A slow WordPress site loses rankings, visitors, and revenue. Google’s Core Web Vitals directly impact search rankings. Here is the exact checklist I run through on every WordPress site I optimise — targeting load times under 2 seconds.

1. Hosting Foundation

• Move to a VPS or managed WordPress host — shared hosting is the single biggest performance killer
• Enable PHP 8.2+ — significantly faster than PHP 7.x
• Enable Nginx FastCGI caching or LiteSpeed at the server level
• Use a server geographically close to your primary audience

2. Caching Strategy

• Install WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache — page caching alone cuts load time by 40–60%
• Enable object caching with Redis on a VPS
• Set browser caching headers for static assets (CSS, JS, images)

3. Image Optimisation

• Convert all images to WebP — typically 30–50% smaller than JPEG at the same quality
• Enable lazy loading — images below the fold should load only when needed
• Use Imagify or ShortPixel for bulk compression on existing uploads
• Always define width and height attributes on img tags to eliminate layout shift (CLS)

4. JavaScript & CSS

• Minify and combine CSS/JS — WP Rocket handles this with one toggle
• Defer or async non-critical JavaScript
• Remove render-blocking resources — use the PageSpeed Insights report to identify them

5. Database Cleanup

• Limit post revisions to 5 (add define(’WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 5); to wp-config.php)
• Delete spam comments and orphaned post meta
• Run WP-Optimize monthly to clean transients and optimise database tables

Target Benchmarks

Following this checklist gets most WordPress sites from 40–50 PageSpeed scores to 85–95+. The biggest gains come from hosting, caching, and image optimisation.

Need your WordPress site optimised? Contact me — I offer a free speed audit.