In this blog, we will discuss the best performance plugins and some facts about performance optimization.
Why performance plays an important role in SEO?
When a user lands to your website, performance is the first thing that they face. After the performance, your UI gets loaded.
Website optimization is also connecting with how your theme is optimized, how is your plugins’ performance, the grade of server resources, and more. If all these factors are balanced properly your website performance will get improved.
Now let us discuss some WordPress plugins that will help you by improving your website page performance. All the plugins listed below are for free to use.
To improve website performance you require a plugin that will help you in
>> Managing caching.
>> Add CDN.
>> Compress images.
>> Add lazy loading.
>> Minify files.
>> Optimize database, etc.
Along with all this stuff you need to make sure to manipulate your website to reduce the size of your pages and make it lightweight so that it provides a great performance.
1. WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest Cache is the most popular and the best performance plugins that has more than 1 million active installations. In the Google search ranking algorithm, site speed is used that will make your website load faster and will improve SEO rankings.
You can set up a plugin very easily because you do not require changing .htaccess file. The file will get changes automatically.
This plugin is available free of cost but if you go with premium version you will get some powerful features such as combine CSS, Minify HTML, Add Expires Header, Disable Emojis, Enable Gzip compression and so on.
Features of WP fastest Cache are
>> Support for Cloudflare.
>> Active or deactivate the cache options.
>> Cache timeout for particular pages.
>> Support for SSL.
>> And support for CDN.
2. Cache Enabler
Cache Enabler is a very light weighted and best performance plugins that does not need so much of time to set up and doesn’t even need a minute to setup. This plugin will create static copies of website pages and that will be placed on the server.
So that if any users need a website page the statics pages will get loaded instead of the original one. This will enhance the website ranking and will improve performance because it does not consume so much of server resources.
Some features are
>> Set expiration time.
>> Clear the complete cache within one click.
>> Very easy to setup.
>> Supported with custom post type.
3. WP Super Cache
This is the most popular plugin that can be downloaded free from wordpress.org. Till now it has more than 2 million active installations. A beginner can set up this plugin and can use it without any problem.
It has so many availabilities of features for advanced users. This plugin will help you for speed optimized by serving static files to most of the 99% of your customers.
The static HTML file will be provided to the customers who have not commented on anything on the blog, the customers who have not checked the post of password protection, and those who are logout.
Features are:
>> CDN Support.
>> Multiple caching types supports.
>> Simple caching.
>> Static HTML files.
>> Cache preload.
4. W3 Total Cache
To speed up your website w3 total cache is one of the best options. This plugin helps to enhance user experience and results on search engines due to the best website performance and lower in load times.
It supports CDN services. With plenty of setting options, the plugin is very easy to setup. You can check on its tutorials and documentation to make sure your plugin has been set up properly.
Features are:
>> Object caching.
>> Browser caching.
>> Files Minification.
>> Database caching.
>> CDN support.
5. WP Super Minify
For page size Minification of file plays an important role. If visitors come to your website for getting some information or service or a product at that time if your website pages are heavy loaded and taking to time to get load then this will spoil your visitor’s mood. At this time file Minification will help. This plugin will make heavy pages to lightweight to get page loads quickly. But before installing this plugin to your theme makes sure you have tested it on the sandbox.
Features are
>> Very easy to configure.
>> Files like JavaScript and CSS compression can be deactivated.
>> HTML, JavaScript, and CSS file Minification, and more.
6. WP Smush
WP Smush is one of the best performance plugins that will delete unwanted bytes from your visual content and will optimize images.
You might have noticed that when you compress your website images online you might have lossy formats but if you use WP Smush to optimize your images you will never lose formats and quality of visual content. For pro customers, there is something best news as it provides Bulk Restore option to correct things if something gets wrong.
Features of WP Smush are
>> Lossless compression.
>> Allow compressing JPEG.
>> Added with Smush.it API.
>> With the help of plugins, you can select to execute previous images.
>> Free plugin available at wordpres.org.
7. Hummingbird
With new ways, you can boost your website speed and performance. With the recommendation of Google PageSpeed Insights your website will get load faster.
When you find some message in PSI that will show some script that needs to be moved to footer, in a single click you can do this with a hummingbird.
But you need to watch full and try to not optimize your website more else your half side website may be look broken. This will happen because you have moved all CSS files and scripts to the website footer.
Hummingbird works better with Smush. Thus if needed you can use both plugins at the same time. Both plugins are available for free plus some extended features are available at the premium version.
Features of Hummingbird
>> Free to use.
>> Defer unused CSS.
>> Efficient cache.
>> Asset optimization.
>> Gzip compression.
>> CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript Minification.
>> Lazy loading.
>> File position.
>> Render blocking can be eliminates.
