I was hunting for some great page speed optimization keywords today and I came across this one: ‘What are top 5 tips to improve WordPress website speed’.
So let’s dive in and spill the page speed optimization beans!
BUT — before we spill those hot beans on what are the top 5 tips to improve WordPress website speed let me tell you a little about why I get excited about WordPress page speed.
Yes I get excited!
I think it’s the competitive ‘beast’ inside of me that just loves to win a great game.
And page speed is a game.
The more you play it the better you get!
And you must continue to play the page speed optimization game every time you create a great piece of content on your WordPress site.
So that leads me to my first and most important top 5 tips to improve WordPress website speed.
What Are Top 5 Tips To Improve WordPress Website Speed List
3. coming soon guys
4. coming soon guys
5. coming soon guys
WordPress Website Speed Tip #1 - Focus on page speed!
Now if you think I have just told you the obvious let me snap my fingers to wake you up!
The most obvious things are the ones that very few people do!
I had an old business teacher once – he was half Chinese and half Scottish – he would say, “to know but not to do, is not yet to know”.
So can I ask a question?
After you have created a great piece of content do you test its page load speed?
And if you do, do you have a publishing quality standard that says EVERY piece of content MUST fully load at DSL speeds in less than 3 seconds and less than 4 seconds on LTE mobile speeds?
Now you may be getting what I mean!
You may be happy with this result but it almost fails the Google Page Speed Core Web Vitals LCP metric!
The report above is for this page BEFORE page speed optimization work.
It’s very easy to be dazzled by the A and 99% ratings.
BUT page speed optimization work is all about the details.
It takes nearly a full second for the page to load the largest piece of content ( Google Core Web Vitals LCP metric ) and despite it fully loading in 1.4 seconds this is not good enough!
The reason being – this report is run at DESKTOP DSL speeds and Google is 100% focused on Mobile First.
GTmetrix mobile speed global testing
If we run the report again – this time at MOBILE LTE speeds, and instead of running it from Hong Kong, which is close to my source server located in Singapore – I have run it from the other side of the world in Vancouver Canada.
This time this web page has failed Google’s Core Web Vitals LCP by a whopping 1.1s!
I use the adjective whopping because EVERY second counts with page speed when it comes to ranking your content at the top of Google and staying there.
Page speed is actually measured in milliseconds and not seconds!
Every 1/10th of a second you can shave off your page load speed at mobile speeds Google will give you an extra page ranking lollipop!
That 1/10th of a second on LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) for example, could rank you ABOVE your competitors in the search results giving you more traffic and more income.
So right now go and create a FREE GTmetrix page speed testing account & check out my page speed course!
So if you don’t have a GTmetrix account go create a free account right now.
I cannot speak high enough about these guys.
And after you have created your account here’s some great GTMETRIX page speed testing tips to get you up and running fast with this amazing speed optimization tool.
AND — [ self promotion plug here ] – take a peek at my Page Speed Optimization Course to learn more about onsite page optimization for WordPress.
Understand Google Core Web Vitals
I get that sometimes new things out of Google can be super confusing, and occasionally you may not be sure of the uptake from others (think AMP pages).
Google Core Web Vitals though is a clear and very well thought out set of metrics that you can use to measure page experience.
Taking the time to fully digest Core Web Vitals assists you in improving your page speed.
When Core Web Vitals was released in May 2020 I have to be honest, I did not initially see the value to me in improving page speed for my own and client sites.
Core Web Vitals has huge value for you
Once I fully understood Core Web Vitals from a technical stand point – as in getting sites to pass the metrics – the penny dropped for me!
I finally saw the value!
One of the first Core Web Vitals metrics I look at now on a GTmetrix report is the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) seeing this metric has a massive impact on user experience and conversion rates.
If you have a large Hero banner image that is also a sales message on a web page, if it does not fully load before the user starts scrolling its sales message is lost, reducing your revenue opportunities from the page.
A top of page loading image (called above the fold image) also sets the tone to a page, and has a huge baring on if someone bounces off the page fast, or reads more.
Of course you want to keep your visitors on your pages as long as possible and Core Web Vitals helps you do that.
Above the fold content
Your LCP rating is almost 100% connected to the content you load ‘above the fold’.
Understanding above the fold is an important piece of page design knowledge.
One of the key reasons for this is that above the fold content cannot be lazy loaded by browsers without showing visitors a blank page as the rest of the page content loads.
Above the fold is basically what can be displayed on a typical browser first screen before the user scrolls.
Of course above the fold is an arbitrary value because there are no standard screen sizes and when it comes to mobile the above the fold size is far less.
Above the fold content is normally loaded first and displayed as fast as possible by browsers.
Anything used in this area of a page – fonts – HTML text – images – Google Maps – sliders etc – has to be more or less fully downloaded before anything else happens.
So you can imagine adding a Google Map right above the fold it will have a gigantic impact on your overall page speed plus your LCP will crash through the floor.
Google sees LCP now as a major speed and user experience metric.
It places a lot of weight on LCP, hence focusing on reducing it – and passing it – gives you kudos for Google ranking.
And one last thing about above the fold content – anything placed in this area – such as a Google Map – cannot be delay loaded – further affecting page speed and LCP.
Want to learn more about above the fold ? Read this great Elementor article.
I highly recommend Elementor Pro – this site is built with it!
And if you need help speeding up Elementor sites check this article out: how to speed up Elementor websites.
WordPress needs to be Cached - Website Speed Tip For WordPress #2
WordPress sites need to be cached to make them fast loading.
Read this article for how to load WordPress page in less than one second to learn a lot more about WordPress caching.
What is WordPress Caching?
Caching is basically a technical term for COPY.
There are so many different types of caching.
WordPress caching though is where a piece of software (a plugin not WordPress core), creates and stores on disk a final fully compiled copy of your all your pages.
Under the bonnet WordPress is a CMS (content management system) that uses a database to store all the site content.
Historically websites were created from just static HTML (hyper text markup language). But this was restrictive seeing dynamic computer generated content gave users a far better page experience.
HTML files were stored on the servers disk and then when someone requested the page (usually via a browser) the content was served.
The only other things needing to be sent were CSS files and images.
CMS’s like WordPress were developed to store and display dynamic data. But this came with a speed cost.
Read this article for how to load WordPress page in less than one second to learn a lot more about WordPress caching.
Instead of picking up the HTML files from disk a CMS now has a PHP (most common CMS scripting language) page template (programmed file), that creates a dynamic page.
So the PHP file has to be first loaded from disk, it then needs to be interpreted seeing it’s in a programmed language (usually PHP), the data then needs to be picked up from the database, and finally the page has to be compiled by the server before being sent to the requestor (usually a browser).
These extra layers of processing performed by the web server are what makes CMS systems like WordPress slower than using plain HTML.
And of course there are huge benefits to using dynamic CMS systems but they must be cached to speed them back up.
So the caching systems simply ‘go back to the old days’ and save a completed HTML file on disk – so no need to access the database or compile PHP.
Why does WordPress not cache by default?
Your question is very valid.
The answer is simple – caching complicates your website and can create a lot of extra issues.
Kinsta has a great article about solving some of those caching issues.
WordPress is designed to be user friendly out of the box. This means that it has a strong focus for simplicity.
This is why WordPress Core is kept simple and extra functionality is created by your theme or by installing plugins.
WordPress newbies find caching very complicated but as an intermediate level user it’s easy to add caching as a plugin.
What is the best WordPress cache plugin?
Right now I will only use and recommend one plugin: WP Rocket.
This plugin is not free – it’s a premium WordPress plugin but worth every dollar increasing web results by keeping visitors on your site for longer and coming back more.
This does not mean that I will not change, but in the last 2 years alone I’ve worked personally on over 200 WordPress sites via my site speed optimization service for WordPress, and I have found this to be the best WordPress caching plugin for these reasons:
- I get massive speed results every time with little or no effort to adjust the settings
- Clients find it easy to understand how the WP Rocket settings work so I spend less time educating them
- The settings are easy to follow for a intermediate to advanced WordPress user
- The caching plugin rarely breaks my clients sites
- The plugin is very robust
- The WP Rocket support is amazing
- WP Rocket keeps updating its plugin making WordPress caching easier and easier
If you want to buy WP Rocket you can use this link: getus.at/wprocket.
WP Rocket configuration service ~ WP Rocket best settings
If you want help with the best WP Rocket settings I do offer a WP Rocket best settings consultation service for a fixed price. Check this out here.
