You can manage without me
The guide for those who prefer to build their own site
Do you have technical understanding?
Are you good at getting to grips with new things yourself?
Do you want to do most of the work yourself?
I understand that! So here's an overview of the most important tools for getting great performance out of your WordPress site, even if you do it yourself.
Many factors are responsible for page performance and visibility in search engines.
Nowadays, it takes far more than clever keywords and descriptions to make Google & Co. happy.
I've put together a list of the most important website tools that perform really well.
These are the key points of your website:
Backup and migration
Duplicator
Data backup, website recovery, website migration.
With Duplicator makes this process child's play. No matter whether you want to move, back up or duplicate your website, Duplicator offers a reliable and user-friendly solution. Securing your website is essential, and Duplicator ensures that you always have an up-to-date copy to hand in case something goes wrong.
A "free" version is also available here, but this makes backing up and especially restoring somewhat more complicated.
SEO - search engine optimizing
RankMath
As with page builders, there is also a much better-known tool for SEO, namely YoastSEO. But the same applies here as with page builders: Better known does not mean better!
Every plug-in also consumes resources, which is noticeable in the page performance. YoastSEO is clearly behind in the loading time test, when using RankMath there was no delay was measurable. In addition RankMath many more possibilities and more meaningful tasks.
The Pro version also includes a 15-day trial for the "AI Content Tool", which allows you to quickly write SEO-optimized texts for your site. As with Yoast RankMath is available as a free version, but both are neither fish nor fowl.
If you save on SEO, you don't even need to think "performance".
Optimization of images
Imagify
The image optimizer that rocks
Images are a very important part of a website, but they can also be real performance hogs.
This is where Imagify comes in and saves the day. It allows you to drastically reduce the size and therefore the loading time of your images without making them look worse. A real game changer for websites with lots of large images!
And quite cheap too.
Database / cache / WordPress optimization
WP Rocket
Performance is everything, and here comes WP Rocket into play. WP Rocket is a caching plug-in that not only makes your website faster, but also improves the user experience.
With features such as page caching, preloading and lazy loading of images, you can drastically reduce the loading times of your site. WP Rocket is easy to set up and works wonders when it comes to increase the performance of your website. A real must-have for websites, especially if they were not created with Breakdance, but with Elementor or Divi, for example.
But what does the fun cost?
Less than you think. Much less!
Here is an overview of all the important top plug-ins together with the page builder:
Pagebuilder: Breakdance ($ 99.90/year)
Backup&Restore: Duplicator ($ 49.50/year)
SEO: RankMath ($ 83.90/year)
Image optimization: Imagify ($ 59.90/year)
Speed optimization: WP-Rocket ($ 47.20/year)
So if you ALL top tools and service providers, you are looking at a little under EUR 330,- / year, so only EUR 27.50 per month for the full performance, security and findability of your site, including domain and hosting.
A real "no-brainer" as a freelancer or self-employed person!
You can also test your site yourself on GTmetrix.comThe free account does not provide as much detail, but it is enough to give you a good insight.
I test for you but I would be happy to take a closer look at your website free of charge.
For the legally compliant texts e-recht24.de offers a great free text generator, but depending on the scope and tools of your site, the "Pro version" may also be useful.