If you currently own a website you may be getting a slow page speed. If you have gone over some guides and are wondering why it is still slow and coming in at over 2 seconds then this guide may help. This is something that I was racking my brain out trying to figure out for a client – and I hope this may be of assistance to you also.
Note: this is only relevant if you currently have a website with a URL like www – so for example – if your website is: https://yourwebsite.com, then this will not help.
However, if your website is: https://www.yourwebsite.com, then this can definitely help.
Understanding Double Redirects
If you go to tools.pingdom.com and scroll down to the waterfall chart you can see how your website is currently being redirected. Many times people will create a redirect in .htaccess which goes from yoursite.com to https://yoursite.com.
However, there is no redirect to https://www.yoursite.com, so the server has to figure this out on its own.
In order to change this, you need to add some code to your .htaccess file. It should be in the root directory on your File Manager – you will need to ensure that you can see Hidden Files.
The End Result
This is not guaranteed and doesn’t work every time. However, it helped my client drastically improve their page speed and more than double their organic traffic.
Hope this helps and make sure to test by clicking through to all pages after saving the .htaccess file to confirm there is nothing wrong.
Note: you do not need to download this plugin. You can simply copy/paste the .htaccess code to the top of your .htaccess file. Furthermore, it serves as an example of how minor technical tweaks can bring a big difference to your site.
If you have any questions about this post or any other WordPress topic simply head over to my website for – www.headstudios.com.au – and fill out the contact form and I can get back to you. Thanks for reading! I work in all industries from compensation lawyer sydney to the medical field.