Before you get started on trying to improve your speed you should take a lookat what it is currently at. The page speed checker and the Google insightschecker should be able to give you a good look.1. Minimize HTTP RequestsAccording to Yahoo 80 of a Web pageu2019s load time is spent downloading thedifferent piecesparts of the page images stylesheets scripts Flash etc.An HTTP request is made for each one of these elements so the more onpagecomponents the longer it takes for the page to render.That being the case the quickest way to improve site speed is to simplifyyour design. Streamline the number of elements on your page. Use CSS instead of images whenever possible. Combine multiple style sheets into one. Reduce scripts and put them at the bottom of the page.Always remember when it comes to your website leaner is better.Pro Tip Start a campaign to reduce the number of components on each page. Bydoing this you reduce the number of HTTP requests needed to make the pagerenderu2014and youu2019ll significantly improve site performance.2. Reduce server response timeYour target is a server response time of less than 200ms milliseconds. Andif you follow the tips in this article youu2019re well on your way to achievingthis.Google recommends using a web application monitoring solution and checking forbottlenecks in performance.Pro Tip Read this report by Singlehop Critical Ecommerce InfrastructureNeeds to learn nine things you need to focus on to keep your site performingwell.Then tap into these resources Yslow u2023 to evaluate your siteu2019s speed and get tips on how to improve performance. Googleu2019s PageSpeed Tools u2023 to learn more about performance bestpractice and automate the process.3. Enable compressionLarge pages which is what you could have if youu2019re creating highqualitycontent are often 100kb and more. As a result theyu2019re bulky and slow todownload. The best way to speed their load time is to zip themu2014a techniquecalled compression.Compression reduces the bandwidth of your pages thereby reducing HTTPresponse. You do this with a tool called Gzip.Most web servers can compress files in Gzip format before sending them fordownload either by calling a thirdparty module or using builtin routines.According to Yahoo this can reduce download time by about 70.And since 90 of todayu2019s Internet traffic travels through browsers thatsupport Gzip itu2019s a great option for speeding up your site.Pro Tip Read this article for more details on Gzip compression. Then set upyour server to enable compression Apache Use moddeflate Nginx Use HttpGzipModule IIS Configure HTTP Compression4. Enable browser cachingWhen you visit a website the elements on the page you visit are stored onyour hard drive in a cache or temporary storage so the next time you visitthe site your browser can load the page without having to send another HTTPrequest to the server.Hereu2019s how Tenni Theurer formerly of Yahoo explains itu2026The first time someone comes to your website they have to download the HTMLdocument stylesheets javascript files and images before being able to useyour page. That may be as many as 30 components and 2.4 seconds.Once the page has been loaded and the different components stored in theuseru2019s cache only a few components needs to be downloaded for subsequentvisits.In Theureru2019s test that was just three components and .9 seconds which shavednearly 2 seconds off the load time.Theurer says that 4060 of daily visitors to your site come in with an emptycache so itu2019s critical that you make your page fast for these firsttimevisitors. But you also need to enable caching to shave time off subsequentvisits.Pro Tip Read this article to learn four methods for enabling caching.Static resources should have a cache lifetime of at least a week. For thirdparty resources like ads or widgets they should have a cache lifetime of atleast one day.For all cacheable resources JS and CSS files image files media files PDFsetc. set Expires to a minimum of one week and preferably up to one year inthe future. Donu2019t set it to more than one year in the future because thatviolates the RFC guidelines.5. Minify ResourcesWYSIWYG resources make it easy to build a Web page but they sometimes createmessy codeu2014and that can slow your website considerably.Since every unnecessary piece of code adds to the size of your page itu2019simportant that you eliminate extra spaces line breaks and indentation inyour code so your pages are as lean as possible.It also helps to minify your code. Hereu2019s Googleu2019s recommendation To minify HTML you can use PageSpeed Insights Chrome Extensionto generate an optimized version of your HTML code. Run the analysis against your HTML page and browse to the u2018Minify HTMLu2023 rule. Click on u2018See optimized contentu2023 to get the optimized HTML code. To minify CSS you can try YUI Compressor and cssmin.js. To minify JavaScript try the Closure Compiler JSMin or the YUI Compressor. You can create a build process that uses these tools to minify and rename the development files and save them to a production directory.6. Optimize imagesWith images you need to focus on three things size format and the srcattribute.Image sizeOversized images take longer to load so itu2019s important that you keep yourimages as small as possible. Use image editing tools to Crop your images to the correct size. For instance if your page is 570px wide resize the image to that width. Donu2019t just upload a 2000pxwide image and set the width parameter widthu201d570u201d. This slows your page load time and creates a bad user experience. Reduce color depth to the lowest acceptable level. Remove image comments.Image format JPEG is your best option. PNG is also good though older browsers may not fully support it. GIFs should only be used for small or simple graphics less than 10u00d710 pixels or a color palette of 3 or fewer colors and for animated images. Do not use BMPs or TIFFs.Src attributeOnce youu2019ve got the size and format right make sure the code is right too. Inparticular avoid empty image src codes.In HTML the code for an image includes thisimg srcu201du201dWhen thereu2019s no source in the quotation marks the browser makes a request tothe directory of the page or to the actual page itself. This can addunnecessary traffic to your servers and even corrupt user data.Pro Tip Take time to resize your images before uploading them. And alwaysinclude the src attribute with a valid URL.To ensure your images load quickly consider adding the WP Smush.it plugin toyour website.7. Optimize CSS DeliveryCSS holds the style requirements for your page. Generally your websiteaccesses this information in one of two ways in an external file which loadsbefore your page renders and inline which is inserted in the HTML documentitself.The external CSS is loaded in the head of your HTML with code that lookssomething like thisu2014Your styles u2013link relu201dstylesheetu201d typeu201dtextcssu201d mediau201dallu201dhrefhttpyourURLstyle.css Inline CSS is nested in your pageu2019s HTML and looks like thisIn general an external style sheet is preferable because it reduces the sizeof your code and creates fewer code duplications.Pro Tip When setting up your styles only use one external CSS stylesheetsince additional stylesheets increase HTTP requests. Here are a two resourcesthat can help CSS Delivery Tool u2023 Tells you how many external stylesheets your website is using. Instructions for combining external CSS files.Avoid including CSS in HTML code such as divs or your headings like theinline CSS pictured above. You get cleaner coding if you put all CSS in yourexternal stylesheet.8. Prioritize abovethefold contentHaving just recommended that you use only one CSS stylesheet and no inlineCSS there is one caveat you need to consider. You can improve user experienceby having your abovethefold top of the page load fasteru2014even if the restof the page takes a few seconds to load.Pro Tip Consider splitting your CSS into two parts a short inline part thatstyles abovethefold elements and an external part that can be deferred.9. Reduce the number of plugins you use on your siteToo many plugins slow your site create security issues and often causecrashes and other technical difficulties.Pro Tip Deactivate and delete any unnecessary plugins. Then weed out anyplugins that slow your site speed.Try selectively disabling plugins then measuring server performance. This wayyou can identify any plugins that harm your site speed.10. Reduce redirectsRedirects create additional HTTP requests and increase load time. So you wantto keep them to a minimum.If youu2019ve created a responsive website more than likely you have redirectsin place to take mobile users from your main website to the responsiveversion.Pro Tip Google recommends these two actions to make sure a responsiveredirect doesnu2019t slow your site Use a HTTP redirect to send users with mobile user agents directly to the mobile equivalent URL without any intermediate redirects and Include the link relu201dalternateu201d markup in your desktop pages to identify the mobile equivalent URL so Googlebot can discover your mobile pages.