Fast sites keep users and help SEO. You can often cut page load times dramatically with straightforward changes. Here are ten practical speed wins, in order from easiest to most technical.
- Use a reliable host — not the cheapest shared host.
- Enable gzip or Brotli compression on the server.
- Serve scaled images and use modern formats (WebP or AVIF).
- Use a caching plugin (WP Super Cache, WP Rocket, or similar).
- Defer non-critical JavaScript and inline critical CSS where useful.
- Limit plugin count — audit and remove unused ones.
- Use a CDN for static assets.
- Optimize fonts (preload key fonts, use font-display:swap).
- Lazy-load below-the-fold images (native loading=”lazy”).
- Monitor with Lighthouse or WebPageTest and fix the top suggestions.
Start with hosting + caching + image optimization — they deliver the biggest returns for little effort.