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Shared hosting is great for small websites with moderate traffic, but as a starter hosting plan, it will never offer the same speed and performance as a VPS, cloud or dedicated server. However, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to speed up a website running on shared hosting if loading and response times are slow. If you’re looking for ways to optimise your website’s speed, here’s how you can do it.
Why website speed is important
Google’s core algorithm now takes several speed-related factors into account when ranking websites in search results. Without going into the finer details, these essentially refer to how quickly a page loads in the user’s browser and how quickly the website responds to interactions, such as when a user submits information or clicks on a link. Poor performance in either of these areas can affect rankings and, consequently, the experience of the website’s visitors.
At the same time, advances in website development, hosting services and connected devices mean that modern users expect websites to load and respond almost instantly. As a result, tolerance for slow pages has decreased, and after a delay of just a few seconds, most users will leave the website.
Why website speed is important on shared hosting
The key difference between shared hosting and other types of hosting is that the server’s resources are shared amongst all the websites, which limits the available hosting, RAM and CPU. Whilst these are generally sufficient for smaller websites, speed and performance may be affected if traffic is high. This problem can be exacerbated if other websites on the server are also busy at the same time, as this can affect everyone else.
How to speed up a shared website To speed up your shared hosting website and minimise the impact of limited resources and noisy neighbours, here are a few things you can do.
Enable gzip compression
A website’s speed is influenced by the amount of data it sends and receives. Gzip compression reduces this data volume by up to 90 per cent, thereby reducing the website’s loading and response times. You can enable Gzip compression via the control panel or by editing the .htaccess file.
Use caching
Websites consist of static and dynamic elements. Static elements are those that always remain the same, whilst dynamic elements (e.g. the display of the time and date) change. Caching refers to the storage of copies of static files outside the server so that they can be loaded more quickly. The most common storage location is on the user’s device, usually in the browser’s cache. Some control panels allow you to easily enable caching for the website. If this is not possible, certain extensions can perform the same task.
Removing unnecessary plugins
Plugins increase the amount of data sent between your website and the user’s browser. If there are too many of them, the cumulative effect can slow down loading and response times. If the plugins are essential, keep them. However, if they are not, you can improve performance by removing them. You should also remove any deactivated extensions that you do not use. You may also find alternative extensions that have less of an impact on speed.
Install a streamlined template
As websites have become increasingly sophisticated, developers are creating ever more elaborate themes. Whilst these offer far more options in terms of a website’s appearance and functionality, they can be data-intensive and take much longer to load. If your theme has more features and options than you need, a lighter theme can help improve speed.
Using a CDN
Website speed can also be affected by the distance data has to travel across the internet to reach the user’s browser. A CDN is a kind of cache that stores the static elements of a website on servers located in various geographical locations around the world. CDNs are paid services, but they can help websites with an international client base to perform better worldwide.
Optimising images
Images are among the largest files on a website, and modern websites – particularly online shops – usually contain a lot of them. This means they affect the website’s loading speed. You can minimise this impact by optimising your images. To do this, ensure that your images are in .jpg or .png format and are no larger than 72 dpi. Also, make sure you upload images that are the correct size for your theme so that automatically resized copies are not generated. You can use plugins that carry out image optimisation for you.
Using lazy loading
Lazy loading technology is another way of optimising images, as it stages the loading of images, ensuring that those which need to be visible on the screen are loaded first. Images below the fold are held back until everything else has loaded and the user scrolls down. If your theme does not support lazy loading, you can also use a plugin to implement it.
Optimise your database
Most websites rely on databases to store their content. Just like a computer, a database can become cluttered with unnecessary content, such as old draft posts and spam comments. A database optimisation plugin can help you run your database more efficiently. It’s a bit like defragmenting your hard drive.
Want a real speed boost? Upgrade to a better hosting plan
If you really want to speed up your website, the best solution is to switch to a more powerful hosting solution. Compared to shared hosting, the most obvious step is to move to a VPS, or virtual private server. This works perfectly with all kinds of websites, such as WordPress; you can easily migrate your website to it and continue to use control panels such as cPanel. Best of all, it costs just a few pounds extra per month, yet delivers the full performance and speed of a mini dedicated server.