Speed Hacks to Boost WordPress Site Vitals Score

Disclosure: Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you purchase through a link. We want to ensure you that we only recommend high-quality products or services we use, trust, and love, and we believe will add value to our readers.

How to Test the Speed of Your WordPress Website

MonsterInsights is the simplest way to test the speed of your WordPress website. It displays a site speed report within the WordPress dashboard, eliminating the need to leave the website to check its performance.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics WordPress plugin, and it also allows you to set up analytics without having to edit code. Not only that, but you can use the plugin to quickly add advanced tracking features such as eCommerce tracking, file downloads, form conversions, and more.

Speed Hacks – How to Boost the Speed of Your WordPress Site

Using a CDN, you can reduce the time it takes for your website to load.
You can use a content delivery network, or CDN, to speed up a WordPress website and ensure that it loads quickly for visitors no matter where they are.

The location of your web hosting server and the location of your visitor can both have an impact on the speed of your website.
For example, suppose a visitor from New Zealand visits your website, but your website is hosted on a server in the United States. When compared to someone based in the United States, the visitor will have a slower loading time.

However, a CDN service for WordPress solves this problem. It is a network of servers located in various locations that cache static content like images, fonts, and stylesheets from your websites. When a user requests to view your website, a CDN retrieves the cached content from the closest server and loads your website quickly.

2. Improve Response Time by Using a Caching Plugin

The following tip is to use a caching plugin for your WordPress website. It shortens the time it takes for your website to load and improves server response time.

So, how exactly does it work?

When a visitor opens your website in a browser, WordPress retrieves the data from the database and must perform several steps in order to generate the web page. When a large number of people visit your website at the same time, this can cause it to slow down.

However, a caching plugin solves this problem. Caching temporarily stores frequently requested information and improves the speed of your website.

3. Choose the Best WordPress Hosting Provider

One of the most important aspects of the success of your WordPress website is website hosting. It is the location of all of your website’s files and content. Furthermore, the type of hosting you use can either speed up or slow down your website.

Top shared WordPress hosting services such as Bluehost and SiteGround ensure that you get the best performance and that your website loads quickly.

However, the disadvantage of using shared hosting is that you are sharing server resources with other websites. This means that if other websites receive a lot of traffic, they will require more resources than you. As a result, it may have an effect on the speed of your WordPress website.

4. Avoid Using a Large Number of Custom Fonts

Fonts, like themes, can play a significant role in increasing the speed of your WordPress website. Having fonts that render quickly can improve the user experience of your website because users will not have to wait for the visual elements to load.

However, using too many custom fonts can cause your website to load slowly. As a result, we recommend selecting a single font for your website and using it throughout the design. This will speed up the loading of each custom font and provide a better user experience.

Premium and free custom fonts can be found on websites such as Google Fonts. Please read this guide on how to add custom fonts to WordPress.

5.Ensure that your WordPress site is up to date.

You can also improve the speed of your website by using the most recent version of WordPress. It is just as critical as keeping your plugins and themes up to date.

Keeping WordPress up to date adds new features, fixes bugs, and protects against security flaws that could expose your site and cause it to load slowly.

Log in to your WordPress site and navigate to Dashboard » Updates to check for the most recent version. You can check for and install new updates on your website.

6. Deactivate Any Plugins That Aren’t In Use

Having a large number of plugins that you aren’t using can cause your server to accumulate unwanted junk files.

Freeing up space can assist the server in making better use of its resources and improve website speed. It also helps to reduce backup file size and does not place a significant load on the server.

Deactivating plugins is as simple as going to your WordPress admin area and clicking on Plugins. Scroll down to any plugins that are no longer required and click the Deactivate button.

7. Remove JavaScript and CSS that are rendering-blocking.

Render blocking JavaScript and CSS are files that prevent your website from displaying web pages and other interactive elements before loading these files.

Because every WordPress plugin and theme adds these files to your website’s front-end, they can slow down your website’s speed and prevent pages from loading properly.

Using the WP-Rocket WordPress plugin is a quick way to fix render-blocking. It includes tools for optimizing your site for JavaScript and CSS. However, keep in mind that these options are not enabled by default because they affect the appearance of your website.

8. Make Use of Fast WordPress Plugins

In addition to removing inactive plugins, it would be beneficial to use plugins that are fast and will not slow down your website. Many plugins are poorly coded and will cause bloat to load when used.

Perform a speed test of your WordPress website before installing a plugin to determine whether a plugin is slowing it down.

Then, download and activate the plugin, and run the speed test again. If you notice a drop in the scores, it means that the plugin is interfering with the performance of your website.

9. Improve Your WordPress Database

The following strategy for increasing website loading speed is to optimize your WordPress database.

Your database would have accumulated a lot of value over time that is no longer required. You can remove this unwanted data from the database and improve the performance of your website.

The WP-Sweep WordPress plugin is the simplest way to clean the database. It’s a free plugin that allows you to clear out unused tags, trashed posts, revisions, auto drafts, and other items.