Quick Summary: You can increase your WordPress PageSpeed Score by 5 ways. First you need to determine what is your current PageSpeed baseline. Next you should optimize your image files which will give you an average of 15-30 points. Thirdly, you should turn on page caching. Caching will add an average of 10-25 points to your overall PageSpeed. Fourthly, you should use CSS and JavaScript minification and deferral. Minifying and Deferring will add 5-15 points. Finally, upgrading to better web hosting may be necessary (10-30 points). Generally, optimizing images and enabling caching are able to create an average of 30 to 50 point increase in PageSpeed. Your goal for desktop PageSpeed should be 90+ and for mobile it should be 80+. All three core web vitals should pass as well. The LCP time (load content) should be less than or equal to 2.5 seconds.
Your WordPress page speed is no longer a “vanity” number. It measures your users’ experience directly; it also has been proven by Google as an important ranking element. A site that scores 45 on mobile will lose traffic and ranking to its competitor (even when they both use the same exact content) who scores 90.
Here’s the good news… Most WordPress sites have plenty of room for improvement and typically their first improvements yield the biggest bangs for buck. Below are the 5 Steps in order from simple to complex. Every Step builds upon the last one so you may stop at whatever Step meets your needs for your desired page speed score.
First, get a baseline. Measure what you have now.
Step 1 — Test Your Current Score
You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. Establish your baseline first.
Google PageSpeed Insights will be our best starting point. Simply go to www.pagespeed.web.dev, enter your website’s URL and run tests for both mobile and desktop devices. There are two key areas we want to pay attention to; the performance score (scores range from 0-100), as well as the Core Web Vitals area (this will either pass or fail).
GTmetrix (gtmetrix.com) allows for a very detailed waterfall diagram that shows all resources loading in sequential order as well as the amount of time spent loading those resources. This resource is excellent for finding exact bottlenecks within your site.
Write Down Baseline Values. Record your current results for LCP, INP Time (if available), CLS Score, Total Page Size, Number Of Requests, and Current Scores. After every step you can refer back to them to see how they’ve changed.
Evaluate Multiple Pages.. A home page may have different performance characteristics than a blog, a product page, etc… Evaluate at least your Home Page, Key Service/Product Page, Blog Post.
Typical Performance Characteristics For Un-Optimized WordPress Sites Include — Page Speed Mobile Score: 30-55, Page Speed Desktop Score: 60-75, Total Page Weight: 3 MB – 8 MB, Number of HTTP Requests: 80 – 150.
Step 2 — Optimize Images
The biggest, slowest assets on WordPress sites are usually images. That’s also where you’ll see the fastest improvements.
Get an image optimizer plugin. ShortPixel, Imagify, or EWWW Image Optimizer can automatically shrink all of your old images and shrink future ones as well. On average these plugins will reduce your image file size 30-60% with no noticeable drop off in picture quality.
Switch to WebP pictures. Pictures that use the WebP format (which is supported by every major web browser today) are around 25-35% smaller than their JPEG counterparts when they have the same quality. All you need to do is get a good image compression plugin like one of those mentioned above to convert them for you. And then make sure the right format gets sent out to each type of browser.
Turn on lazy load. Lazy load allows your site to delay downloading images until they appear in view. WordPress does this natively through its built-in loading="lazy" tag. But don’t turn on lazy load for the image that appears first when users land on your home page. If you do lazy load these images, you’re hurting your LCP since the browser is waiting before displaying the most important parts of the page.
Use responsive srcset images. When you upload an image into WordPress, it creates multiple versions of it. Make sure your theme is using responsive srcset tags to tell devices to only download small versions of the images if needed. For example, if you have a large 2000px wide hero image and someone viewing your website on a 400px wide phone screen has to download the whole thing — that means you’ve wasted 80% of the bandwidth.
Expected improvement: With the changes described here, you should be able to see an increase of about 15-30 points on Page Speed testing results and a cut in overall page weight of anywhere from 40-60%.
Step 3 — Enable Caching
Without using caching WordPress will render each page from a blank slate every single time someone visits your website. Using caching allows WordPress to store that rendered output and serve it immediately.
WP Rocket is the easiest caching solution to use. With this product you have access to page caching, browser caching, GZIP/Brotli compression, as well as some basic CSS/JS optimization without having to do a lot of work to get it set up. WP Rocket, however is a paid plugin ($59/year) and while it’s a bit pricey, the amount of time it will save you over a free plugin like one of those listed below is priceless.
LiteSpeed Cache is a free alternative if your hosting runs the LiteSpeed web server (common on many managed hosts). It offers comparable features to WP Rocket and has tight integration with the LiteSpeed Web Server.
What to enable: Page caching (stores the rendered HTML), Browser caching (lets the browser know when you are coming back to your site, so they don’t need to download all of the files again), and GZIP or Brotli Compression (reduces the size of the files being transferred by about 60-80%).
What to test after enabling: Make sure everything loads properly in a private browser window. Test all forms, login functionality, as well as WooCommerce Cart & Checkout (if you’re using an e-commerce theme). Some people may also want to test their dynamic content. Caching may cause problems if you’ve got a feature that dynamically renders on your site and it was not configured correctly.
Expected improvement: Assuming you were at a 0 before installing cache plugins, you can expect a 10-25 point increase in your Page Speed Score. Also, you’ll likely see a 50-70% decrease in your server response times for the cached pages.
Step 4 — Minify and Defer CSS/JS
Caching provides a significant performance boost. The next biggest limitation for web pages is typically render-blocking CSS and JavaScript files.
Minification. Removes unnecessary whitespace, comments and characters from CSS and JavaScript files; which reduces the size of those files. On average you can expect to reduce your CSS and JavaScript files sizes by 10% to 30%. Many caching products including WP Rocket and LiteSpeed Cache provide minification as an option. Make sure minification is enabled for both CSS and JavaScript.
CSS deferral. CSS deferral prevents browsers from painting the screen because they need to download and parse all the CSS before they can paint what was previously rendered. Create “critical CSS”, which is the CSS required for items displayed “above the fold”. Critical CSS should be placed inline. All other CSS can be deferred. For many users, WP Rockets “remove unused CSS” will create the critical CSS for them.
JavaScript deferral. Add the defer property to your JavaScript files to prevent JavaScript files from being executed while the browser parses the HTML document. When you add defer to your JavaScript files, the browser will still download the script files, but execute them only after it has completed parsing the HTML document. Using the defer property may help improve your site’s LCP and INP. WP Rocket has an option called “delay javascript execution” which allows you to delay executing non-essential JavaScript files until after some form of user interaction.
Testing is Important. Minifying and deferring files could cause problems with your website if you apply those optimizations to scripts that require a specific loading sequence. Test all areas where there is user interaction: Menus, Sliders, Forms, Modals, Accordions, Checkouts, etc… Test each area thoroughly to make certain everything works as expected. If you find a problem, disable the optimization for the offending file(s).
Expected improvement: Optimizing your CSS and JavaScript files using minification or deferral will give you an estimated 5 to 15 point increase in your Page Speed score. In addition, your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID) scores will likely see improvements ranging from 300 milliseconds to 1000 milliseconds.
Step 5 — Upgrade Hosting If Needed
If you’ve successfully implemented Steps 2–4 and your mobile PageSpeed Score is still under 75 then your web-hosting environment is most-likely the bottleneck.
Shared hosting is the most common speed ceiling. With shared hosting, hundreds of websites are placed on one server. This means there are numerous limitations & unpredictability as far as server resource availability. TTFB scores using shared hosting will typically be anywhere between 600 milliseconds (ms) to 1500 ms. Managed WordPress hosting scores will typically be anywhere from 100 ms to 300 ms.
What managed WordPress hosting provides. Server-level caching which is faster than the caching provided by plugins; The latest PHP version preconfigured to ensure compatibility with modern software development standards; HTTP/3 Support; Built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN); Staging Environments; Dedicated Server Resource(s) for your website vs. having all available resources split between your site & hundreds of other sites hosted at the same location.
Popular managed hosting options in 2026. There are several managed hosting options that can assist with improving your website’s overall performance. They include: Cloudways (Good Price-to-Performance Ratio); Kinsta (Premium Offering / Excellent Dashboard); WP Engine (Enterprise Focused Host); & SiteGround (Mid-Level Performance / Reasonable Pricing for a single Business Website). Costs for these services vary from $15/month to $50/month for a single Business Website.
Migrating to a New Host is Easy. Most managed hosts offer free migration from your current host. The process typically takes 24 to 48 hours with no downtime. The performance improvement is usually immediate and dramatic.
Expected improvement: Generally speaking, migrating your website to a managed host should result in an increase in your mobile PageSpeed Scores ranging from 10 – 30 Points above where they were prior to migration; Additionally, you may see a decrease in Time To First Byte (TTFB) of between 50% – 70%.
Bonus — When DIY Is Not Enough
For many WordPress website owners, the five steps above will get their site’s PageSpeed score from around 40 to 80 or better. However, there are some websites which require more than just the five steps outlined in this chapter.
Some complex sites have an upper limit. Sites with large databases (e.g., WooCommerce stores with 100+ products), dynamically changing content (e.g., membership sites), numerous active plugins (e.g., sites using 20+ plugins) and/or custom code that uses specific internal APIs are examples of complex sites that cannot be properly optimized by non-professionals.
To do deep optimizations of a site requires knowledge. To optimize a site’s performance, you may need to use specialized tools to identify problematic database queries; create conditions under which certain assets are loaded instead of all at once; generate custom critical CSS based on user experience testing; implement Web Workers to offload heavy JavaScript functions; or configure your server for optimal performance. All of these are not tasks that you can accomplish simply by clicking through options within your WordPress plugins.
Maintenance is needed to prevent speed degradation. Any site that has been optimized once will eventually degrade due to the natural progression of plugin updates, new content additions, growing databases, etc. Optimizing a site is not a one-time task; rather it is an ONGOING MAINTENANCE DISCIPLINE. If you do not continue to maintain your site’s speed, the benefits obtained by completing the five steps described above will likely deteriorate over time (typically between 6 and 12 months).
If you feel that you have reached the limits of what you can achieve with these five steps, Deutrix Care offers a speed optimization service which provides both the initial “deep” optimization as well as the ONGOING OPTIMIZATION MAINTENANCE NEEDED TO KEEP YOUR SITE FAST. As a general rule, professional optimization typically results in increasing PageSpeed scores from 70-80 to 90+.
Having trouble optimizing yourself with DIY methods? Have our Team Take Your WordPress Website’s PageSpeed To The Next Level →
This post is part of our Complete WordPress Speed Optimization Guide– the ultimate resource for maintaining a Fast & Secure WordPress website.
Frequently Asked Questions
The goal should be at least 90 on Desktop and at least 80 on Mobile. Typically, because of how Google simulates mobile, Mobile Scores will be about 10-20 Points below Desktop Scores as they test with slower devices and simulated networks. The actual score is less important than the fact you pass all 3 Core Web Vitals (LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1).
Google’s simulated “mid-range” mobile device with a throttled 4G connection to simulate what happens when you visit a site on your phone. On Desktop, heavy use of JavaScript and larger images do not seem like such a big deal, but on Simulated Mobile, they can cause massive issues.
No. Begin at step number 1 (Testing) and complete each of the other four steps, as your results warrant. Steps two and three (Images and Caching), by themselves, have given scores of 30-50 points. Steps four and five are for those who wish to take their site even further.
Only step number four (Minification and Deferral) has potential to be problematic. All of the steps (2, 3, & 5) represent a very small risk; however, minification and deferral could potentially create an issue. Therefore, always test changes in a testing environment before applying them live, and apply them slowly and carefully, so if things go wrong, they can quickly be rolled back.
