20 Ways to Speed Up Your Financial Wordpress Site

Are you a financial professional or blogger that’s struggling with a slow Wordpress site? Chances are you are dealing with an extremely slow Wordpress website that’s costing you free organic traffic, leads, and revenue.

I’ve worked with dozens of clients across many different financial verticals and most of them have extremely slow websites. Some of these professionals are:

• Personal finance bloggers
• Investment managers
• Accountants
• Forex traders
• Equity Analysts
• Credit counselors
• Mortgage brokers
• Insurance agents
• Real estate agents
• Fintech startups
• Tax consultants
• Stock market bloggers
• Investment newsletter services
• Financial magazines
• Financial planners (CFP)
• Crypto investment blogs
• Venture capitalists
• Personal finance influencers
• Tax attorneys
• Retirement planning consultants

Want to test out your site speed? Go to Google’s PageSpeed Test and enter your URL for free. You’ll receive a simple report showing you how you score on both mobile and desktop devices.

Your site speed matters a lot! In my 16 years running InvestorTrip.com, I know firsthand how difficult it is to compete for competitive keywords in the finance and investment niche.

While you cannot easily replicate their backlink profile, you can control how fast your website loads and the overall user experience for your visitors.

How I Got A Perfect 100/100 Google PageSpeed Score For This Website

I struggled with a slow Wordpress site until I learned everything you need to know about optimizing financial Wordpress sites for speed. That’s why this website has perfect Core Web Vitals and Google Pagespeed scores!

25 Ways to Speed Up Your Financial Wordpress Website in Less Than 1 Hour

If you want the same results as above then you need to spend at least 1 hour optimizing your website for maximum speed. I’m going to share with you exactly what I did so you can get the same results, too.

Most financial niche websites are incredibly slow so I’m here to make a positive impact on our industry.

Tools I Use

• Rocket.net Wordpress Hosting (paid)
• Kadence Theme (free)
• Perfmatters (paid)
• WPOptimizer Plugin (free)

You don’t need to invest in a ton of tools to make this work. All of them are free other than good managed Wordpress hosting and Perfmatters.

1. Choose a Fast Hosting Provider

Select a reputable hosting provider that specializes in WordPress hosting. A high-quality host can significantly impact your website’s speed and performance. InvestorTrip.com is hosted by Rocket.net and they offer free worpress site migration if you sign up for one of their plans.

2. Eliminate and Optimize Images

Images are extremely resource extensive and make your site slower if you don’t properly optimize them. Most people use featured images on their pages but you don’t necessarily need them if they put a drag on your website loading times.

For example, Investopedia ranks for a ton of lucrative financial keywords without using featured images above the fold.

The easiest solution is to get rid of unnecessary images that don’t add a ton of value. Compress and resize images before uploading them to your website. You can use plugins like Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer to automate this process.

3. Minimize HTTP Requests

An HTTP request is made whenever you install a new Wordpress plugin, embed videos, add javascript tracking codes, or anything else to your website.

Reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files, using sprites, and implementing asynchronous loading for non-essential resources.

4. Enable Caching

Caching saves a copy of your website’s pages whenever a visitor lands on your website. Rocket.net enables caching automatically for all of its clients but you can utilize caching plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache to generate and store static versions of your web pages, reducing server load and load times.

5. Clean Up Your Database:

Your Wordpress database stores all of your posts, drafts, comments, and other key data. Over time, your database gets clogged up and needs maintenance. Regularly clean and optimize your WordPress database using plugins like WP-Optimize or WP-Sweep.

6. Choose a Lightweight Theme:

Opt for a lightweight and well-coded theme to avoid unnecessary bloat that can slow down your website. I recommend KadenceWP (free) or GeneratePress (free) for a fast loading Wordpress theme. Both themes offer premium upgrades if you want more features.

7. Update WordPress and Plugins:

Keep your WordPress core and plugins up to date to ensure you have access to the latest performance enhancements and security fixes. You can turn on auto updates so that your theme and plugins get updated on autopilot.

8. Use Lazy Loading:

Lazy loading delays the loading of below-the-fold images and content, improving initial page load times. I use the Perfmatters plugin to turn on lazy loading for this website.

9. Enable GZIP Compression:

Enable GZIP compression on your server to reduce the size of files transmitted to users’ browsers. Rocket.net enables GZIP compression automatically or you can download a free plugin such as WP Fastest Cache.

10. Minimize Redirects:

Limit the use of redirects, as they add extra HTTP requests and increase loading times.

11. Leverage Browser Caching:

Set cache headers to instruct browsers to store certain resources locally, reducing the need for repeated downloads.

12. Reduce Server Response Time:

Optimize your server environment, choose a reliable hosting plan, and consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce server response time.

13. Don’t Implement AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages):

AMP is a framework that creates lightning-fast versions of your web pages for mobile users but I don’t recommend using it for your financial website. Your website will be hosted on Google’s server and could negatively affect your SEO and user experience.

14. Enable Browser Resource Hints:

Use DNS prefetch, preconnect, and preload to instruct browsers to fetch resources earlier in the loading process. Perfmatters can enable all of these settings with your Wordpress dashboard.

15. Remove Unused Plugins and Themes:

This step is crucial to achieving a fast-loading website. Be ruthless with this step and deactivate any plugins that don’t benefit your visitors or drive revenue for your business. Each plugin puts additional load on your website and most plugins aren’t optimized for speed.

Unused themes can be targeted by hackers who inject malicious code into your website for phishing/illegal purposes. I recommend using only 1 theme as a backup, preferay the default Wordpress TwentyThreee theme.

16. Optimize CSS and JavaScript:

Minify and combine CSS and JavaScript files to reduce their size and the number of requests.

17. Optimize Your Homepage

Streamline your homepage by limiting the number of posts, using excerpts instead of full content, and reducing image sizes.

18. Limit External Embedded Media:

Embedding Youtube videos and X.com posts add a visual element to your site but really make your site load slower. Reduce the use of external embedded media (e.g., videos) on your website, as they can increase loading times.

19. Monitor and Audit Your Website:

Regularly audit your website using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to identify performance bottlenecks.

20. Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDNs cache and distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing server load and speeding up content delivery. All Rocknet.net Wordpress plans come with a free Cloudfare Enterprise CDN package (worth well over $2,000 monthly if purchased separately).

Don’t Have Time to Speed Up Your Financial Website? Hire Me

I’m a Wordpress expert in the financial niche and can speed up your Wordpress site within 1 business day.

My hourly rate is $250. Most projects can be completed with 1 to 2 hours on average.

Contact Me below to Get Started or email: tjp@investortrip.com