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  • 5 Best SEO Tips for a Fast and Optimized Website

    This is a guest post written by HubSpot. Opinions and recommendations are the author’s own.

    Search engine optimization (SEO) has a significant impact on the success of any business. To be frank, it is the most important marketing tool any business can utilize. In fact, 45% of marketers say that organic search has the best ROI of any channel they use.

    But with the many changes happening in the SEO world, how do you know which SEO strategies to implement?

    Should you just focus on website speed? Or devote your time and efforts to on-page SEO and link building?

    We’ll cover the essential SEO tips you need to know to boost your search rankings and drive more organic traffic to your WordPress website.

    Here’s what you’ll learn:

    What Is SEO?

    SEO is a digital marketing strategy that helps your website or a piece of content rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). The higher you appear in search results, the more likely you’ll attract quality traffic to your website.

    One crucial ranking factor is site speed, which Google has used since 2010. In 2018, the tech company introduced The “Speed Update,” which added more focus on the speed of mobile searches.

    Google even provides a tool called PageSpeed Insights to help you measure your website loading time, further increasing the importance of page speed. 

    In short, a fast-loading website can boost your Google rankings.

    That said, while speed is a crucial ranking factor, it’s not the end-all-be-all of ranking on Google’s first page. Other metrics like search intent and domain authority are strong ranking signals.

    Why Does Page SEO Matter?

    Page SEO matters because it ensures your target audience discovers your website through a relevant search. Internet usage is as high as it’s ever been. Google processes approximately 63,000 search queries every second.

    With such stats, you’ll be pushed to the outskirts of the internet universe if you don’t implement a solid SEO strategy. Even if the search engines index your website, your target audience will never see it.

    Also, SEO is more affordable than paid advertising, and its effects are longer lasting.

    Once a webpage ranks well, it’ll stay there for a long time. As a result, you can allocate time and resources elsewhere, knowing that the SEO efforts you’ve already put in will continue working without your input.

    Best Tips for a Fast and SEO-Optimized Website

    SEO is among the top priorities for any website today. With over 1.9 million live websites, the competition for the top spot on the SERPs has never been this stiff. 

    Here are five SEO tips to make your WordPress website stand out from the competition and get higher rankings:

    1. Build a Well-Designed Website

    A well-designed, responsive website improves the user experience (UX). It gives visitors a seamless experience regardless of the device they use to access your WordPress website.

    User experience and SEO are interlinked since Google values websites that work well for users.

    With 61% of the global online traffic coming from mobile in July 2022, Google wants to offer a positive experience for these searchers. So, if your website is mobile responsive, it’ll likely rank higher.

    Optimize your website for mobile.
    Optimize your website for mobile.

    Well-designed websites also have optimized architecture that enables search engine spiders to find and index all the website pages. It also helps users quickly find what they’re looking for on the website. 

    So, keep your website architecture simple to make it easy for users to pop around your website and find what they need. That’ll improve the user experience, which indirectly helps with your SEO.

    Also, when using lead generation forms, ensure the intent is to capture information. Otherwise, it can negatively impact your Google rankings.

    For example, if your page is trying to rank for “get renters insurance” and the form is about “sign up for renters insurance,” the form has the right intent.

    But if the page’s intent is answering “what is lead generation” and you have a renters insurance form at the top, Google will view the form like an ad, which may negatively impact your rankings.

    Something else to consider is creating a sitemap — your website’s blueprint that helps search engine crawlers find and index all the content on your website. It also tells search engines which pages on your website are the most important.

    Sitemaps come in handy when your website is new and has a few external backlinks. Or, when you run an e-commerce website with hundreds, thousands, or millions of pages that are hard to internally link perfectly. 

    You can use a plugin like Google XML Sitemaps to create a sitemap for your WordPress website.

    Lastly, optimize your page’s meta description and title tags to help you get more clicks (which is a direct ranking factor). 

    Even Google recommends creating a meta description for each page on your website. Backlinko also shares that pages with a meta description get 5.8% more clicks than pages without a meta description.

    2. Speed Up Your Website

    If your WordPress website loads slowly, you’ll lose half of your visitors before they click on anything. According to a Digital.com survey, a whopping 50% of visitors leave a website when it takes more than six seconds to load.

    Speed up your website to avoid losing visitors.
    Speed up your website to avoid losing visitors.

    Here are three ways to improve your website speed:

    • Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

    A CDN increases your website speed by caching content in multiple locations worldwide. It figures out where your visitors are physically located and serves your website’s resources from a server close to them — resulting in a massive decrease in page load times.

    • Minify and optimize your files to remove anything that slows down your website.

    Minifying your files removes unnecessary whitespace, formatting, and code that increases the page size and slows down your WordPress website. 

    Optimizing your CSS and JS files eliminates render-blocking resources and optimizes the Core Web Vitals – three key performance metrics.

    One effective way to minify and optimize your files is with a plugin like WP Rocket — it makes the process relatively simple. It ensures your pages are as lean as possible, making the load time faster.

    • Optimize images for faster page load time.

    Optimizing images involves compressing files and reducing the resolution and dimensions to make them lighter. 

    You can use a plugin like Imagify. It easily compresses the images and converts them to WebP – the next-gen format recommended by Google. If you have many images, you can take advantage of the Bulk Optimization option.

    Optimizing for speed reduces your bounce rate and increases visitor engagement. As a result, it improves the user experience and boosts your search engine rankings and conversions.

    3. Create Amazing Content Consistently

    Consistently creating quality, relevant content should be at the core of your SEO strategy. Exposure Ninja backs that up with a survey, showing that 69% of the 149 businesses surveyed believe high-quality content is vital for gaining search engine traffic.

    High-quality content helps you gain search engine traffic.
    High-quality content helps you gain search engine traffic.

    An excellent way to maintain consistency is to focus on topic clusters, which comes down to strategy and planning. Instead of looking at posts as individual elements, look at them as parts of a more prominent structure.

    Organize high-quality content around specific topics and create supporting content to explore related themes further. Also, use internal links to help search engines understand the relationship between pages. 

    That way, you’ll be able to build authority and rank higher in more search queries.

    You can also create new content around shoulder niches to help you reach more people outside your industry. For instance, gardening is an excellent example of a shoulder niche for pest control content. You can create content based on common garden pests to increase your reach into the gardening industry. 

    Another important aspect is improving existing content and adding missing subtopics to help your content remain relevant. 

    In the process, you’ll incorporate more relevant keywords and carve your content to serve the search intent better. As a result, you’ll get more organic traffic and increase your click-through rate (CTR).

    Also, consider formatting your content for featured snippets. A featured snippet is an opportunity to get more clicks from the organic search results without necessarily having higher Google rankings.

    Featured snippet on Google SERP.
    Featured snippet on Google SERP.

    To appear in the featured snippet: 

    • Find a keyword you already rank for and identify what type of featured snippet it is:
    • Definition snippet (“What is SEO?”)
    • Table snippet (“SEO Tools Prices”)
    • List snippet (“Top 10 SEO Tools”)
    • Then, add a content snippet to your page designed for the specific featured snippet box.

    Creating amazing content is only the first step. Consider shouting out your content in a custom newsletter, where you can create positive experiences for your potential and current customers and compel them to come back for more, further boosting SEO. You can also shout your content out on social media.

    4. Target the Proper Keywords

    The first step in an SEO campaign is keyword research. It impacts every other SEO task — finding content topics, email outreach, on-page SEO, and content promotion.

    There are two types of keywords you can rank for:

    • Short-tail keywords — have less than three words (SEO tips, Google SERPs). 
    • Long-tail keywords — contain three or more words (best SEO tips, how to rank in Google SERPs).

    While short-tail keywords have a large search volume, they’re super competitive for SEO and pay-per-click (PPC). In contrast, long-tail keywords don’t have a large search volume but can help you rank quickly without many backlinks.

    When doing your keyword research, use keywords that aren’t too competitive to rank for. Super competitive keywords might give you trouble getting past Google’s third page. If you can find a keyword without much competition, you’ll have a good chance of making the top three.

    Also, target branded keywords that searchers use to know more about a brand’s products or services. They can include the brand name and product, such as WP Rocket for WordPress or WP Rocket Caching.

    Branded keyword for WP Rocket.
    Branded keyword for WP Rocket.

    Branded keywords help visitors find your website directly. And since there’s very little competition on the SERP for these keywords, you can control the messaging behind the keywords your brand is linked to.

    5. Look for Link Building Opportunities

    Backlinks are like votes from other websites, which tell search engines, “This content is credible, useful, and valuable.” 

    Having more backlinks means your website will rank higher in search engines. Backlinko shares that the top Google result has 3.8x more backlinks than results in positions 2–10.

    High-quality backlinks help you rank higher on search engines.
    High-quality backlinks help you rank higher on search engines.

    Backlinks remain one of Google’s three most important search engine ranking factors. That’s why pages with many backlinks rank better than pages with fewer backlinks. 

    That said, not all backlinks are the same. Focus on quality backlinks if you want to rank higher in the SERPs. One high-quality backlink would be more effective than 1,000 low-quality backlinks.

    Here are some characteristics of relevant, high-quality links:

    • They come from authoritative and trusted websites.
    • They have your target keyword in the link’s anchor text.
    • The website and page linking to you are topically related to your website.
    • The link is a “do follow” link.

    An excellent way to manage your SEO backlinks strategy is by guest posting. It helps you exchange free content for backlinks from a page that links to your website through the byline.

    Use Google search operators, such as Your Keyword “write for us” or Keyword “guest post,” to find guest posting opportunities. You can also backtrack competitor backlinks to find any recent guest post links, then ask the website to guest post for them.

    Another way to get quality links is to create linkable assets such as surveys, infographics, a piece of software, or videos. Your linkable asset needs to be remarkable — something people would want to add external links to without you asking.

    General Advice for Creating SEO Content

    As mentioned, good SEO and relevant content go hand in hand. So here are two tips to help you stay ahead in your content marketing game:

    Write for Humans First and Search Engines Second

    Even if you rank at the top of Google, it’s people who follow or subscribe to your WordPress website. Not Google.

    Google’s algorithm and search spiders find and rank content that offers the most value to the reader. So, Google bots don’t need you to write for them. They’re getting better at understanding good content every day.

    A good rule of thumb is to draft your content with your audience in mind, then optimize it for search engine crawlers after. That way, you’ll help human readers understand your content easily — increasing dwell time, reducing bounce rates, and improving the overall user experience.

    Pay Attention to Google’s Algorithm Updates

    Google makes one or two algorithm changes daily, but most of these changes aren’t noticeable.

    However, Google officially announces a “core update” a few times yearly. These updates are changes to Google’s systems and algorithms that cause significant fluctuations in search results.

    For example, Google implemented a “broad core update” to its algorithm in May 2022.

    Google’s broad core updates impact all search engine ranking factors without addressing any one component in depth. But past updates like Penguin and Panda focused on the quality of backlinks and content.

    So, paying attention to Google’s algorithm updates is crucial to understanding how those changes impact your website. 

    Final Thoughts: 5 Best SEO Tips for a Fast and Optimized Website

    We hope you’ve found these SEO tips helpful. If you follow them, you’ll be well on your way to more traffic and higher rankings.

    Which SEO tips do you consider the best for optimizing your WordPress website to rank higher? Share the post with your answers.

    The post 5 Best SEO Tips for a Fast and Optimized Website appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • WordPress Localization: What It Is and How to Get Started

    Interested in WordPress localization but not sure where or how to get started?

    When you publish your website, anyone can access it from anywhere in the world. That’s the beauty of the Internet!

    But if you want to create the best experience possible for visitors in the different locations where you’re active, you need to optimize your site for them. That’s where WordPress localization comes in.

    By learning how to localize WordPress, you can create optimized experiences for visitors browsing from different locations and in different languages.

    In this guide, you’ll learn what WordPress localization is in more detail, along with some of its benefits for both you and your readers.

    Then, you’ll learn step-by-step how to localize WordPress in the most efficient way possible using a WordPress localization plugin and you’ll get some other general tips.

    What Is WordPress Localization?

    WordPress localization is the process of fully adapting your WordPress site to both the language and culture of its target markets (also called “locales”).

    So – what does that mean in practice? Here are some of the most common aspects of localizing a website:

    • Translating your site’s content into users’ local languages.
    • Adjusting your images, videos, and other visuals to the local market.
    • Changing currencies to visitors’ local currencies.
    • Changing other units of measure into the local units (e.g. pounds versus kilograms).
    • Adjusting dates, times, and other location-specific formats.
    • Accounting for cultural differences and sensitivities to avoid causing offense or confusion.
    • Complying with local laws and privacy regulations.
    • Optimizing website performance so that visitors experience fast load times in all relevant locales.

    Basically, website localization covers everything needed to create a great experience for visitors in different locations.

    WordPress Localization vs WordPress Translation

    Because WordPress translation is such a big part of localization, a lot of people will use translation and localization interchangeably.

    However, this isn’t entirely accurate because translation is just one element of fully localizing a website.

    It’s certainly important to translate your site’s content to provide a localized experience, but you also need to go beyond just basic translation if you want to fully localize WordPress for your visitors.

    The Benefits of WordPress Localization

    There are a lot of benefits to WordPress localization, including benefits to your users and benefits to you.

    In terms of user experience, localization lets you optimize your website for users in that locale. For example, a user will be able to browse in their preferred language, see prices in their local currency, interact with relevant visuals, and so on.

    Beyond that, localization also helps you be more culturally sensitive and avoid accidentally confusing or offending your visitors, which is another important part of creating a good experience for them.

    If those benefits aren’t enough, localization can also help you grow your site and improve your marketing opportunities.

    By localizing your content, you can expand your potential audience by moving into new markets, which helps you grow your global brand presence and boost your market share.

    There are also more direct growth benefits, such as being able to rank for multilingual queries in Google Search, being shared more broadly on social media in multiple languages, and so on.

    Basically, you have a bigger pool of potential people that you can reach across all channels.

    How to Get Started With a WordPress Localization Plugin

    Now that you know more about localization and its benefits, let’s go over an easy way to start localizing your site using the TranslatePress WordPress localization plugin.

    Then, once you have a solid baseline, we’ll cover some other tips to localize WordPress in the next section.

    1. Install TranslatePress and Choose Languages

    To get started, install and activate the free TranslatePress plugin from WordPress.org.

    Then, head to Settings → TranslatePress to choose the languages/locales that you want to offer on your site:

    • Default Language – the language that your site’s content currently exists in.
    • All Languages – one or more new languages/locales into which you want to translate your site’s content.

    For example, if your site’s content currently exists in English and you want to create a new version for Spanish speakers in Spain, you would configure it like so:

     Install TranslatePress and choose languages

    2. Translate Your Content

    Translation is not all of localization, but it is one of the most essential elements. So before you go any further, you’ll want to translate your content into the languages you selected in the previous step.

    However, it’s important to note that you don’t have to “translate” your content word for word. 

    For example, you could change the meaning or references of some text to better adapt to the local culture instead of trying to preserve the exact same meaning. You also might change other details, such as using kilograms instead of pounds (more on this later).

    TranslatePress supports two different translation approaches:

    • Manual translation – manually translate your content using a visual, point-and-click interface. You can do the work yourself or hire a translator. This lets you ensure 100% accuracy, but it can be time-consuming if you have a lot of content.
    • Automatic machine translation – use Google Translate or DeepL to automatically generate your site’s translations. This lets you save a lot of time and effort. However, while machine translation services have gotten quite good (especially for popular language pairs), they’re still not 100% perfect.

    You can also mix and match both approaches, which can offer the best of both worlds. That is, you can use machine translation to generate your site’s baseline translations but then still manually refine those automatic translations using the visual interface.

    When you do your manual edits, you could also adjust meaning and references as needed to better localize your content.

    Set Up Automatic Translation (Optional)

    If you want to use automatic translation, you can set that up from the Automatic Translation tab of the TranslatePress settings area.

    You’ll need to generate an API key from your chosen translation service and then add that API key to the TranslatePress settings.

    The plugin also gives you a feature to control your usage, which can help with billing. While TranslatePress doesn’t charge any extra to use machine translation, you might need to pay Google Translate or DeepL depending on your usage (both services offer limited free tiers, though).

    Automatic translation
    Automatic translation

    Open the Translation Editor

    Next, you can open the visual translation editor:

    • If you use automatic translation, all of your content’s translations will be pre-filled from the translation service, but you can still edit them if needed.
    • If you skip automatic translation, your content’s translations will be blank and you’ll need to add them from scratch.

    Here’s how to open the translation editor:

    1. Open the page that you want to translate on the frontend of your site.
    2. Click the new Translate Page option on the WordPress toolbar.
    Open translation
    Open the translation editor

    Once you’re in the translation editor, it works a lot like the native WordPress Theme Customizer – you’ll see a live preview of your site on the right and a sidebar on the left.

    Here’s how to translate content:

    1. Hover over the content that you want to translate on the live preview of your site.
    2. Click the pencil icon to open that content’s translation in the sidebar.
    3. Use the sidebar to add/edit the translation.
    4. Save your changes by clicking the Save Changes button or using the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut.
    5. Repeat to translate additional content.
    Translate content
    Translate content

    You can use this point-and-click approach to translate all of your site’s content, whether it comes from the native WordPress editor, your theme, or other plugins you might be using (such as page builders like Elementor or Divi).

    3. Localize Your Images and Videos

    As we discussed earlier, translating your content is only part of localizing WordPress. You’ll also need to consider other aspects of your site, including localizing your images.

    That is, you might have certain images that you want to adjust based on the user’s language/locale.

    To help with this, TranslatePress lets you “translate” your images much like the rest of your content.

    In the translation editor, hover over the image you want to localize and click the pencil icon. Then, you can use the sidebar to choose a different image based on the user’s language. If applicable, you’ll also be able to translate the image alt text and title.

    Localize images
    Localize images

    4. Add a Language/Locale Switcher

    Finally, you’ll want to add a frontend option to let your site’s visitors choose their preferred languages and/or locales.

    By default, TranslatePress adds a floating language switcher to the bottom-right corner of your site. However, you’re free to move this floating switcher to a different position or to use a different placement, such as adding it to your navigation menu or manually placing it with a shortcode.

    You can find the language switcher settings by going to Settings → TranslatePress and scrolling down to the Language Switcher section.

    Language switcher
    Language switcher

    8 More Tips to Localize WordPress Effectively

    While TranslatePress can help you with WordPress translation and some other localization details (such as images), you’ll also want to consider some other WordPress localization tactics.

    Let’s go through some other tips to fully localize WordPress.

    1. Optimize Website Performance for Different Geographic Areas

    If you want to target audiences in different areas, it’s important that your WordPress site loads quickly for all visitors, even if they’re browsing from different continents.

    In addition to general WordPress speed optimization, one of the best ways to achieve fast global load times is to use a content delivery network (CDN).

    A CDN works by caching your site’s content to a global network of servers, which lets visitors download the content from the server location that’s nearest to them. Because physical distance still affects load times, this means that users will be able to benefit from faster load times no matter where they’re browsing from.

    For the easiest way to optimize your site and set up a CDN, you can use the WP Rocket plugin and the RocketCDN service.

    2. Add a Currency Switcher (if Applicable)

    If you sell physical products, digital products, and/or services, another important aspect of localization is providing prices in your visitors’ local currencies.

    You’ll see this on pretty much any site that sells products in multiple markets – here’s an example from Agoda, a travel booking site:

    Currency switcher
    Currency switcher

    There are two ways that you can do this:

    1. Show converted prices in the visitor’s local currency but still charge them in the original currency. For example, let’s say you normally accept payments in USD. You could show converted prices in Euros as a courtesy to your EU customers, but still process the actual payments in USD. This is the simplest option because you still only need to deal with one currency.
    2. Show converted prices AND process payments in that currency. While this approach is nice for visitors because it lets them avoid any potential currency conversion fees from their credit card provider, it adds complexity for you because you’ll now need to deal with multiple currencies. However, payment providers like Stripe typically make it easy to handle multiple currencies and can also handle automatic conversions for you (though at a fee).

    To let customers choose their preferred currencies, you can add a frontend currency switcher to your site using a currency switcher plugin. WOOCS is one of the most popular options, though there are plenty of other quality currency switcher plugins.

    If you’re using WP Rocket to optimize your site’s performance, make sure to choose a WP Rocket-compatible currency switcher plugin – check out some options here.

    3. Adjust Units of Measurement

    Beyond currencies, you’ll also want to adjust other common units of measure. Here are some examples:

    • Pounds vs kilograms
    • Kilometers vs miles
    • Centimeters vs inches
    • Etc.

    Basically, if one version of your site targets visitors in the USA, you’re probably going to need to adjust units of measurement if you want to localize for most other countries in the world!

    4. Adjust Date and Time Formats

    Different locations might use different formats for date and time, which can cause confusion if you don’t take the time to localize these formats.

    For example, is 2/12/2022 “February 12th 2022” or “December 2nd 2022”? Without proper localization, your visitors might end up confused.

    For dates that come from WordPress (e.g. a post’s publish date), TranslatePress will automatically adjust the date format using WordPress’ built-in wp_date() localization function.

    However, if you include a date manually (e.g. writing it in the editor), you’ll need to remember to localize the date format when translating that content.

    5. Adapt Content to Cultural Norms

    This one is pretty broad, but it’s important to remember that users in different locations might have different cultural norms.

    As such, content that might work fine for visitors in one language/locale could be confusing or even offensive to visitors browsing their local versions of your site.

    If needed, you can change the content/meaning of the text when you’re “translating” it in TranslatePress.

    6. Change Your Font If Needed

    Different languages might use different characters, either because the language uses its own unique characters or it adds variations to the Latin alphabet.

    Not all fonts will support these different characters, which could lead to subpar or even broken experiences for visitors browsing in certain languages.

    To address this, it’s important to make sure that the fonts you’ve chosen for your site offer full support for all of the languages and locales that you want to offer.

    To check font support, you can use tools such as Alphabet’s CharSet Checker or the Underware font validator.

    If you’re using Google Fonts, the Google Fonts website also has a feature that lets you choose fonts that support different languages/character sets (and preview those languages).

    Google fonts check
    Google Fonts check

    7. Check Your Icon/Emoji Usage

    Icons and emojis are a great way to add some spice to your content. However, they can cause localization issues because the formatting might be different in various countries or different locales might just interpret them differently.

    For example, you might have an arrow emoji that points to the right and works fine for left-to-right text. But if you also offer your site in a language with right-to-left text, that emoji might suddenly not make any sense (or lead to confusion).

    To address this, think about whether any of your icons or emojis could be interpreted differently in different locales. If you think they might be, you can either remove them or change them based on a user’s location.

    8. Use Different Testimonials

    If your website features customer testimonials, you might want to think about localizing the testimonials to each visitor’s location to make them more effective.

    For example, you could show testimonials from USA customers to visitors from the USA and testimonials from Spanish customers to visitors from Spain.

    To achieve this, you should be able to just “translate” your content with TranslatePress. But rather than translating the content word-for-word, you’d be adding a different testimonial based on the user’s language.

    Wrapping Up

    If you want to reach visitors in multiple locales, learning how to localize WordPress is important so that you can create the best experience possible for all of your visitors.

    Not only will it create a better user experience, but it will also expand your potential market share, grow your global brand presence, and help you reach more people in search engines and social media.

    Translating your site’s content is one of the most important parts of WordPress localization. However, it’s important to remember that localization goes beyond just translation and you’ll also want to consider other aspects such as visuals, currencies, units of measurement, formats, cultural sensitivities, website performance, and so on.

    Follow the tutorial above to localize your WordPress website in the easiest way possible and you can start benefiting in no time.

    The post WordPress Localization: What It Is and How to Get Started appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • How to Create a Fast eLearning Course Site in WordPress

    This is a guest post. Opinions and recommendations are the author’s own.

    The task of creating an eLearning course site might be scary at first glance. Even if you are an instructor used to teaching and creating courses, an eLearning site creation might seem scary. But do not worry! We will help you easily set up an eLearning Course Site. We acknowledge that for most people creating an eLearning site might be technically challenging. You might not even be an instructor and want to start a business by hiring instructors to sell their courses on your site. 

    This is where we introduce WordPress. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) out there. A CMS helps you quickly create, manage and edit a website, making it the perfect tool for beginners. WordPress lets you have a large number of nifty tools and theme packs, assisting you in setting up a site by simply dragging and dropping elements without much need for coding. 

    In this article, we use our expertise with WordPress to create a simple, step-by-step walkthrough of setting up your own eLearning website using the Tutor LMS plugin and WP Rocket. Join us on this wonderful journey from getting your domain and hosting to installing the Tutor LMS plugin and setting up your very first course. 

    Domain & Hosting

    The first step in creating eLearning websites is to get a domain name. Simply put, it is the name of your website, and this could also be your brand’s name. If you are just landing into the eLearning world, brainstorm your name ideas to reflect your niche. You can register your domain name from registrars such as HostGator, Automattic, etc. Or, you can claim a free one from your web hosting package.

    Talking about hosting packages, choosing the right hosting for your WordPress website is very important! Some of the popular hosting companies are BlueHost, DreamHost, and SiteGround. Whichever host you choose, keep in mind to never compromise on the hosting provider’s speed, uptime, and customer support. Your website’s health is dependent on them. 

    Choosing the Right eLearning Plugin

    To create an eLearning site in WordPress, you need to use a Learning Management System or LMS for short. A Learning Management System is an application that provides a framework that handles each aspect of the eLearning process. This lets you create a central source for online courses and training materials, making it a one-stop solution to create, deliver, manage and track performance.

    You need to be careful about the LMS plugin that you use to build your eLearning site on WordPress since it is the core of your eLearning site. It should offer you at least some basic features to deliver your course materials and run an eLearning platform. 

    The plugin you choose should incorporate easy course creation, and measure learners’ progress, all the way to managing the overall performance of your eLearning site.

    WordPress has a plethora of plugins available for users. But how do you determine if an LMS plugin is right for you? Here are some of the basic features to look out for: 

    • Functional course building
    • Easy to create quizzes 
    • Student interaction with email 
    • Easy payment integration 
    • Content Drip 
    • Certificates with a Certificate Builder
    • Theme starter pack integrations 
    • And many more 

    Taking these features into consideration, we suggest using Tutor LMS. We will go over the pro features of Tutor LMS that help max out this LMS plugin’s power. 

    Installing the LMS Plugin

    Now that you have decided on your choice of plugin let us go ahead and start setting it up. 

    To install Tutor LMS navigate first to your WordPress admin panel. Note that this is the installation of the free version of Tutor LMS. 

    From the admin panel, go to Plugins > Add new, search for Tutor LMS then install and activate the plugin. In a few minutes, it should be ready to be used.

    Installing Tutor LMS
     Installing Tutor LMS

    To install the pro version of Tutor LMS, navigate to Plugins > Add new > Upload Plugin. Simply upload the zip file of Tutor LMS Pro and hit activate. 

    You need both the free and pro version of Tutor LMS installed simultaneously for it to work as intended. With all that finished, you can go on to the next stage. 

    Designing Your Website

    Once you have installed your LMS plugin, you now need to choose a theme for your online course website. 

    The design needs to attract consumers and help provide the authority you need to encourage people to sign up for courses.

    Following that, our suggestion for the theme would be Tutor Starter. This theme not only is free, but it was also made to be used with Tutor LMS. That makes life a whole lot easier for you. 

    To install Tutor Starter from the WordPress admin panel, you can find the Appearance tab. From there, you click on Add new and search for “Tutor Starter”. Go ahead and hit install and activate.

    You need to add one more plugin before you can start utilizing Tutor Starter properly. In the same way, you installed the other plugins, you need to navigate to Add a new plugin and search for TutorMate. TutorMate is a companion demo importer plugin for the Tutor Starter theme. After finding it from Plugins > Add new, you click to install and activate it. 

    Activating Tutor Starter theme
    Activating Tutor Starter theme

    You are now geared up and ready to go. Let’s add a starter pack from Tutor Starter to your WordPress site. From the WordPress admin panel, go to Tutor Starter > Starter sites. Here you can find 4 unique demo starter sites for different types of sites according to what you want to create. The neat thing about starter sites is that they will load up your site with some pre-built content so you can see what’s what. 

    Tutor Starter demo sites
    Tutor Starter demo sites

    You can preview the site before you choose to import it. When you have decided which site to import, simply click the Import button. This will bring up this popup. 

    Importing a demo site
    Importing a demo site

    From here, you can choose to launch with Elementor or Gutenberg page builder. For this article, let’s go ahead and run it with Gutenberg. Luckily for you, Tutor Starter shows us which plugin/add-ons you are missing when you try to make this installation. So if you are missing Qubely and WooCommerce, they will be automatically installed and activated. Since you had already installed and activated Tutor LMS, you would see it is active. 

    Once the import is complete, you can see the site by clicking “View your site”. 

    Demo site imported from Tutor Starter
    Demo site imported from Tutor Starter

    To edit the page, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and select Customize your site. This takes you to the customization page, where you can access all the background changes, widgets, and so much more. You can add design flair to your site by changing elements and blocks exactly how you want them to be.

    Tutor Starter demo site view
    Tutor Starter demo site view

    How to Create eLearning Courses With Tutor LMS

    Now that you have your plugin and theme ready, it’s time to start creating content for your LMS website! Tutor Starters demo site does give you some demo content, so your site has some substance to it already. But, let’s go over how you can add, edit and sell your courses to the world. To set up your courses, navigate to WpAdmin > Tutor LMS > Courses. 

    From the courses menu, select Add new to add a new course to your site. 

    You are then taken to the Backend Course Builder. Here you input the course name, add a course description, add a video if you need it, and a lot more. Add a meaningful title for your course and a description, so readers will understand what they are signing up for. 

    You can also set how many students can enroll for the course and determine a difficulty level for your course content. 

    There is also a featured image section that you can utilize to let students know what your course is about. 

    Tutor LMS backend course builder
    Tutor LMS backend course builder

    Tutor LMS Pro lets you have access to the drag & drop Frontend Course Builder from where you can visually create courses in no time. 

    This has been the barebones setup of the course, now you must give it more substance. A course comes up short if you do not evaluate your students on the material you are teaching.  

    How to Evaluate Students With Effective Quizzes

    A crucial part of a course is taking quizzes to evaluate your students. Quizzes are designed to assist learners in remembering what they have already learned. So you must create quizzes to both assess your students and diversify your lesson plans.

    For quiz building, Tutor LMS comes with a powerful Quiz Builder. It gives you amazing freedom with 10 different quiz types and detailed settings to personalize your quizzes exactly how you want them. Most notably, you can set limits and timers to quizzes with an auto-grading system. Students can take the quizzes at their convenience, and the grade is shown automatically. 

    The burning question now becomes, how do you start? Let’s begin. 

    Step 1: Add a New Topic 

    To start creating a quiz, you first need to add a topic. 

    From the course creation page, scroll down a bit to see the Course Builder section. 

    From there, hit Add New Topic to create a new topic for your course. 

    Once you have done that, hit Add Topic to move on to the next step. 

    Adding topic from the course builder
    Adding topic from the course builder

    Step 2: Creating a Lesson

    After a topic has been created, you can now create a quiz and a lesson.

    To create a lesson, click on the topic you have created, and you will now see a new Lesson button. 

    Click on that, and you will see a pop-up window where you can add the lesson details. You can even configure the lesson with videos if you like. 

    Creating a lesson on Tutor LMS
    Creating a lesson on Tutor LMS

    Step 3: Creating a Quiz 

    After the lesson is set up, you can finally start creating a quiz. Click on the topic you want to add a quiz to, followed by a click on the Quiz button. 

    First, you need to set a name and description (if you like) for the quiz. 

    Adding a quiz from the course builder
    Adding a quiz from the course builder

    Click Save & Next to go to the next step. 

    Adding questions to a quiz
    Adding questions to a quiz

    After your quiz’s initial setup, you can set the questions and grades. You can have different questions with different grade points, depending on the type of question you set. 

    For multiple-choice questions, there is a nifty Randomize option that jumbles up the choices. 

    Types of questions on the quiz builder
    Types of questions on the quiz builder

    The quiz builder has a lot of other extra settings as well for added customizability. Feel free to play around with them until you’re completely happy.

    Quiz builder settings
     Quiz builder settings

    Your course is now powered up and ready to go. 

    How To Monetize Your Course

    You are done with the basic setup of your course. What comes next? The setup is followed by adding payment options to your course. You definitely want to make money off of your carefully created course. Tutor LMS has integrations with eCommerce plugins, such as Paid Membership Pro and Easy Digital Downloads. 

    Tutor LMS offers seamless monetization options, earning and commission allocation, and multiple payment gateways to make selling courses a breeze! 

    Rewarding the Achievements

    So once your students have completed one of your courses, you must present them with a reward. The point of taking an online course is mostly for learning, but also partially for recognition and acknowledgment. A great way of fulfilling that is to reward your students with a certificate of completion. What better tool to use than the Tutor LMS Certificate Builder? 

    Remember that this tool is not included in the free version and is only available in the pro version of Tutor LMS. It is worth the investment that goes into the pro version of Tutor LMS, as you will have access to the powerful certificate builder of Tutor LMS along with many other advanced features. 

    Find out more about the Tutor LMS Pro Add-ons.

    Tutor LMS Certificate Builder
    Tutor LMS Certificate Builder

    With certificate builder, you can create, edit, and design incredible certificates from scratch to dazzle your students at the end of courses. Learn more about the Tutor LMS Certificate Builder.

    The Need for Speed

    You’ve created a stunning eLearning course site and filled it with various vast, vivid courses. But you notice customers or students are regularly complaining that your site feels slow to use and visit. This could be a fatal issue that might ward visitors away. Slow load times and clunky site loading discourage users from clicking links on your site. They may usually close the site after a couple of clicks. So how do you troubleshoot this issue? 

    This needs to be addressed by page speed optimization. Page speed optimization is the end result that has many paths to help you reach it. One of the best ways to optimize page speeds is to use a caching plugin. 

    A caching plugin stores static HTML pages of your website on the server. So every time a user visits your LMS site, the caching plugin will show the much lighter, cached version of your site instead of loading your entire site with all the heavy Php.  

    This is where the beauty of WordPress shines once again, you can have a wonderful, easy-to-use caching plugin up and running in no time. Caching plugins almost work like magic. A good one can make your life much easier without having to go through any hassle. 

    To achieve all that, we suggest WP Rocket. 

    WP Rocket has been hailed as the #1 WordPress Caching Plugin. Although the title defines it as just a caching plugin, it is much more than that. WP Rocket does 80% of the work of improving speeds just upon installation. Get WP Rocket depending on which plan suits your purpose the best. 

    Get WP Rocket 

    Once purchased, install it like any other plugin on WordPress.

    Using WP Rocket

    You ideally want to use a caching plugin that makes performance optimization easy and straightforward. As a large user base of WordPress consists of people who aren’t as tech-savvy, having a plugin ready to use is quite beneficial. 

    WP Rocket does just that! As we said before, 80% of the performance optimization is done out of the box as soon as you activate it. WP Rocket offers key performance optimization such as page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression, among many others, right after activation. These options don’t even appear on the settings page as they take care of it for you immediately. 

    In addition to minifying CSS and JS options, WP Rocket offers advanced and powerful features such as Remove Unused CSS, Load JavaScript deferred, and Delay JavaScript execution. You can enable these features with just a click from the File Optimization tab.

    File Optimization tab – WP Rocket

    Even then, the settings do not take much effort to enable and configure to boost your site. You can be on your way to a much faster site with a few clicks. 

    Of course, you can make many more tweaks to optimize your site speed. But we are not going to go over all the details. A more detailed guide to getting started with WP Rocket should help you if needed. 

    Wrapping Up

    Well, that was quite a ride. But the work does not end here, rather this is only the beginning. The journey’s second half is marketing your courses to students, ensuring that your product reaches its desired customer. Ideally, you should: 

    • Identify your target students
    • Advertise your courses efficiently for maximum outreach
    • Promote your course as industry-standard material
    • Offer sales to increase student
    • Get affiliate personnel to promote your material elsewhere
    • And much more

    While this is definitely not a comprehensive list, these tips could help you get on track with marketing your course. 

    Now you embark on your eLearning site expedition armed with the amazing tools that you set up. 

    The post How to Create a Fast eLearning Course Site in WordPress appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • WP Rocket 3.12: Revamping Preload Cache to Improve Reliability and UX

    Delivering a great user experience is more crucial than ever – you’re probably aware of it. Do you also know how to make a great first impression when new users visit your website? The easiest way is to take advantage of the preload cache option.

    And preload cache is exactly at the center of our new major release. Say hello to WP Rocket 3.12! Our latest version focuses on enhancing the Preload Cache feature, making it more reliable and effective in improving user experience.

    Keep reading and learn what WP Rocket 3.12 entails for your site. You’ll discover why we decided to work on Preload Cache and how your site will benefit from enabling the new option right away.

    Read until the end of the blog post – there’s also an announcement all Rocketeers were waiting for!

    Introducing the New Preload Cache Feature

    Let’s take a step back and understand why preload is important for enhancing user experience and what’s the difference between cache and preload cache.

    When you enable WP Rocket without the Preload Cache option, users landing on your site for the first time will experience a pretty slow page. That’s normal because it’s just the first session, and the pages are not cached yet. In fact, the cache will be generated after the first visit. So, the same pages will load much faster during the second and subsequent sessions. 

    What happens when you take advantage of the Preload Cache? In this case, users will get a faster page as soon as they visit the website for the first time. That’s possible because the preload cache option will simulate a visit to that page before any user session. So, when users land on the same page for the first time, they will immediately get the cached version. That’s helpful, especially because a bad first impression on your site could mean that users will leave and never return. A cached version also allows search engine bots to visit the pages quicker and improve page indexation and crawling budget.

    Can you see why Preload Cache is a great asset to improve user experience and optimize SEO performance?

    Of course, we do! That’s why we focused on revamping the Preload Cache feature for WP Rocket 3.12. The previous Preload Cache option didn’t provide the most effective results because the process could be a bit slow or incomplete – meaning that not all URLs would be preloaded. As a result, some pages could still be too slow when visited for the first time.

    And there was something more. Looking at some usage data about WP Rocket 3.11, we noticed that not all our customers would take advantage of such a useful feature.

    On the one hand, 89% of Rocketeers enabled the Activate Preloading option to preload only the homepage and the links included on the page. 

    The old Activate Preloading option 
    The old Activate Preloading option 

    On the other hand, only 48% also activated the Sitemap-based cache preloading option – which would fetch the sitemap and preload almost all URLs.

    The old Sitemap-based cache preloading option
    The old Sitemap-based cache preloading option

    We realized there was room for improvement for the feature itself and the adoption from our users. Preload greatly affects user experience and can impact websites, starting from their conversion rate.

    We aimed to make the Preload Cache option easier, more reliable, and more powerful when providing a better UX to anyone browsing our users’ websites.

    You can watch our video or jump to the next section to find out what we achieved.

    What Are the 3.12 Preload Improvements and Changes?

    The biggest 3.12 enhancement entails the way the feature works. When enabled, the Preload Cache option will always preload all URLs. This is possible because WP Rocket automatically looks for one of the most popular sitemaps so that it can preload all pages by default. If the plugin can’t find any sitemap, it will use the WordPress built-in sitemap as a fallback.

    In short, WP Rocket will always find a way to grab all the URLs and preload them. 

    Moreover, the URLs and data are now stored in a database. In other words, there isn’t anything that could block the preload process or slow it down –  it’s an asynchronous process running in the background.

    The other change involves what you’ll find in the Preload tab. The Preload Cache feature now includes only one option to preload all the website’s URLs. So, you don’t need to tick two boxes for the homepage and the sitemap anymore. Instead, just flag the Preload Cache feature, and the plugin will take care of everything.

    The new Preload Cache option – WP Rocket 3.12

    You’ll now get a different message. In the current notice, there is no counter. This is because preload is supposed to be ongoing, so no counter will be accurate. Every time a page’s cache is deleted, it should be preloaded automatically.

    The Preload message 

    You’ll also see new messages in the menu and the dashboard tab. 

    You won’t find “Preload cache” in the menu anymore.

    Old Preload Cache button - Menu
    Old Preload Cache button – Menu

    In the dashboard, the option about Preload Cache is also gone.

    Old Quick Actions - Dashboard
    Old Quick Actions – Dashboard

    Here’s what you’ll find instead.

    • If Preload is enabled, you’ll see a “Clear and preload cache” button in the menu. 
    The new button when Preload Cache is enabled – Menu

    If you go to the dashboard tab and look for the Quick Actions button, you’ll find the same option to Clear and Preload Cache.

    The new button when Preload Cache is enabled – Dashboard
    • If the Preload is disabled, the button will only say “Clear Cache”.
    The new button when Preload Cache is not enabled – Menu

    You’ll find the same “Clear Cache” button in the dashboard tab.

    The new button when Preload Cache is not enabled – Dashboard

    What Will Happen to Your Old Preload Cache Option?

    You may wonder what happens to your existing option once you update your WP Rocket version to 3.12.

    That’s easy. If you had at least one of the old preload features activated in 3.11, you’d get the feature enabled when updating to 3.12. Of course, we highly encourage you to activate the Preload Cache feature if you previously didn’t do it.

    The more websites using WP Rocket 3.12 with Preload Cache enabled, the better. As explained, the option will provide a better user experience to all users landing on your websites for the first time – and that’s what we would like to see more and more!

    Why Your Site Performance Will Benefit From the New Preload Cache

    We’re glad we achieved all the goals we had in mind when we decided to work on enhancing the Preload feature. And here’s why you should enable the revamped option right away.

    1. You’ll benefit from complete and reliable cache preloading. As mentioned above, the feature will always preload all the URLs. It doesn’t matter what happens to the cache – for instance, if it’s deleted. WP Rocket will always have all the information stored in the database. As a result, no matter what, the cache will be available and provide users with pages loading fast from the first session. 

      The plugin will keep the same compatibilities with the following sitemaps: All-in-one SEO, Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress, and the SEO Framework. In addition, there will always be a fallback to WordPress built-in in case there would not be any sitemap to crawl.

    1. You’ll get the easiest Preload Cache ever. Now you only have one option to flag to preload all your website’s pages — no need to worry about anything else.
    1. You’ll provide your new users with a better first impression. A great user experience is essential for conversion rate – just to mention one of the reasons why visitors should enjoy the best possible experience on your website. Hopefully, the revamped feature will allow more and more users to enjoy our Rocketeers’ sites.

    Remove Unused CSS: Goodbye, Beta Version!

    That’s right: WP Rocket 3.12 comes with the finalized Remove Unused CSS. This powerful feature now works completely well, and it was time to remove the Beta mention for good. 

    Remove Unused CSS is one of the most powerful WP Rocket features. It makes it easy to tackle CSS optimization, improve Core Web Vitals and boost the PageSpeed Insights score. Don’t take our words for granted – enable the option and see it yourself!

    Remove Unused CSS - File Optimization
    Remove Unused CSS – File Optimization

    Wrapping up

    Are you ready to try the new Preload Cache feature that comes with WP Rocket 3.12?

    You’ll get your website’s pages cached and fast for all new users. A great first impression is essential to let visitors browse your site, enjoy their experience and return.

    Preload Cache is a no-brainer option. Thanks to WP Rocket 3.12, you need just one click to activate it. The icing on the cake is that the new major release also comes with removing the Beta version for the Remove Unused CSS feature – one of the most effective options to improve your site performance easily.

    Give it a try, and let us know your experience in the comments!

    The post WP Rocket 3.12: Revamping Preload Cache to Improve Reliability and UX appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • How WEBK SEO Improved Their Clients’ Performance and Conversions with WP Rocket

    Do you manage many websites simultaneously and want to improve their web performance easily and quickly? Even better: do you run a web agency, and your clients keep asking you how they can optimize their Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed Insights score – and you don’t have enough time to work on manual implementations? You’ll be glad to know that the solution to your performance optimization issues can be quicker and much less stressful than you think.

    WEBK SEO is a digital marketing agency focused on SEO and web performance. They have many clients, from eCommerce to editorial and corporate sites. Of course, all clients need a blazing-fast site. Keep reading and discover how WEBK SEO delivered outstanding web performance results and helped their clients grow their businesses – yes, we talk about conversion rate, too!

    Everyone Wants (and Needs) a Fast Website

    Bernardo Klock is the WEBK SEO founder. He starts explaining what business success looks like for his company.

    He says: “WEBK SEO offers speed optimization and SEO services. Our company’s success means helping clients achieve great SEO and speed optimization results – and not just for the sake of it. We succeed every time clients get a fast website that increases the number of leads and sales.”

    He goes on: “Nobody likes to browse on a slow website. It’s annoying and affects the conversion rate. Depending on the niche of our customer’s business, we can see a concrete improvement in the bounce rate once the site gets faster. 

    When we ask users what they liked about visiting a website on a list of ten options, speed is always one of the top three answers. Customer benefit is the main reason to make sites faster – it’s even more important than getting a better ranking on Google.”

    What Does it Take to Optimize Multiple Sites?

    Web performance optimization is not straightforward. If you want to optimize websites at a large scale manually, you should have strong technical knowledge – or you should hire developers, as WEBK SEO did at first. Bernardo explains: “When we needed some help to optimize our websites’ clients, we used to hire freelancers. However, it wasn’t the most convenient solution, and we started to look for the best caching plugin to fine-tune the performance optimization on our own”.

    At this point, Bernardo and his team did what everyone usually does: they started trying all free caching plugins out there. Rings a bell? 

    Bernardo says: “Some plugins were even pretty good, but we realized that a paid option could give us the extra gas to deliver better performance to our clients. We are a well-established company selling professional services, so why not buy the best plugin to deliver the most outstanding results?”.

    So, WEBK SEO started to look for the best caching plugin for WordPress. And the team came across WP Rocket.

    The first thing the agency did was to test the WP Rocket homepage. According to Bernardo: “If you test the WP Rocket homepage, you’ll see an outstanding result. It’s lightning-fast – and that’s impressive. We realized that WP Rocket site was blazing-fast also thanks to their plugin and that we could replicate a similar performance on our website”. 

    WP Rocket homepage - Source
    WP Rocket homepage – Source

    Bernard admits: “At first, I wondered if WP Rocket would be like the other plugins in terms of settings and results. Nonetheless, we decided to give it a try. And we were right. Since the beginning, WP Rocket has been a superior solution to anything else we have tried. It quickly brought better results, and we got outstanding performance results. We were amazed by such a complete solution in terms of UX, settings, and support – all of these contributed to the great outcomes”.

    What Do Great Results Mean for an Agency?

    For starters, WEBK SEO realized they no longer needed to hire developer freelancers. 

    “A tool like WP Rocket gets the job done”, continues Bernardo. “The plugin is easy and provides the best results even if you don’t have any technical knowledge. That’s the magic behind WP Rocket. Thanks to its powerful features and amazing customer support, we can achieve great results without finding the right developer – saving time and money!”.

    Even more importantly, the results on clients’ websites were amazing.

    Here’s what Bernardo tells us about one of his clients: “A client in a niche industry had a very slow website. After optimizing performance with WP Rocket, the conversion rate increased by 16%, and the bounce rate reduced from 77% to 35%. That’s a huge improvement!”

    And there’s more.

    “For another client in the medical products wholesale niche, we launched an optimized website version using WP Rocket. As a result, the bounce rate dropped from 67% to 49%. Such improvement positively impacted the number of quotes generated online – there was a 6% increase in lead generation right away”.

    Bernardo adds: “Depending on the niche, you’ll get a greater or smaller impact – in any case, you’ll see a clear performance improvement. Using WP Rocket on any new website project is always a good idea. There’s no doubt that WP Rocket is helping us to deliver super-fast and optimized websites that convert better”.

    WP Rocket is the perfect caching plugin for agencies that need to deliver excellent results at scale – and quickly. 

    On the one hand, the plugin helps you save time because you can optimize websites on a large scale. Plus, you can export your settings to apply the same set of optimizations to multiple websites in the blink of an eye.

    On the other hand, it also allows you to save money because you don’t need to hire developers.

    On top of that, clients are amazed by the performance improvements they can get – which positively impact conversion rate and other key business metrics.

    Powerful Features, Easiness, and Great Customer Support All Together

    Bernardo continues: “WP Rocket is the best cache plugin on the market and the most complete in terms of what you need to get the best results in performance. Together with other tools like Oxygen Builder, AssetCleanup, and Cloudflare, WP Rocket is part of our secret weapon to easily boost the speed and performance of our clients’ websites”.

    Some key features made a difference for WEBK SEO.

    According to Bernardo, Remove Unused CSS, Load JavaScript Deferred, and Delay JavaScript execution were the biggest features that impacted that “last mile” goal. 

    Here’s the example of the WEBK SEO homepage after WP Rocket’s optimization:

    WEBK SEO Homepage - Source
    WEBK SEO Homepage – Source

    Bernardo also shared the before and after results with GTmetrix:

    GTmetrix score before using WP Rocket GTmetrix score after using WP Rocket

    Bernardo explains that two files were delaying the page loading, and the team was fighting against them with little results. He says: “The Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources message at Google’s PageSpeed Insights was hurting our pride! WP Rocket helped us defer and delay the files and get the awesome results we have now. And it was really easy”.

    💡 Load JS deferred and Delay JS execution are key features to optimize JavaScript files and address crucial PageSpeed Insights recommendations, such as reducing JS execution time and removing render-blocking resources.

    🚀 If you want to tackle CSS optimization and its render-blocking resources, the Remove Unused CSS feature is what you need.

    In addition to such powerful features, Bernardo also highlights WP Rocket’s easiness: “WP Rocket is simple to set up. Plus, everything inside the admin panel is so well explained and designed that it makes it very easy to use. If a problem shows up, and we struggle to fix it, your support team is always ready to help – and it makes a great difference, too”.

    Support is the last essential point that makes WP Rocket the best option on the market: “The value of paying for a cache plugin today is also about support and the quality of results. Your Support amazed us with the fast responses and the team’s knowledge. We’ve always got a fast and straightforward response. Such customer service showed us the knowledge of your staff, which is what we need from a partner”.

    A message to Other Digital Marketing Agencies

    Lastly, we ask Bernardo what he would say to any other web agency facing the same web performance challenges. He explains two things matter the most when a digital marketing agency chooses its tools: easiness and reliable customer support.

    “Our company is an example of how you can get better results not only because of the powerful plugin per se but also because of customer support. Only a paid plugin with a team of experts can assist you like a PRO – and we need fast support from experts. We need to deliver better results to our customers. 

    Besides great support, WP Rocket is the perfect solution to achieve performance goals easily. In a digital marketing agency, easiness is also key because we don’t have developers. That’s why WP Rocket is the best choice in the market, hands down.”

    Want to see how WP Rocket is powerful for yourself? Give it a try right now! You can always count on our 100% money-back guarantee. Although we don’t think you’ll ever want one, we’ll gladly provide a refund if you request it within 14 days of purchase.

    The post How WEBK SEO Improved Their Clients’ Performance and Conversions with WP Rocket appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • Yes, Your WordPress Site Can Deliver Outstanding Web Performance: Here’s Why (and How)

    It’s all over the industry news: WordPress has lost 0.4% market share since February. While the percentage is small and doesn’t change anything for real, the WordPress community has discussed the reasons for this drop. Among the culprits, there’s the assumption that WordPress sites don’t perform as well as other CMS speed-wise – at least when looking at aggregate data. 

    At WP Rocket, we deeply care about educating users on achieving better web performance and making it easier for everyone – and that’s why we want to share our point of view on the matter. For starters, we think it’s nonsense to compare WordPress performance to other CMS because there are several variables to consider that make it unfair and misleading. 

    The truth is, WordPress can deliver excellent web performance. In our opinion, this is not why market share is slightly declining. 

    The difference between WordPress and other CMS lies in the actions you are required to do on your own to improve your site speed. These steps are not necessarily complex and can be done in a few clicks according to your specific needs. Yet, they add some complexity to the overall experience of WordPress.

    In this article, you’ll understand what makes WP different from other CMS and why saying that WordPress can’t deliver excellent performance is inaccurate. Plus, you’ll learn how to make the most of the WordPress site for performance. 

    Debunking 4 Misconceptions About WordPress Performance

    When it comes to WordPress performance, there are some common wrong assumptions. Let’s start by clearing them up.

    1. WordPress can’t deliver excellent performance for complex and high-traffic sites such as eCommerce

    It’s not true. Performance hugely depends on the hosting, the page builder, and the plugins you choose. It doesn’t matter how many visitors your site gets every day or the type of site you have – get the right things in place, and you’ll achieve the results you want. 

    2. Plugins: the more, the better for performance

    This is also not true. You don’t need many plugins to make your site faster. It’s quite the opposite: you should carefully choose what to install to prevent your site from dealing with many JS-based plugins and slowing down. Do you even have a slider? Then you should read our article on the bad performance practices.

    3. WordPress doesn’t perform well on mobile devices

    Mobile performance depends on the theme – you should choose a responsive one. It doesn’t have anything to do with WordPress itself. Simple as that.

    4. WordPress doesn’t include a CDN as default, which makes the site slower

    First things first: CDN is necessary if you have a worldwide audience. Otherwise, you don’t even need it. Either way, installing a CDN can be easy and hassle-free. Once you get it, there won’t be any difference between your site on WordPress and another CMS.

    Now that we explained which ideas about WordPress and performance are wrong, let’s see why WordPress is not like other website building platforms.

    What Makes WordPress Performance Different from Other CMS

    As mentioned in the introduction, comparing WordPress performance to other CMS is inaccurate because there are several factors to consider, and looking at aggregate data can be misleading.

    First and foremost, WordPress is chosen for all types of sites, including tiny ones that don’t even care about performance. This is the first key point to keep in mind. 

    As you can see from the CMS distribution, only 13% of WordPress sites are among the top 10k sites – the ones that get the highest traffic volume.

    CMS Usage distribution - Top 10k Sites - Source
    CMS Usage distribution – Top 10k Sites – Source

    The percentage goes up to 20% when looking at the 100k sites.

    CMS Usage distribution - Top 100k Sites - Source
    CMS Usage distribution – Top 100k Sites – Source

    The distribution gets even higher when looking at the sites included in the top 1 million sites: it’s now 34%. This figure validates the assumption that many small sites use WordPress as opposed to high-traffic ones. It goes without saying that small and low-traffic websites invest in performance less than the big ones.

    CMS Usage distribution - Top 1 Million Sites - Source
    CMS Usage distribution – Top 1 Million Sites – Source

    Another interesting data point comes from comparing WooCommerce vs. Shopify. While WooCommerce is the most popular solution for the top 1 million sites, Shopify does better for the top 100k and 10k sites. Especially for the top high-traffic sites, the distribution difference is vast:

    Top 1 million sites Top 100k sites Top 10k sites
    WooCommerce 29% 15% 8%
    Shopify 21% 21% 21%

    This data brings us to the second important point about managed vs. shared hosting. 

    CMS like Shopify or Wix come with a managed hosting service. On the other hand, WordPress gives you a choice between a more powerful managed hosting and a less potent shared one. Shared hosting is suitable for small sites – and we’ve just seen how many tiny sites WordPress hosts. 

    Some recent stats also show the most popular WordPress hosting providers. On top, there’s BlueHost, which offers shared hosting. The same goes for Automattic and DreamHost.

    Most popular WordPress hosting providers - Source
    Most popular WordPress hosting providers – Source

    While shared hosting is convenient in price, it can’t deliver the same performance as managed hosting. As a result, more sites using shared hosting will perform worse than those using CMS with managed hosting. Can you see why comparing CMS performance is difficult when the starting point is much different? It looks like we’re comparing apples to oranges.

    For instance, look at how sites using WP Engine as their hosting are performing in terms of Core Web Vitals grades. The percent of good Core Web Vitals is up to 38,1% as opposed to WordPress (28,7%):

    Core Web Vitals Technology Report - Source
    Core Web Vitals Technology Report – Source

    And other factors are in play.

    Plugins can make a big difference, too. You should choose the right plugins to make your site as fast as possible. With the right choices, there won’t be any performance difference compared to other platforms with default options. Once again, though, the starting point can be different.

    A CDN also affects performance. On WordPress, you can decide if you want a CDN according to your needs. Other platforms such as Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace already use a CDN. So, by default, they’re faster. Remember that a CDN plays a crucial role in speeding up your site if you have an international audience. 

    What Such Differences Entail for Users (and Market Share)

    You can now see how WordPress has an excellent performance potential – if you know how to do it.

    And here’s the thing. If you’re wondering what makes WordPress less appealing on the market, we say that WordPress is not easy enough for every user. So, complexity is the main culprit for users choosing other CMS (or switching to them). It would be naive not to mention the marketing budget that allows companies such as Wix and Shopify to stand out and get advertised on TV and so on – such coverage can make a great difference in customers’ perception and choices.

    WordPress is free and is open-source software – and that’s great. It’s also customizable for any site, including large ones. Thanks to great options among plugins and themes, you have the freedom to choose how to build your site. You don’t have to stick to default options. Plus, you can benefit from free tools if you’re on a budget.

    On the other hand, for the same reasons, WordPress can’t make substantial improvements to its core – for instance, it can’t add a CDN option. Overall, we think there will always be a gap with other CMS in terms of built-in options. And this gap can also affect market share.

    Once again, it’s important to highlight how WordPress still dominates the market share. Looking at the historical trends in 2022, it’s interesting how Wix is growing faster than the other CMS.

    February 2022 30 May 2022 Feb 2022 vs. May 2022
    WordPress 43,3% 42.9% -0,4%
    Shopify 4,4% 4,3% -0,1%
    Wix 1,9% 2,3% 0,4%
    Squarespace 1,8% 2,0% 0,2%
    Source: w3tech

    How to Get an Outstanding Performance on WordPress 

    All that said, you can always make your site as fast as possible on WordPress. Here are some best practices to follow that will help you boost your site speed.

    The first is choosing a managed hosting service over a shared one. A managed hosting solution is more expensive. However, it helps you get the best performance for your site. If you’re looking for a great solution, you have several options, including Kinsta, WPEngine, and Flywheel.

    Next, you should choose only a few plugins – the less, the better. Among them, you should include a caching and performance plugin. If you’re looking for a paid solution, our recommendation is, of course, WP Rocket. Remember what we said in the previous section? Choosing the right plugins can make things easy – and WP Rocket takes care of complex performance issues and boosts your site speed in just a few clicks. As WPMarmite recommends in their article, taking performance to the heart is crucial to achieving excellent results.

    For instance, here’s some data showing how WP Rocket helps get good Core Web Vitals – even more than other platforms such as Wix and Squarespace.

    Core Web Vitals Technology Report - WP Rocket - Source
    Core Web Vitals Technology Report – WP Rocket – Source

    The beauty of WordPress is that you can also go with a free plugin. Regarding improving your site performance, here are a few free options that tackle some of the most crucial performance issues, such as CSS and JS optimization:

    You should also pick an image optimizer. This is essential to make your images lighter and give a crucial boost to your site speed. Imagify is our plugin to compress and convert images to WebP. Want more options? Read our list of the best image optimization plugins to discover other plugins for your WordPress website.

    As already explained, a CDN is also essential for boosting performance for an international audience. You can choose easy and 100% hassle-free solutions like RocketCDN or explore other CDN services like StackPath or Akamai.

    The last key point to remember is choosing a fast and responsive theme. You can pick the best solution among the fastest free WordPress themes we listed in our article or go for a paid solution. It is essential to pay attention to your theme’s performance and ease to make the whole site experience fast and smooth.

    Blazing-fast WordPress Sites: Two Examples

    Let’s now look at a site built on WordPress and performing great. 

    We could include WP Rocket, but it would be too easy, right?

    Instead, we picked two websites. As you’ll see, they differ from each other in size and topics.

    The first one is Olga Zarzeczna’s site. Olga is a technical SEO expert and she already explained how WP Rocket allowed her to focus on the most important aspects of her business because our plugin would take care of performance optimization.

    Her site follows the best practices above and passes the Core Web Vitals assessment. The Page Speed Insight score is 94/100.

    Google PageSpeed Insights report - Source
    Google PageSpeed Insights report – Source

    The second site is completely different. In fact, it’s a French government site on ecological transition. It shows how important sites can also be built on WordPress and achieve outstanding performance.

    Google PageSpeed Insights report - Source
    Google PageSpeed Insights report – Source

    Wrapping Up

    In this article, we explained why we believe WordPress is a great platform to speed up your site and why it’s different from other paid CMS. We also shared our point of view about why WordPress’s market share is shrinking – even though the percentage is so small that it doesn’t matter now. 

    WordPress offers many advantages, from being an open-source software to being customizable for all needs and budgets. Plus, there’s a great community behind WordPress that supports all members through online channels, local events, and WordCamps. If you are worried about performance, remember that this is not a good reason not to choose WordPress. Your site can be as fast as any other site built on another platform.

    The post Yes, Your WordPress Site Can Deliver Outstanding Web Performance: Here’s Why (and How) appeared first on WP Rocket.

  • How to Test DNS Server Response Time to Troubleshoot Site Speed

    When it comes to decreasing your website’s load times, your DNS and how quickly it responds are often overlooked.

    Without it, users would need to remember the long string of numbers of your IP to visit your website instead of a user-friendly address.

    Since Google’s research indicates your website’s bounce rate can increase by 32% if it loads between one and three seconds, it’s essential to shave off as much time as possible from page load speeds.

    Today, I’ll share more details on DNS testing and how you can run your DNS response time test to see if you can improve the performance of your DNS and website’s speed.

    What is a DNS?

    Domain Name Servers (DNSs) are like phone books for websites, linking them to their IP addresses. In turn, a DNS lookup is the process of finding the correct IP address for a given website URL. 

    Domain names such as “wp-rocket.me” require the assistance of DNS servers to translate the domain name into a numeric IP address so that users can access the right site.

    How do DNS Servers Work?

    Understanding how DNS servers work might help troubleshoot when you have DNS problems. For example, a number has a name and a number attached to it. The name is what people type into a browser to access a site, such as our website wp-rocket.me. 

    Numbers or IP addresses are associated with that domain name and indicate the location of the website on the internet. A DNS server’s job is to tie the name to the number.

    When a website’s name is put into the browser, it queries the nearest DNS server for its IP address. When the DNS server delivers the IP address, the browser connects to the webpage, which shows on your screen. Unfortunately, end users are unaware of the necessary background processes to keep the system running.

    If the DNS server is unavailable, the browser cannot get the website’s IP address and returns an error. Because it takes seconds for the news to spread, everyone knows the server is down.

    DNS Lookup Journey. Source

    Here’s a quick step by step process of how it works once you type in the domain name you want to visit:

    1. Requesting website information.
    2. It contacts the recursive DNS servers
    3. It looks for the authoritative DNS servers, or it looks elsewhere
    4. Access the DNS record
    5. Returns the record to your computer to your browser

    And entire DNS process takes only milliseconds to complete, and as a site owner, you want to reduce DNS lookup as much as possible.

    Two Methods And Two Very Different Tests

    The two methods are:

    1. Ping test
    2. Dig  test

    Site owners and developers commonly run ping tests to measure the average time for a site to load.

    While these tests give helpful information, they are not always trustworthy.

    Some servers consider pings to be unnecessary and do not respond to them. Unfortunately, when this occurs, you will be unable to generate data on how fast your site loads.

    Ping tests also don’t always disclose how quickly your DNS responds and fetches the IP address needed to load a page.

    This is when the BIND tool comes into play.

    It may be used to execute a DIG (Domain Information Groper) command to get your actual DNS response time.

    It comes with Mac and may be downloaded and installed on Windows.

    Using dig to test DNS server response time

    The DNS response time results show just one metric from your computer, and it is essential to conduct your tests from other locations to get more accurate findings. You may run further tests using Google’s Public DNS. 

    To run a DIG command and DNS response time test, go to your Applications folder on Mac and open the Terminal app.

    For Windows, go to Start > Run, enter “cmd” (without the quotation marks) into the field, and press Enter on your keyboard. Then, click on Command Prompt to open it.

    Next, type in the command in the link below, but don’t forget to replace “your-site.com” with your actual domain before pressing Enter on your keyboard:

    time dig example.com 

    Furthermore, you must enter the command in the link below, but remember to change your site’s domain with your actual domain before pressing Enter.

    In this case, we’re showing a result similar to the one shown below for the DNS response time test performed for Google. The real-time is recorded in minutes, then seconds, followed by a period and milliseconds during the test. 

    The query time is recorded to determine how long it takes for your computer to execute the command, whereas the real-time determines how long it takes for your computer to contact your site’s DNS.

    Using dig to test DNS server response time on mac
    DIG command and DNS response time test on Terminal App via Mac OS

    The results are identical to the previous commands, and you can get DNS response time by subtracting the real-time from the query time.

    Digging Deeper into a DNS Response Time Test

    The resulting DNS response time test shows only one metric from your computer. To get more accurate results, you must run tests from different locations.

    You can use Google’s Public DNS, for example, to run more tests.

    Go back to your Terminal app or Command Prompt and enter the following command:

    Don’t forget to replace “your-site.com” with your actual site address.

    The results are similar to the previous command, and you can subtract the real-time from the query time to get the DNS response time.

    You know how to test DNS server response time using the DIG command, but how reliable are your results, exactly?


    The Problem When You DIG for Results

    While the BIND tool and DIG commands are helpful, there are some caveats.

    Have No Fear, You’re (Probably) in the Clear

    Lighting-fast DNS speeds are significant, but that’s not the only factor you should consider when trying to improve your site’s performance.

    Many DNS options out there are sufficient. So unless you’re experiencing an alarmingly large DNS response time close to or much longer than a second for a small to medium-sized site, you’re probably in the clear.

    Although, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Each site is different. It’s up to you to decide what’s an appropriate DNS response time since it will vary based on the purpose of your website.

    As Valuable as Your DNS’s Speed

    How quickly your site’s DNS performs isn’t the only factor you should consider. What’s equally critical is that your DNS is secure and reliable, and your provider acts ethically, professionally, and takes your privacy seriously.

    If security and privacy aren’t a priority for you, they should be since hackers can cause many issues for your site’s speed.

    For example, they could inject scripts that add spam to your site that increases load times or redirect your domain to point to their spam, malware, or phishing website.

    Hackers could redirect your domain to their phishing site compromising security and privacy.

    If your DNS isn’t reliable, it could be slow one minute, then fast another, and your visitors could get downright annoyed and decide to leave your site altogether.

    Similarly, your hosting provider should also help you with any DNS issues courteously and quickly. Otherwise, you could struggle with your site’s speed for the long haul.

    Possibly Skewed Results

    The DIG command does a DNS lookup, but only from your computer or another DNS of your choosing.

    Depending on how close your site’s DNS is to your computer or the DNS you used to run the test, you may not get accurate results for how your users experience your site’s speed.

    If you’re located near your DNS and server, you’re going to get much faster response times than a user from the other side of the world and vice versa.

    Not every one of your users will likely visit your site from your location. Unfortunately, that means some of your site’s visitors may experience higher or lower response times depending on how far they are away from your site’s DNS and server.

    Getting results from only one or two different DNS locations isn’t going to provide an accurate overview of the average DNS response time for your site.

    Ideally, Google’s Public DNS would be located on the opposite side of the world from your computer’s location, and your site’s DNS would be located near either you or the public DNS.

    In that case, your results wouldn’t be as limited.

    But, this may not be the case.

    Fortunately, there are automated tools you can use to get more accurate results when you test DNS server response time.

    Tools to Test DNS Server Response Time

    Both of the tools listed here are free to use and do not need any software installation. They are both dependable and secure, and they provide complete reports after each DNS response time test.

    DNSPerf

    DNSPerf website

    The DNSPerf tool performs real-time checks from over 30 locations to provide a comprehensive picture of how well your DNS performs worldwide.

    Each location is marked with the amount of time it took your DNS to reply, and bad timings are highlighted in yellow as a warning or in red to indicate significant speed difficulties.

    The results are given in list form and on a map for clarity.

    DNSPerf map dns vieew

    Probably the best tool, and that looks great. But you can also scroll down and see the list of locations and response times:

    DNSPerf result list

    DotCom-Tools

    DotCom-Tools website

    The DNS lookup test from DotCom-Tools asks root servers to obtain DNS lookup records that specify the path followed to acquire authoritative DNS server data. The IP addresses associated with the requested DNS record are returned by the DNS server. If IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are available, the DNS trace test will attempt to resolve them automatically.

    The ability to choose the countries you want to test a page’s load and response time on is an excellent option if you’re testing a specific area for your business. The time it takes to obtain a response from each node along the path, and the responses given from each node are included in the test results.

    DotCom-Tools results

    GRC DNS Benchmark

    GRC DNS Benchmark is a standalone tool provided for Windows and Linux to test local and remote name servers. You can compare the performance and reliability of up to 200 DNS resolvers with Cached/uncached/dotcom lookup. View the findings in tabular or graphical form or export the results to CSV format.

    GRC DNS Benchmark


    Wrapping Up

    In certain circumstances, shaving milliseconds – or seconds – off your DNS response time might drastically reduce your site’s load times. It will also aid in the improvement of the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) grade, which is one of the Core Web Vitals.

    A DNS response time test using the DIG command can help you identify whether your DNS is operating properly or whether it needs to be improved.

    In any case, you’ll know if your DNS speed is enough.

    Do you test the response time of DNS servers? Have you considered your DNS while reviewing the overall performance of your site?

    The post How to Test DNS Server Response Time to Troubleshoot Site Speed appeared first on WP Rocket.