If you have just started your brand new WordPress website and still find that the search engines aren’t ranking it high enough on SERPS, the perhaps it’s time to clean up your website. You need to optimize your website so that it functions better and in the long run, can even provide more user centric features to your users. If you have opted for WP free themes then you need to optimize your website regularly. Premium themes are better designed and more robust but that being said, you still need to optimize your website regularly. There are a few things that you can do for some quick optimization but if you want to try out advanced methods, then you may want to do a backup before you do so.
- Delete unused plugins: Your website comes with limited bandwidth which essentially means that the more plugins you install on your website, your processing power gets processed to the same. So, make a point of checking out various plugins and see if there’s any that you have not used in a while. Now deactivate those plugins by accessing your admin area and changing their titles. This should effectively deactivate those plugins and your website should start performing better as a result.
- Hide unwanted shortcodes: If you had used short codes with a particular plugin and have since then deactivated the same, then you are bound to be left with all those shortcodes all over the place. Just use a plugin like ‘hide unwanted shortcodes’ and this should effectively help you sort out all those short codes. What this plugin does is that it does not delete the short code but merely hides them until you require them at a later point of time.
- Trim that database: One of the ways to optimize your website s to clear up all the ancient revisions and old posts. You can either archive the lot or just delete the old revised posts. This should help your pages load faster and at the same time, help your website stay current in the process. You can check out RGV optimize database plugin which should come handy when cleaning the clutter from your website. This plugin also tells you the size of the database, both prior and after optimizing your website with it.
- Image clean up: It is a good idea to use images and media with posts but when your website hosts several images, then it may be time to trim the fat. Media files often take up a lot of space and processing power, so deleting those old images and media files should go some way to optimizing your website.
- Check out the tags: It may come as a total surprise to you that your website contains more than a few tags that you have not used to date, for any of the posts. There is no reason as to why these tags should not be removed. By removing these tags,
- Spam: Most of the spammers often target WordPress sites and its comment section. So make sure that you install specific plugins on your website which should help you dele those commens for good.
These are some of the ways that you can clean up your WordPress website. You can always go in for a more detailed clean up but remember that you would require doing a complete backup before doing so. It is important that you clean up your website at regular intervals so that it continues to perform seamlessly. Just make sure that you delete all those plugins that you are not using at the moment.