from search engines in the process of creating the main mirror. Therefore, you can choose the option that you like best. Just keep in mind that without www the address is shorter and easier to write. So let’s get started.
Removing duplicate pages with and without a slash at the end
The engine can create different URLs for the same pages. This will have an extremely negative impact on promotion, so we will fix it now.
To do this, we will need to refer to the .htaccess file we already know and add redirect parameters.
In this case, the page is available at the following addresses: https://site.com/services and https://site.com/services/.
Redirect code with slash:
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ $1/ [L,R=301]Last Modified header
Using this header will improve indexing speed. The fact is that search engines do not know in advance when an already indexed page was updated, and whether it was updated. To find out, they need to index it again. And ultimately, this will lead to the fact that the search robot will recheck old articles, and may not get to new ones. All this will lead to a low indexing speed of new materials on the site.
To prevent this from happening, the Last Modified header is used. In it, we immediately inform the robot when the page was last updated. Thanks to this, he can understand that there is no need to re-index it, and will go looking for new pages.
We can report Last Modified data through the Clearfy plugin. Let’s go to the SEO section. And include the Last Modified headers.
Metadata for social networks
When posting a link to a site on social networks, they adapt them and also upload the page description, image, etc.
But if you do not specifically indicate this information, it may not be loaded or may be selected randomly from the page. We can fix this with the same All in One SEO Pack plugin.
In addition to setting up the meta tags we discussed above, we can add social media information to our page.
File Caching
What is a site cache? Every time a user accesses a page, the engine loads various resources, images, text, and from all of this it assembles a page, which it then delivers to the user.
All this can take quite a long time and makes the user wait. To prevent the wait from being too long, they came up with a cache.
The site creates pages, style files, images in advance and stores them in its cache. And when the user contacts, it sends him content that is already prepared in advance. And the site engine ultimately works less, and the hosting is not so heavily loaded. Since you don’t have to create pages for each user personally.
The disadvantage of this method is that if we update the content on the page, but it is already in the cache, then the user will not be given a new page, but the old cached one.