How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website in 20 Minutes

Everyone knows that page speed is important. It’s a confirmed Google ranking factor on desktop and mobile, impacts user experience, and can have a direct effect on your bottom line.

But slow WordPress websites are a common issue.

Here’s the mobile score for a page of mine in PageSpeed Insights.

Before optimization.

If we run the entire website through Ahrefs’ Site Audit—which shows page load time for all pages—we see that this isn’t the only slow-loading page either. None of them load massively fast, with an average load time of 570ms.

Before optimization.

Now here’s that same page after around 20 minutes of page speed optimization:

After optimization.

And the rest of the pages in Site Audit:

After optimization.

The difference is night and day. The score from PageSpeed Insights is near-perfect, and every page loads pretty fast.

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how I did this in a few simple and easy steps.

Remove unused plugins
Switch DNS providers to Cloudflare
Install a caching plugin
Minify your code
Combine CSS and JavaScript files
Eliminate render-blocking resources
Lazy-load images and videos
Optimize Google Fonts
Enable preloading
Use a CDN
Optimize your images

important

Many of the recommended optimizations below use WPRocket, a paid plugin for speeding up your WordPress website. I’ve listed free alternatives where possible, but it’s important to note that plugins can sometimes conflict with each other and cause issues. You should always test how they affect your site in a staging environment before pushing any changes to your live site. Learn how to set up a staging site here.

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Cloudflare.

To do this, sign up for a free Cloudflare account. Click “Add a site,” enter your domain name, and click the button.

Select the free plan, then click “Confirm plan.”

Cloudflare will now give you a chance to review your DNS settings before continuing. If there are no warnings, it’s usually safe to continue.

Now all that’s left to do is to swap your nameservers with your domain registrar. The way you do this varies between registrars, so don’t hesitate to ask their support if you’re unsure how to do it.

Here’s the process if you’re using Google Domains:

WP Rocket makes it simple to enable caching. Just buy, install, and activate it. Basic caching (server and browser) is on by default. If your site is responsive, head to the cache settings and check the box to enable caching for mobile devices, too.

Looking for a free option? Try W3 Total Cache.

Autoptimize and do the same.

Just know that you should always test how this affects your website before deploying live. Minifying can often lead to broken code, especially when it comes to Javascript.

Key CDN’s tester.

If HTTP/2 isn’t supported, it’s worth combining CSS and JavaScript files.

To do this in WPRocket, tick the checkboxes to “Combine JavaScript files” and “Combine CSS files” in the settings.

If you’re using Autoptimize, there are two checkboxes to “aggregate” files. Just know these can sometimes ‘break’ things on your site, so it’s worth double-checking that everything still looks and functions the same once enabled. And remember to clear the cache beforehand and check for changes in an incognito window. Otherwise, the changes might not be reflected in what you see.

Autoptimize and Async JavaScript.

In the settings for Autoptimize, check the box to “Inline and Defer CSS.” Then, in the settings for Async JavaScript, hit “Enable Async JavaScript.

If you previously saw the “eliminate render-blocking resources” issue in PageSpeed Insights, this will usually fix that problem.

enabled by default, but not for video.

If you’re using WPRocket, solve this by ticking the “Enable for iframes and videos” box under LazyLoad settings.

If you’re not using WPRocket, the free Lazy Load for Videos plugin does much the same thing.

Swap Google Fonts Display is a good starting point.

Content delivery networks (CDN) are groups of servers distributed all over the world. Each of these stores a copy of your website so it’s quicker for users to connect when requesting web pages.

For example, let’s say your web host’s server is in the UK. If someone visits your site from the US and you’re not using a CDN, the connection between their device and your server will be slow. If someone visits from the US and you use a CDN, their device will connect to the closest server, which helps things connect faster.

There are lots of CNS providers, so all you need to do is choose one, enable it in WPRocket, and enter the CNAME.