How to Use and Speed up Google Fonts in WordPress

Surprisingly, there is one thing that you can do to improve not just your website's loading speed but also improve your optimisation, and that's with Google Fonts in WordPress. Many WordPress Developers Sydney suggests using this since its quite effective and powerful despite being a free font. However, if you have enough budgets, a paid font is better. Nevertheless, let's talk more about Google Fonts.

What are Google Fonts?

First off, for those of you who might not know, Google Fonts is an open source (free) directory of over 800 web font families which you can use on your website. They are also available to download locally for print and other uses. Millions of WordPress websites utilise Google Fonts as it is a great free way to enhance the look and usability of your site.

If you're aiming to improve your website's performance, then a system font is the best thing to use. However, it won't look as professional as other well-designed websites out there. So you need a perfect balance in order to professionally use Google Fonts.

How to Use Google Fonts in WordPress?

There are different ways to incorporate Google Fonts on your WordPress website.  The first and default way is to grab them directly from Google. This method uses their global CDN to deliver the fonts quickly from different servers from around the globe.

When you add them to your site there will be an external request to "fonts.googleapis.com."

Another option is by using external requests to "fonts.gstatic.com" for the WOFF or WOFF2 versions depending upon browser support.

Advantages:

·         Free and easy to implement a much wider variety of type into a website.

·         No licensing issues.

·         Some great font and font family choices.

·         Downloadable to use in print.

Disadvantages:

·         Becoming more and more common on the web.

·         Limited number of font families including different weights and italics.

If you want to improve your Google Fonts, make sure to ask WordPress Developers Sydney to customise your theme and plugins to optimise it better.