If your small wordpress blog or site is hosted on bluehost it is probably hosted on a shared server. A shared server means your blog is sharing resources with millions of other blog sites.
Sharing a server with other small blogs is not a problem on bluehost because they are a top notch web hosting company. Bluehost have heavily invested on their servers and people to ensure all hosted websites are running like clock work.
While Bluehost do a good job to provide fast speeds on their side, it is up to you to do what is necessary to make sure your wordpress blog site is racing like a Ferrari.
1. Resize Those Images
Images should be minimized to the right size without destroying the quality. I use photoshop to reduce the size of the images. The latest version of wordpress allows you to reduce the size of images immediately after uploading them.
2. Use a Lean Wordpress Theme
A good example of a fast loading wordpress theme is Twenty Ten/Twenty Eleven (aka the default WP themes). The reason is, it is simple and lean. Doesn't have fancy designs with tons of images, lines and colors that hog the speed.
A fancy theme may look good but they sacrifice load times.
3. Optimize your homepage
Keep things to a minimum on your homepage
Show excerpts instead of full posts
Reduce the number of posts on the page (5-7 is an okay number)
4. Remove Inactive plugins
If you no longer use a plugin, remove it from your installation. Keeping it is a poor use of disk space.
5. Remove duplicate plugins
It is pointless to use multiple SEO plugins. They all do a similar job. MY recommended SEO plugin is all in one SEO plugin.
6. Use a few plugins as possible
The truth is the more plugins you have the slower the blog.
7. Beware of Auto Link Plugins
Auto links plugins are highly valued because of their SEO value but they are a speed hog. Auto links take time to calculate. They have to go through the whole database each time a link is created. All that sending is eating into your speed.
8. Keep your wordpress blog updated
Previously you needed to login to your bluehost cpanel to update your blog but these days you do it inside wordpress. There is no reason for leaving your blog out dated other than sheer lazyness.
Remember this days Google rates sites based on speed / load times. Another reason to make sure your bluehost hosted blog is up to speed!
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