Having a fast blog has its many benefits. From an end user perspective, it means that people can get to your content faster and have a much more enjoyable experience. From a search engine perspective, it opens up easier rankings for you, as it is public knowledge now that search engines do take into account the load time of your blog.
The first think to keep in consideration here is your hosting. Is it currently powerful enough to support your traffic numbers. Whilst there are some basic and extremely popular hosts out there now, most of these shared hosting environments are simply not built to withstand large numbers of traffic. Keeping in mind that you will be sharing a server with potentially hundreds of other people, if one person has a spike in traffic, your load time will drop, and visa versa.
It is in this instance that it is advisable to either seek a VPS or dedicated solution, or even a CDN style backup solution to load your most critical files. There is also what is known as "Cluster Based Hosting" which means that your site will load from a variety of locations, deemed best depending on the location of the visitor. What this means is that instead of loading from one static location regardless of where you are based, it will load on the quickest location based on your location.
It is also worth using caching plugins for WordPress that generate a status set of html files to load content quicker. It is worth mentioning that these plugins amongst all else are a powerful script that runs on your hosting account, so you will still need to be conscious of the amount of computing resources that you are taking up on your host.
Another recommendation is to start using GIF images for graphics, and JPG strictly for photos only. Both of these file formats are purpose built for each purpose, and can generate smaller file sizes. For example, if you are using a large PNG image for your header, consider shrinking it down using the GIF format, as that will take the load off your hosting resources if rolled out over your entire site.
This should not be taken with a grain of salt. Load time is a big factor in not just visitor experience, but also how well your website ranks in the search engines. Using just the above methods should see some massive improvements, however, this is something that should be focused on long term. That way, you can continuously please both your visitors and the search engines.
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