How to Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

You can’t control whether someone goes to the HTTP or HTTPS version of your site in some situations. Old links to your site may still point to the HTTP version. You also will have some people specifically typing in the HTTP version.

The easiest way to force someone to go to the HTTPS version is with a redirect, and the easiest way of how to redirect HTTP to HTTPS is using your site’s .htaccess file.

This is a file which instructs web browsers on how to open and engage with your website. Adding a simple line of code here will tell the web browser to automatically reload to the HTTPS instance of your site when someone goes to the HTTP.

Whether you use an FTP client locally or go through your host, locate the .htaccess file for your website.

It will be located in the root directory of your website. If you don’t see it, click the “Settings” icon in the top right and make sure the “Show Hidden Files” is ticked.

You should now see the .htaccess file. Click on this file and select “Edit”.

Go to the bottom of this file and paste in the following lines of code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

Replace “Example” with your website’s address (change the extension if your site is not a .com), and click “Save Changes” in the top right.

That’s all you have to do in how to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. You can test it now by trying to open the HTTP instance of your website. It should redirect you automatically to the secure version and you should see that coveted lock in the browser destination field.

This is important not just for security but for tracking purposes, as well. Now you don’t have to worry about your reports leaving out traffic to the HTTP version or checking two instances; everything should be funneled to the secure version of the URL.

Again, if you don’t have an SSL certificate for your website, grab one for free now as I detail in how to get an SSL certificate for free.

Congrats, all traffic is now being sent to the HTTPS version of your site!

Bringing this home and getting right to the point, Google has begun testing an AI supplemented version of their search engine results called SGE (Search Generative Experience). While at the time of my writing this, Google’s only featuring this for a select few who use Chrome or the Google app, but we can expect this to expand to their conventional SERPs for everyone in time.

This begs the question, how will this effect search engine optimization. Will AI replace SEO?

Will AI Replace SEO

AI will never fully “replace” SEO, but it will impact it with increasing significance the more sophisticated it becomes.

Its impact on SEO should be what the conversation should be about.

Let’s first take a look at what it’s going to look like, at least early on, using an example from Google itself about its generative AI search.

Here’s their first example, with someone’s informational query being an uber specific and focused question regarding local national parks.

Appearing above the traditional organic SERPs listings we see a sizable block of generative AI search results.

Quite cleverly, the AI has plucked the most relevant information from other websites, essentially poaching clicks, website visits and, perhaps most interestingly, ad revenue for Google and the site owner, from the websites themselves.

It’s also supplanted the informational type blogs which deal in hiking/national parks in this case below. It’s not just that the AI block is first; it’s bigger and colorful, easily drawing the eye to it over anything else on the page.

The AI block even offers a space for follow-up questions and suggests a couple relevant questions alongside it.

Google would likely be quick to point out that the block does include a couple links to relevant websites as part of the block.

How Will AI Affect SEO

Google’s AI is mostly designed for these very specific search queries which I’ll admit Google itself (or any search engine for that matter) doesn’t do very well at serving results for to begin with.

The one wildcard throughout all of this is Google’s reliance on ad revenue. According to this insightful article from Oberlo, more than half of Google’s 2022 income came from ads appearing on their platforms.

By increasingly discouraging people from clicking through to websites, it’s effectively stealing from its own pocket.

Unless a serious revenue shift develops, Google is still heavily reliant on driving traffic to websites.

At the same time, they want to deliver the best experience over their competitors in the other search engines. This is why the inclusion of websites as part of the AI block will likely continue to be a focus.

Here’s a second example of Google’s AI generated search results for someone looking for a particular bike based on certain conditions.

This format of AI results integrates Google’s existing sponsored ads or at least image/price links which you’d find if you just searched for “commuter bikes”.

The difference is you get more information than you once did for each ad listing.

Also note that once again, we get a few websites listed on the right as kind of “sources” or resources for further information on the subject.

It’s hard to say whether someone would click on one of those websites or go straight for one of the listings below; it would depending on the potential consumer.

In Conclusion – Will AI Replace SEO

While there’s a lot that is still unknown and will need to play out before we truly understand its effects, one thing is certain, AI will not outright replace SEO.

It will undoubtedly affect SEO, as I believe we’ll see a continuation of how SEO was already evolving.

More than ever before, content is king (it’s my best SEO tip, afterall).

You or whomever writes the content for your website now more than ever should be making sure that your content (and website itself) offers something unique. Your content should continue to work in relevant long tail phrases to your main keyword as voice and personalized/more specific search continue to dominate the average query in Google like the examples Google gave.

This will keep the pages of your website relevant in Google’s eyes to where you’ll find your content becoming a part of their AI generated results.

Yes, it’s certain that some “genres” of websites will take a hit over others, especially early on.

But it’s important to point out one last time that it’s still in Google’s best interest to serve up the best content to its users, and while its AI will be working to better identify what is objectively the best content, make sure that its your website and content which qualifies.

What Is Above the Fold

In website terms, above the fold refers to the section of a web page which is visible when someone first opens it. In other words, it’s the visible bit of a web page without any scrolling down.

This is the most important part of any web page, because unless someone sees what they’re looking for as soon as that page loads (which hopefully loads quickly – check out my easy guide on how to increase website speed in WordPress), they’re going to leave that page.

Not only have you lost a potential customer or reader in that case, but Google and other search engines will note their quick exit and take that as a sign that you shouldn’t be ranking for the keywords which brought that person there in the first place. This can cost you rankings and traffic.

So even if you have the content that person is looking for, if it’s not apparent to them above the fold on that page, it’s doing you no good.

Fortunately the solution is simple enough.

Above the Fold – Website Tutorial

The number one rule in above the fold website design is to be sure that every page of your site has everything your visitor needs without having to scroll down.

By default, most of the most important content on your site is at the top, including your logo and your menu.

As an (albeit obvious) aside, your menu should feature the most important pages on your site you want to drive traffic to. Whatever your reasoning for having that website, it needs to be well represented here.

Your website should also be easily navigable by way of this menu. Including a search bar in this area or at the very least above the fold ensures that someone can access virtually every page of your site from every page of your site with little effort.

If you have an email signup field, you should also include it above the fold so again, it’s visible on every page without any scrolling necessary.

Now, with regards to content, you obviously can’t always feature it above the fold.

In other words, the “meat” that people want on your page when they click through from Google can’t always exist at the top of the page/above the fold.

This is why it’s essential that you create a table of contents for your post or page featuring anchor links at the top of your page. This is especially important for longer posts which cover a lot of different content.

This TOC should be clearly visible above the fold regardless of what device someone is viewing your page on.

These anchor links are live links which, when clicked, take you instantly to that corresponding part of the page.

How to Make Same Page Links

I did an entire tutorial showing how to easily make an anchor link in WordPress, so refer to that for a more detailed explanation.

Suffice to say, though, it’s a two step, very easy to do process.

You simply create an anchor tag for the section you want to link/jump to, then create the link from the word(s) you want to jump to that section, like in your table of contents.

The best way to use this navigable TOC on a page is to write a very short intro paragraph confirming what that page is about, promise the resolution the user is looking for, then offer the TOC before getting into the content.

There’s a good example of a TOC in action on my SEO for YouTube guide:

It looks clean, it divides the content in an effective way, and it’s convenient. It allows the visitor to quickly skip to the specific part of the page they’re looking for rather than having to wade through lots of content they don’t want.

Most people use Google with the intent of quickly finding what they’re looking for, and this helps them do that once they get to your site.

Consider the Browser

One last thing to mention is to keep in mind that your pages will look different in different browsers and on different devices.

This means that what is above the fold on your website will vary from user to user.

While you could check it using your various devices manually, you can get a much better idea using a free cross browsing tester.

Not only will this show you any above the fold website issues, it can show if certain elements of your website aren’t loading properly in a particular browser or on a particular device.

In Conclusion

Above the fold website design is something to keep in mind as you’re creating your website or even a specific page.

Designing your site or a page so that everything someone might be looking for is accessible without any scrolling will earn you more time on your site.

This will in turn improve your rankings as Google sees this user behavior as a sign that you’ve got good content worthy of ranking well (see 6 types of user engagement in Google Analytics that can make or break your rankings).

Just put yourself in the shoes of someone coming to that web page every time you create a new one and think of what they are looking for. Once you know that, just make sure it’s easy to access from the start.

You’ll be amazed at the effect this can have on your bounce rate, the amount of time people spend on your site, and your Google rankings!

It’s incredibly simple to do, so let’s talk about what are anchor links in WordPress and how to make them.

Anchor Links in WordPress

First, let’s actually identify what anchor links in WordPress are.

This is an element on a page which allows you to link from one section to another within the same page.

This is especially helpful when you’re talking about a variety of things within one post and for longer posts. In this case, you might want to make a table of contents above the fold/at the opening of that post to better organize your content within the page.

This is also helpful when someone just wants to jump to the specific section/content they’re looking for in your post.

Your visitors should never have to work to find what they’re looking for on any given page of yours, and anchor links can do a lot of the lifting for you.

How to Make an Anchor Link in WordPress

It’s incredibly easy to make an anchor link in WordPress. You’ll actually notice that the two links in the second paragraph of this post itself are anchor links, one going to each heading section.

Making an anchor link is a two step process in WordPress.

Step 1 – Make an HTML Anchor

This sounds technical, but it’s not.

All you need to do is click on the block you want to jump to with your link (see classic editor vs block editor for more information on WordPress blocks).

This is the section you want the link you’ll make in the next step to jump to.

In the case of this post, I wanted to link in my opening section to jump to the “How to Make an Anchor Link in WordPress” heading of this section.

So I simply click on the heading, then click on “Advanced” in the block section on the right.

I then fill out the “HTML anchor” field with whatever text I want. I just used the text I used for the heading itself with dashes between the words:

This block is now ready to be linked to, we just need to create the link in Step 2 next.

Step 2 – Create the Anchor Link

This part’s a bit more conventional.

To create the anchor link, we highlight the text we want to be clickable and send people to the desired section of our page we just established.

In this case, I highlighted the text “how to make them” in that second paragraph in the opening. I then clicked on the link icon.

Normally we’d put in a link to an external page or to another page on our website. Instead, we’re going to paste in the exact text we put in the HTML anchor field a second again, but with a hashtag symbol (#) in front of it like so:

You have the typical link options, though I recommend leaving them all unticked as they don’t typically apply for anchor links (unless for some reason you want them to open in a new tab).

In Summary

That’s all there is to it. Once you save the draft of or publish the page, you’ll find that the text is now a live link which goes to the section you created the HTML anchor for.

Note that you’re not limited to Headings to link to. You can add an HTML anchor to many different types of blocks including any kind of text as well as images.

Try to get in the habit of creating anchor links in WordPress to make your content more navigable and especially to help people find the specific content they’re looking for quickly.

Not only does it look more organized, but this will keep people on your website for longer and will earn you better rankings and more traffic.

• Making your content more engaging for the visitor, thus increasing time spent on your website.
• Helps establish the context around the content on that page for Google, thus helping you rank for the keyword you’re targeting.
• In some niches, effective use of images on a page can actually more conversions (sales, sign ups, etc.)
• The images can rank in Google on their own, thus bringing more traffic to that page and your website.

The value of that last point cannot be overstated. Google Images averages more than 1 BILLION page views a day. This means that hundreds of millions of people are browsing through images on Google on a daily basis, and a large portion of them will visit the websites hosting the images which are ranking.

Let’s talk about how to rank images in Google so that you can leverage the images you feature alongside your content into another valuable source of organic and targeted traffic.

How to Rank Images in Google

Let’s go down the must-have list for how to rank images in Google.

Relevance to Its Page

An image doesn’t have a great chance of ranking well in Google if it’s not relevant to the rest of the content of its page.

Example: a random picture of your dog is cute, but what’s it have to do with your DIY home repair article?

If you’re talking about how to repair cracks in a wall on the page, upload an image displaying a crack in a wall.

It seems like an obvious thing, but the context of your images should be in lockstep with the context of the rest of the page.

Keyword

An extension of the last point, but more on the technical side, title your image after the keyword you’re targeting on that page.

Not sure what keywords to target? See how to know what keywords to use for SEO.

So if the page is titled “How to Repair Cracks in a Wall”, title your image “how-to-repair-cracks-in-a-wall” with the dash representing a space. This helps to create a cleaner URL for the image, as well.

Use that keyword as the alt-tag for the image, as well. The alt-tag is what displays in case the image can’t load in the browser for whatever reason. The idea is, if the image won’t load, the visitor can still see the context of what that image was.

This is why it should reflect the rest of the page, or in this case the page’s keyword.

Note that you only want to use your keyword for one image. If you have additional images, use similarly relevant keyword phrases for their title and alt tags.

For example, if you have an image of a wall where the cracks have been filled, title it “wall with filled in cracks” and use the same for the alt tag.

This further establishes and supports the context of the page so this image has a chance of ranking in Google images for the main keyword as well as its own title.

Image Location

The location of the image matters just like the location of anything on your website.

Search engines crawl website content just like a regular person starting at the top of the page. Therefore, your most important content needs to go at the top, and this includes the main image you want to rank for.

Feature that image as near the top of the page as you naturally can without forcing it to give that image priority in the page crawl.

Image Quality

Users obviously prefer high quality images over blurry or grainy ones. Unfortunately, high quality often translates into substantially larger file sizes which will take longer to load on your page, thus hurting your rankings when Google wants to prioritize faster loading pages in their search listings.

That’s why I put together an entire resource on how to optimize images for SEO in order to create the best possible images at the smallest possible sizes.

The images below shows the same image rendered at two vastly different qualities. And while the one on the left is 40% smaller in image size, the difference in visible quality is negligible.

Not in terms of visuals, but the rest of the content on the page should be high quality, as well, meaning it should be worthy of ranking well for its keyword in the traditional, non image based Google search results (see how to create high quality content).

Make sure the image loads equally well on desktop and mobile versions of your website, as well.

You can also set your images to lazy load, meaning the page will prioritize loading the more important content which Google recommends as a way of speeding up your site. Incidentally I put together an entire resource on how to increase website speed for WordPress.

Use a Sitemap

A sitemap is a an organized list of all of the URLs of your website which search bots use to more easily crawl your website. This extends to the images of your site, as well, as Google can more easily locate and identify your images with a sitemap.

Having a sitemap for your website helps the pages and images of your website rank well alike.

I put together a 1 step tutorial on how to create a sitemap for your website, so refer to that to create one and share it with Google in seconds.

You can also create a special image specific sitemap, though unless you’ve got a huge website with thousands or millions of images like with an ecommerce site, a normal sitemap will suffice.

Use Structured Data

More of an advanced tip, adding special information called “structured data” alongside certain types of content on your website will create rich snippets to display in Google.

Rich snippets are enhanced types of content which appear in Google’s search results in place of or alongside the standard title, description, and URL of a page.

If you do a search for a recipe right now in Google, you’ll likely see a special section at the top of the results labeled “Recipes”, featuring an image, the website name, a rating, prep/cook time, and ingredients.

The websites these recipes are from created said recipes using structured data which makes them especially Google friendly and appear that way.

As Google’s search results continue to become more complex and offer more than the standard web listings, the importance of integrating rich snippets into your content will grow.

While some niches lend themselves to utilizing structured data more than others, there are dozens of practical uses of them which even extends to images on your site.

I recently talked about what are rich snippets and everything you need to know to easily create them on your website simply using a plugin, so refer to that for more information.

In Summary

Keep these tips in mind for how to rank images in Google. Just remember:

• Make images relevant to rest of the content on the page.
• Use your keyword in the image title/URL and alt tag, as well as in the content around the image.
• Use high quality/resolution images (while keeping them optimized).
• Use a sitemap on your website and in some cases structured data.

I mentioned the Google Keyword Planner in my free keyword tool review guide as it’s completely free, but it’s tricky to access if you’re new to it.

This is because it’s part of the Google Ads platform with the primary purpose for the tool (from Google’s perspective) is to use it to target keywords in Google Ads you run.

Many people use it to get keyword data for SEO purposes, though, so let’s talk about how to get the Google Keyword Planner for free.

How to Get Google Keyword Planner for Free

While it’s free, you still need at least a Google account to access the tool. Let’s break down how to get the Google Keyword Planner for free in a few simple steps.

1 – Get a Google Account/Sign in to Google Ads

First off, sign up for a free Google account if you don’t already have one. Odds are you already have a Google account if you have or use Gmail, YouTube, Google Voice, Google Play, etc.

Once you are signed into your Google account, navigate over to Google Ads at https://ads.google.com.

2 – Switch to Expert Mode

Once there, Google will ask you to choose from a list your advertising goals.

Ignore this and scroll down. Notice below the Next button the line: “Are you a professional marketer? Switch to Expert Mode”:

Click on the link that is “Switch to Expert Mode”.

3 – Create an Account Without a Campaign

On the next page, Google will prompt you to choose your objective. Like before, we’re going to ignore this and instead turn our attention to the small link beneath the choices, this time which reads “Create an account without a campaign”:

4 – Confirm Your Business Information

Once we click that, it will prompt us to input a few basics regarding business information – billing country, time zone, and currency type.

It doesn’t matter what you put here as we’re not here to actually run any Google Ads, we just want to access the Google Keyword Planner for free.

Click “Submit” and “Explore Your Account” on the next page after your account is finished setting up.

5 – Tools and Settings

Once your account is set up, you’ll be on the home page of your dashboard. This will look pretty blank without any campaigns set up, and Google will prompt you to set up a new campaign.

Instead, navigate to the small “Tools and Settings” button in the top right of the browser. This will bring up a drop-down menu. Select the bottom option “Keyword Planner”.

6 – Choose Discover New Keywords or Get Search Volume and Forecasts

Now we’re finally in the Keyword Planner where you have two options: “Discover New Keywords” and “Get Search Volume and Forecasts”.

Discover New Keywords

Discover New Keywords is the option you’ll want to choose if you don’t have specific keywords in mind already.

You begin by entering a seed keyword or keywords and the Keyword Planner will generate related keywords accordingly.

Depending on the seed keyword, you can get hundreds or even thousands of related keywords to consider.

Along with those keywords, the tool gives you estimated monthly keyword search volume data on each of them.

If you are looking for keywords to base your content around, “Discover New Keywords” is the way to go.

Get Search Volume and Forecasts

If you already have a keyword or keywords you want search volume stats on, “Get Search Volume and Forecasts” is the way to go.

You can type in the keywords you want search volume estimates on or you can upload a list of keywords if you have them in say a notepad or other text document.

You’ll get the same information as you would get from the “Discover New Keywords” option, including search volume estimates, percent changes over a 3 month period, a rough read of the level of competition, and the cost per bid.

While the cost per bid isn’t especially relevant for an organic SEO based keyword campaign, it still gives you an idea of the level of competition for a keyword.

The more expensive the average bid to rank well for that keyword in Google Ads, typically the greater the organic competition to rank well for that keyword, as well.

In Summary

Accessing the Google Keyword Planner for free is simple enough, you just have to find the small print links to bypass the unnecessary approach of setting up a campaign.

While it’s nice to get search volume estimates from Google themselves, the estimates are especially rough (1k-10k, 10k-100k, etc.) to the point that it can be difficult to determine which keywords are worth targeting.

For this reason, I again recommend that you check out my free keyword tool review roundup as most of the options I cover in that overview give a lot more detailed keyword information than the Keyword Planner and for free at that.

And if you’re looking for a cost effective tool which gives you everything you need for conclusive keyword research, consider my KeySearch review.

Happy hunting!

This is because just like your page itself, images can rank well in search engines, potentially bringing you additional traffic to your site. They can also help your page itself rank better if properly optimized.

With all of that in mind, let’s cover the checklist for how to optimize images for SEO.

How to Optimize Images for SEO

Where to Find Images for Your Blog

To begin with, I’m not going to just assume that you know where to get images for your blog to begin with. You likely realize that you can’t just take any images you find across the Internet, stamp them on your site, and call it a day.

There are copyright issues at play, and this can wind you in legal trouble down the road. This is why I get a lot of use out of sites which house millions of cost and copyright free images ready for you to use on your site however you like.

Check out my top 5 sites for where to find images for your blog which are completely free and free of copyright issues.

Each of these sites have advanced search features and huge databases of free images which make finding the perfect image fast and simple.

This is also a much better alternative than having your site flagged or paying two to three figures on average for a single image!

Just be sure to check the terms to make sure you don’t need to attribute the image author and that it’s actually copyright free. 9 times out of 10 it is, but occasionally an image can have additional terms of use which will be detailed in the download area.

Best Image Size for SEO

What I typically do is download the image I want from one of the sites I just referenced, then pull it into an image editor. In my case I use Photoshop.

Even if I don’t want to make any additions or changes to the image, I may want to change the size or resolution. Most of the free image sites allow you to download them at a few stock size options, so an image editor allows me that bit of extra control.

The best image size for SEO is typically going to be the smallest size you can get away with.

So while there’s no perfect image size in most situations, there are some guidelines to follow:

Featured Image Size – WordPress recommends a size of 1200×675 for your post’s featured image.

Don’t Exceed Site’s Width – Most WordPress themes today (see my post on what is the best free WordPress theme) allow you to designate the width of each area of your site. For instance, you might want to devote more width to the content area, or alternatively you might want that sidebar to have a bigger presence, in which case you’d increase the width there.

All this to say, if your blog’s content area’s size is say 700 pixels wide, then it doesn’t make sense to upload images which exceed 700 pixels in width.

I should note that the only exception is when you’re creating an image which is meant for download or at the very least opening in a new tab like an infographic.

Know Your Site’s Width – In the same vein, it’s a good idea to know your content area’s width where images appear.

If it’s, say 700 pixels wide, then you have a guideline for how your images can fit within your content.

For example, if you want your image to roughly embed within a paragraph, you might size it for 300-350 pixels wide and align it to the right.

The point of this is that you can create the image accordingly to optimize it size-wise. In other words, while WordPress makes it simple to resize your images within your content on the fly, it’s inefficient to put a larger image in your content, then shrink it.

As I discussed in my recent overview of how to increase website speed in WordPress, the data sizes of the files loading on your website have a huge impact on how quickly the page loads.

With that in mind, create your images to the best/intended sizes from the start to avoid uploading larger than necessary images (in both image AND file size).

Best Image Format for SEO

The most common file formats for images are JPEG, PNG, and GIF.

Each one has a specific purpose, so the best image format for SEO is situational based and comes down to what type of image it is. Here’s a quick guide:

JPEG – JPEG is the ideal and best compressed image format for more complex images with lots of colors. For photos and more complex illustrations, save the file as a JPEG.

PNG – A PNG is for far more simple images. PNGs have a more limited color range and are ideal for images with clearly defined edges. If you have a text based image (like an infographic), a PNG is the way to go.

PNGs also allow you to save the image with a transparent background, making them easy to embed on a web page without having a solid white background or a background in general.

GIF – This is the most straightforward; a GIF is used for images with a brief animation.

If you try to save a complex photo as a PNG, you’ll find that it will create a much larger file size with no noticeable improvement in quality. This is why it’s important that you follow those guidelines.

It’s also worth noting here that photo editors like Photoshop allow you to choose the image quality when outputting them.

Above are two versions of the same image rendered at different qualities.

The left is 60% and the right is 100% in terms of quality setting. While the images look virtually identical, the one on the right renders at nearly 3 times the size.

I find that a quality of 60 works gives you the best quality to size ratio with JPEGs in Photoshop.

How to Name Images for SEO

Lastly, when you’re rendering the image itself, you have to supply a file name for it.

It’s a good idea to be precise with the name of your image to better convey to search engines what that image is of. So “girl on tokyo train” is better than “girl on train” or just “train”.

It’s also preferred to put dashes between words in the title of the image, just like with a URL.

By using the “Save for Web & Devices” option to render, Photoshop will automatically put dashes between every word you type (in place of a blank space).

This will ensure that your image is easily interpreted by both your visitors as well as search engines.

Alt Tag

Last but not least, when you upload your image to your website, remember to include its name/keyword as the alt tag.

Browsers rely on this to show when either the image is broken or images are disabled.

This helps with the accessibility of the page as well as better conveying to search engines as to what your image is about.

Search engines will use both an image’s title and its alt tag to identify the context and include it in image searches accordingly.

Summarizing How to Optimize Images for SEO

• Use free image sites to get the exact image(s) you need without paying or running the risk of copyright issues (be sure to check with every image you download and use, though).
• Know the size of the content area of your website and size your images accordingly.
• Don’t upload a larger than necessary image needlessly (infographics are one of the few exceptions).
• JPEGs are ideal for complex images like photos. PNGs are for simple images with clearly defined edges and limited colors. GIFs are for animated images.
• Saving an image with an unnecessarily high quality setting will create a larger file size without upgrading visible quality.
• Name your images with specificity, after keywords, and include a dash in place of spaces with multiple words.
• The alt tag should reflect the image’s name and is used when the image cannot load properly. This provides additional context to search engines regarding what your image is about and what search queries it should appear for.

Let’s talk how to increase website speed – WordPress edition. Here are the top 10 (all easy) ways to speed up your website.

How to Check Website Speed

The first thing you should do is actually check your website’s speed, meaning its load time.

Navigate over to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and plug your home page’s URL along with a few deeper pages into the tool.

After a few seconds you’ll get a speed score on a scale of 0-100 with 100 being the best. Note that you’ll get a unique score for both the mobile and desktop devices. It will look something like this:

This snapshot shows you the individual load time metrics from specific elements of your site. Green is good, anything in red or orange requires your attention.

Best of all, upon scrolling down, Google gives suggestions on the actual things you need to do to correct this speed liabilities.

If you’re unsure as to what these various metrics are, check out my overview on what each of these core web vitals mean and how to improve them.

How to Increase Website Speed in WordPress

Let’s go over the top 10 things you can do for how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Enable Caching

I begin with caching because it’s the easiest, fastest way of how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Caching means that when someone comes to your website for the first time, the majority of the files necessary to load your site are saved in your visitor’s browser.

This way, if they return to your site, it will load significantly faster.

To enable caching in WordPress, you need a free caching plugin. There are a lot of good and highly rated options (personally I use W3 Total Cache), so grab one and enable caching.

Most of the files needed to load your website are static and rarely change. The caching plugin creates code which instructs your visitor’s web browser which files are unchanged and can be loaded from the previous visit (thus saving time).

You can pick and choose the cache time for each file type on your site within most of these plugins but typically the defaults are fine.

You can also add some code to the bottom of your .htaccess file for your website to manually instruct browsers on caching times.

Adding the following code ensures that the following file types only load fresh after 30 days (measured in 2592000 seconds).

<FilesMatch "(?i)^.*\.(ico|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|woff)$">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A2592000
</FilesMatch>

I still recommend just using a plugin because they usually have additional options for how to increase website speed in WordPress as I’ll discuss in a moment.

Upload Optimized Images

A lot of speeding up your WordPress run site is simply a matter of reducing file sizes. A good way to do this moving forward is to only upload optimized images to your site.

If you’re using a program to edit or create images for your site like Photoshop, make sure that you’re creating them to be as efficient and compressed as possible.

Typically setting your output setting above “high” quality just creates a larger file size with no noticeable change in visual quality.

Also remember that the image file type dictates the size and certain image types are better at compressing and optimizing certain images more efficiently than others.

A good rule of thumb is:

Use JPEG when it’s a photo or complex image with lots of colors and definition.

Use a PNG when it’s a simple graphic with just a handful of colors and well defined boundaries.

Optimize Images Upon Upload

You can also use an image optimization plugin to optimize existing and new images when you upload them to your site. These work by compressing images to smaller sizes without sacrificing image quality.

Using one retroactively can free up a lot of space on your site, particularly if you have a lot of images already on your site.

It’s worth noting that some of the caching plugins will do this for you, as well.

Use a CDN

One of the major causes of slow website load time is the user’s physical distance from the server your website is kept on.

The farther your site’s visitor is from where the content they’re loading is actually stored, the longer it will take to load.

This is why a content delivery network or CDN can be a very effective way to speed up your site’s load time.

It works like this: cached versions of your site are stored on secondary servers around the globe.

So when someone in Australia is loading your site in their browser, it will load significantly faster if a cached version of your site is stored on a more local server in say Melbourne than somewhere in the United States.

Their browser will connect to the closest server your content is stored on no matter where they are in the world.

Most caching plugins give an option to integrate with a CDN (hopefully you’re getting an idea by now of how important a caching plugin is in how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Remove Excess Content and Scripts

Sometimes the easiest and most effective way to speed up your website is to just start cutting out existing yet excess content and scripts.

For example, javascript based content typically takes much longer to load over basic HTML.

Ask yourself what is better for your website’s visitors – that over the top loading animation on your website or a simpler, cleaner page which loads in a quarter of the time.

In a similar vein, take a glimpse at the plugins installed and active on your site. Do you need them all? Odds are you installed something months ago as an experiment to try it out but it’s not providing any value to your site.

It’s a good idea to audit not just your site’s content, but your site’s behind the scenes content like plugins and scripts and make sure every bit of it is essential.

Use AMP

Speaking of removing bloated content and scripts, this is especially true for loading your site on mobile devices.

Mobile devices on average have access to slower internet speeds, so it behooves you to have a lighter version of your website for mobile users.

Enter AMP.

AMP stands for accelerated mobile pages. It’s an open-source project initiative begun by Google.

It essentially involves creating alternate, lighter in code versions of every page you create which Google can serve up specifically to mobile users.

This sounds like a lot of work, but as I covered in my overview of what is AMP in WordPress, it’s virtually as simple as installing a plugin.

There are plenty of plugins for AMP, and most of them automatically create an AMP compliant page and communicate this to Google for you. They do this by cutting most of the complex scripts out of your page and just boiling it down to the loading essentials while preserving as much of the look and feel of your site but on mobile as possible.

Alternatively, they give you the option to manually create an AMP compliant page.

Optimize Existing Code

You can optimize the existing code on your site in a few ways.

This includes:

Minifying Code – Minifying code removes unnecessary gaps/white space in your code to make it more efficient and load faster because the browser can read it more easily.

Note that a good clean and maintained theme (see what is the best free WordPress theme in 2022) won’t have a great deal of this.

Regardless, you can minify your code and specify which types with most caching plugins and is a one click way to speed up your site in WordPress.

Lazy Load Images – Typically an image is lower priority in terms of importance with your content.

With that in mind, you can lazy load images on your site using either most caching plugins or image optimization plugins.

This lowers their priority when your page is loading, putting loading them off until the more important elements have loaded for your visitor.

Defer Javascript – I talked about removing bloated code like javascript you might not need, but just like with lazy loading images you can defer javascript or any other types of code for that matter to load last.

This allows the rest of your page to load more quickly rather than the browser struggling with loading the heavier code simultaneously.

You can specify different script extensions like JS to load last in most caching plugins.

Embed Videos Rather Than Host Them

Using videos and images is a good way to keep your content fresh and make it more easily digestible for your visitor.

Videos are typically easily the largest sized files you can have on your server.

With that in mind, it’s better to reference and embed a video from another site rather than uploading and hosting it right on your site, though.

YouTube makes it very easy to embed a video you’ve uploaded there directly into your page.

With WordPress’ blocks system, you can just pull up a YouTube block and paste the URL of the video you want to embed.

Keep Your Database Optimized

Your site’s database is where your actual website is organized. So think less images and code which dictate the look of your site but more the written content of your posts and pages.

Over time, this can get cluttered up just like your own desktop.

You can use a database plugin to optimize and cleanup your database.

This is useful for removing old unnecessary revisions of posts and pages you still have lying around, cluttering up the database.

It won’t give you a huge boost in performance, but every little bit helps and it’s good maintenance to get into the habit of.

Keep Site Updated

Lastly in this list of how to increase website speed in WordPress: keep your site updated.

This means keeping your plugins, theme, and WordPress version itself all up to date. So every time a new update rolls out, make sure that you install it.

I talked about this in my overview on 3 website updates I recommend doing every year, but it’s a good way to both keep your site secure and get the latest functionality. Many updates will involve any of those three elements (plugins, themes, and WordPress version) to run more efficiently.

You can automatically set plugins to update on the plugins page:

Updates for Themes and the WordPress version itself both need to be done manually (meaning click update automatically when they’re available).

This means it’s obviously important to make sure that your website loads quickly across all devices (see my overview on the huge Google core web vitals update from 2021).

And THIS in turn means that it’s not enough to put together one iteration of your site and call it a day.

Enter AMP, so let’s talk about what is AMP in WordPress and how to speed up a WordPress site on mobile using it.

What is AMP in WordPress?

In short, AMP stands for accelerated mobile pages and essentially means creating dedicated mobile friendly pages which will load on mobile devices in place of your conventional pages.

Not surprisingly, AMP was an open-source project initiative started by Google. Google wants to feature fast loading pages in its SERPs regardless of the device someone is using.

When someone is on a mobile device, odds are greater that their internet connection will be slower and less reliable than when browsing on a desktop.

AMP takes this into consideration and creates specific pages which load more quickly. It accomplishes this by putting caps on the amount of JS and CSS code an AMP specific page can load (50kb).

It’s essentially a “lite” version of the same content designed entirely with speed in mind.

How to Speed Up a WordPress Site on Mobile With AMP

So how do we enable AMP on our website?

Like with everything in WordPress, there’s a simple plugin for enacting AMP on your website. There are a few good ones, so pick, install, and activate one on your site. I’ll be referencing AMP (literally the name of the specific plugin) in the rest of this resource.

You can see the plugin immediately start working if you begin creating a new post or page on your site or open an older one in your WP dashboard.

In the case of AMP the plugin, you can see live AMP validation on the right hand of the screen when you click on the AMP bolt icon:

In the case of this page, there are 7 issues which means there are 7 elements on the page which, if left intact, the page will NOT have AMP validation. This means that Google will not see that we have an AMP compliant page to serve to mobile users.

By default, this plugin removes the sections of a page which are keeping it from being AMP compliant. Note that this doesn’t affect your original/desktop version one iota.

So by default, no extra actions are needed on your end. That said, it’s still useful for seeing any issues which were note AMP compliant and possibly are slowing your site down in general.

To be clear, unless there are specific issues the plugin will notify you about where you need to take manual action, you’ll have an AMP ready/mobile Google friendly page every time which can help you outrank your competitors in Google’s mobile SERPs.

Alternatively, the plugin allows you to manually create a dedicated AMP version of the page separate of your main page. You might go for this option if you have a smaller site, say for a brick and mortar business which only has a few pages.

If you have a content site which you publish to frequently, the automated/standard version works well.

How to Not Sacrifice Style for Speed

The one obvious drawback of AMP is that it neuters the intended design of your page.

On some sites, if you’ve got a lot of code, it completely changes the look of the mobile pages so that it looks like you’re on a completely different website than the desktop version.

The best way to combat this is to have a light and speedy site to begin with so that there’s not much to change.

Incidentally, I just looked into what is the best free WordPress theme. Reassuringly (considering it’s the theme powering this), I found Astra to be the best free theme for a number of reasons, one of which is speed.

Astra boasts it’s AMP friendliness and compatibility in that it goes out of its way to keep your AMP pages as close to the desktop versions as possible. It accomplishes a lot of this by being lightweight right out of the box.

You can get an on-demand speed appraisal for both the desktop and mobile devices from Google to see how far behind the curve you are from the start. That free tool will give you recommendations on the biggest issues impacting your site’s speed and performance.

Some of the same issues may present themselves in the AMP validation section of a page. Of course with AMP installed, it simply removes the bits which are keeping it from being validated on its AMP version.

In Summary on How to Speed Up a WordPress Site on Mobile

• More than half of all website traffic is mobile and it will continue trending that way.
• It’s essential to have a website which is responsive on both desktop and mobile devices.
• AMP is a system of creating mobile friendly/lite versions of the same desktop content, optimized for mobile devices and designed to use less data/load quicker through data caps and other requirements.
• AMP pages are more Google friendly in Google’s mobile SERPs because Google recognizes that they load faster. As such, with everything else being equal, an AMP version of a page will outrank a conventional page which hasn’t taken mobile into consideration.
• Using a free AMP themed plugin, you can automatically create AMP compliant pages alongside the main content as you go. Conversely you can also use it to manually create an AMP compliant version of a page.

Hopefully this helped you understand more about AMP, why it can be beneficial for your site/rankings/traffic, and how easy it is to implement.

In fact, each year I always make it a point to perform these 3 new year website updates every time that calendar changes over.

Copyright Year

Call me a purist, but it kind of turns me off when I visit a website and the copyright year of the site is out of date.

The first thing I always do once that calendar year flips over anew is update this for every one of my websites.

Typically this appears in the footer section of your website.

Note that if you’re running WordPress many themes automatically update this for you. You can obviously check this by navigating to your site and checking the bottom for the correct date.

If the theme hasn’t automatically updated this for you, you can typically manually change it in the customization section of your theme.

In the “Sparkling” theme, for example, you would click on “Sparkling Options”, then “Footer”.

Here you can input whatever copyright information and year you would like.

Don’t stop there; be sure to update the copyright year on any resources on your site, as well. An example would be if you have any eBooks you sell or give away as incentives on your site. You’ll want to update the copyright year there to ensure folks that they’re reading a recent and up to date resource.

Date Specific Posts

By date specific posts I’m referring to posts with a date in the title. Date specific titles can encourage a higher Google CTR by assuring your visitor that you have the most up to date information on your topic. This is especially effective on topics which might evolve over time.

Date specific posts can also work against you if they mention any year but the current year.

So instead of shying away from featuring the year in a post’s title and to get the most out of them, use the new year as an opportunity to do a mass update of all of these posts at once.

This is easy enough to do on your WordPress site by utilizing the search box on your posts page:

Search by the last year to get an instant collection of posts featuring your keyword, or in this case the year, in your title.

The posts with the year in the title will appear first as the most relevant results.

Instead of simply swapping out the year itself in the post, do a quick read through of the post to see if you’d change anything. As long as you’re sure you have the latest and most relevant information on the topic, simply changing the year is fine.

If you end up changing any specific content in the post, maybe make a note at the top to reflect when it was updated and give a quick overview of the change.

This can further drive home the idea that you carefully curate your content and ensure that it’s up to date, again assuring relevance to your visitor.

Don’t forget to do the same thing to other content of yours off of your website. This can be content in your email list, or other media like videos.

If you have videos on YouTube and the content doesn’t need to be refreshed, you can get away with just updating the title. Just note that the publish date of the video will still reflect the previous year, so I wouldn’t do this after more than a year or so.

Theme/Plugins

Last but still very worth mentioning, the new year is a great time to make sure that your theme and plugins are up to date.

Outdated content like this leads to potentially costly security vulnerabilities on your site.

It’s easy to ensure that your plugins are up to date as you can set them to auto-update in the plugins section of WordPress. Simply tick the boxes for all of your plugins and select “Enable Auto-updates” from the dropdown menu and apply:

Your theme is another matter. You still have to manually update your theme which is simple enough to do.

Note that many themes get neglected over time to where the author quits providing support and updates for it.

The new year is a great time to make sure that your theme is still being maintained on a regular basis. If it’s not, then you might want to take the opportunity to give your site a fresh look in the form of a newer, more popular and therefore better maintained theme.