Are you having trouble drawing in the crowds? Your can improve your site’s set-up, performance and ranking. Here’s how to increase the number of clicks.

Choose your server locations well

Servers work better when they are closer to the target audience. If you are targeting a specific region, you should find servers that are close to it to prevent slow load times. Optimizing server location will enhance customer satisfaction, since new requests will receive rapid responses. This will be key in consolidating already existing traffic, and generating interest in the site.

If your servers are not ideally located, you could consider shifting to other better placed servers. If your target audience is global, you may need to invest in more servers to ensure a great user experience for everyone around the world. If you are unable to provide holistic coverage, you may consider caching and content delivery networks, which are discussed within this article.

Optimize your images

Choosing the right images to accompany your text content will generate more hits for your site. Images draw users and may work better than actual content in this regard. However, they can add up the total page size and affect user satisfaction.

It is important to find a balance between the amount of images used and the size of your page. You can use more images by optimizing them for the web. Optimization reduces the size of the image without affecting its quality. Optimization takes out metadata, which may be responsible for the increase in size. You can optimize your images by using free online tools or WordPress plugins such as Auto optimize and Smush.

As a rule, you should never upload videos to your site. Pictures may increase your page size by up to 70 times, but video content may increase the size up to 1000 times. Uploading videos could also increase the cost of your hosting premiums, which will result in an unnecessary expense. Instead of videos, you should use GIFs and embedded links to the actual videos.

Layout and Design

Your layout could influence user satisfaction and tendency to visit your site. A great layout will attract users to your site. A great aspect of layout improvement can include the use of a sitemap. This will help search engines to index your site and make it easier for users to find the specific content. The ease of navigation will attract high rankings, as well as improve user satisfaction levels.

The design of your homepage will determine how quickly it loads, as well as how many clicks your articles receive. Having too many details on your homepage could bog down your site, and affect user satisfaction for customers with limited patience. It is important to minimize the amount of detail displayed on your site’s homepage. You can do this by using excerpts, or breaking down the content into different pages. Users will experience quicker loading times because your site is optimized for seamless transition.

Picking out the right layout and design will also boost traffic. Users will view more content when they visit your home page, and could be better placed to find and view other articles they are interested in. Instead of losing potential followers, you will generate more clicks and provide your visitors with an enjoyable site.

Content Delivery Networks and Cache Plugins

CDNs and caching work almost in a similar manner. They reduce the load on your servers by responding to requests with versions of your site that have been saved beforehand. Caching works by saving the site contents on the user’s interface. This is displayed first when the user attempts to visit your site. Instead of loading the entire page, your site will load a cache, enabling your visitor to navigate through the site easily, and without having to wait long amounts of time for the site to load.

Content Delivery Networks store static data such as CSS, JavaScript, images and text on different servers around the world, and deliver them to clients who make the specific request. If a user wants to visit your site, it will load quickly because the CDN delivers a response from a server that is close to the user.

CDNs and caching can help you overcome server location challenges. If your servers are placed too far away from certain groups of users, they could take a long time to load. This could be challenging for site owners who have a global target audience. With a CDN and caching plugins installed, your WordPress site will run more efficiently, and handle traffic from all over the world.

Choosing the right tools

Plugins are designed to offer additional features that help improve user experience and personalize your site to your liking. Plugins can be bulky, as they may increase the size of your WordPress code. Plugins are available for a number of functions. It is important to manage your plugins in order to have an efficient site.

You should eliminate all unused plugins, since they only increase the total page size and affect its loading speed. You should also consider the functions of all plugins that are in use. During this process, you should look into and do away with plugins whose functions overlap with others. This way, your site will only have necessary additional tools. Having fewer plugins will translate to optimum site operation, with the minimalist interface taking a shorter time to load.

Final thought

Your WordPress site should be optimized for speed to draw traffic. A fast loading site will attract new users, as well as help you maintain your current visitors. If your site is optimized, you will increase your visibility and improve the traffic to your site. The reduced response times and faster loading pages will protect your site against any loss of potential users, and improve your SEO ranking. Optimizing your homepage will be better for your site than paid advertising!

If you don’t know how to optimize your site, you should consider hiring out WordPress optimization services to professional service providers who will ensure a thorough process. The knock on effect of optimization is increased traffic, and better ratings.