A slow website not only makes for dissatisfied visitors, but also hurts your Google ranking. In this article, we'll show you how you can optimize your WordPress page speed. We will mainly focus on less common tips and tricks that you can use to fine-tune your WordPress website in terms of page speed.

Important: Google's PageSpeed values do not correspond to the actual loading time. A WordPress website can also load quickly, but still not be perfectly optimized (i.e. not have perfect PageSpeed values). A perfect score in Google PageSpeed Insights should therefore not necessarily be the goal. Instead, it is important to try out different things and filter out the measures and adjustments that really have a noticeable impact on the loading time of your WordPress website.

Before optimization: Measure speed

Before you start optimizing your WordPress page speed, you should know how your website currently stands in terms of performance optimization. Four values are crucial for your audit :

• The First Contentful Paint (FCP) indicates how quickly the first elements on the page are displayed. It basically measures the perceived loading time and is particularly important for optimization.
• The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) expresses how long it takes for the remaining elements from the main content of a page to be loaded after the first.
• The First Input Delay (FID) measures how much time passes before visitors can actually interact with your site.
• The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) should ideally always be zero. The value stands for shifts in the layout that lead, for example, to users clicking on the wrong button.

Unlike the Time To First Bite (TTFB) - i.e. the time from the first request to the server response - these values are user-centered. They are not exclusively aimed at WordPress performance. This means that they are less determined by measures such as (server-side) caching and the right WordPress hosting. Instead, it is important that you build your pages cleverly. For example, they should be loaded in the right order - but more on that later.

If you want to measure the speed of your WordPress website, there are various online tools available to you, including

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• GTmetrix
• Lighthouse (extension for Google Chrome)
• WebPageTest

Google and GTmetrix offer you extremely detailed WordPress PageSpeed Insights here. However, only WebPageTest also measures the perceived loading time. You can find out what you should look out for when using this somewhat more complex tool in our article WebPageTest: Analyze your website performance.

What is a good page speed?

All testing is of little help if you don't know how to classify the results afterwards. Before we get to the optimization tips, we'll tell you the answer to the question: Which page speed value is actually good? Let's take a quick look at Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix.

Important: If your website also includes a blog or magazine, you should always measure the page speed for at least one article in addition to your homepage. You should also set the page speed in relation to the type of website. It is much more realistic to achieve ideal page speed values for a simple blog than for an elaborately designed website with extended functionalities.

Google PageSpeed Insights

The PageSpeed Insights provided by Google's tool refer less to actual loading times than to the degree of optimization. To test, simply enter your URL here (e.g. your homepage or a subpage in the magazine or blog). Google will then show you a test result for the mobile version of the page by default. However, you can also switch this to a desktop version.

The results for performance are easy to understand and are color-coded according to the traffic light system:

• Red = 0 to 49 points = bad
• Orange = 50 to 89 points = medium
• Green = 90 to 100 points = good

However, the interpretation is not quite that simple in practice. Among other things, it is not absolutely necessary to achieve a value in the green range for your website to pick up speed.

Instead, you can use this as a rule of thumb : Mobile you should be at least in the orange range, anything above a score of around 70 is already good. For desktop, you can definitely aim for the green zone - but you don't have to aim for 100 points either.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is also a relatively simple tool, but it mainly measures the actual loading time of your website. Please note: You should register for free before the measurement and change the location of the measurement from Vancouver to London.

Alternatively, you can also check the speed of your website with our WordPress speed test. Simply enter your URL and our WordPress experts will check the speed of your WordPress website for you. After a maximum of 48 hours, you will receive an email with all the details of the test and your complete GTmetrix measurement result with all relevant performance data (incl. Core Web Vitals).

The rule of thumb here is: You should achieve at least a B rating.

Optimize WordPress page speed: 5 tips

If you really want to optimize your WordPress page speed effectively, you should make sure that your measures contribute to one of these four central parameters:

• Reduce the size of your website
• Reduce the number of HTTP requests
• Compress data packets
• Optimize perceived loading time

Our tip: You should always focus on the "low hanging fruits" first and, for example, activate caching (plugin or server-side), reduce HTML, CSS and JavaScript, clean up your WordPress or optimize your images for WordPress. Fast WordPress hosting also ensures that the technology doesn't slow you down with all the optimizations.

Overall, there are many easy-to-implement measures that you can use to reduce the loading time of your WordPress website. We have already summarized the basics for you in several articles, which we would of course like to share with you here:

• Optimize WordPress with the 10 most important adjusting screws
• Make WordPress faster: The best tips for more performance
• PageSpeed Insights & the importance of website speed
• Shut up Google PageSpeed! Fix the most important error messages

Have you already adjusted all the basics? Then we'll now reveal five additional tips and tricks that you can use to fine-tune your WordPress page speed.

#1 Anticipate DNS requests

Most websites contain code from third-party providers. Videos are often provided via separate video hosting (e.g. via YouTube or Vimeo). You have probably also integrated services such as Google Maps or social feeds from Instagram & Co. on your website. Put simply, all of these services have to be loaded from the external server of the third-party provider via DNS requests in order to function. This takes a certain amount of time and may cause your website to load more slowly.

One way to save time and optimize your WordPress page speed is DNS prefetching. This involves making DNS queries on a page in the background before users actually click on the corresponding link, for example a video. This means that the DNS search has already taken place and the waiting time for users is reduced. The result: an improved user experience and more page speed.

You can set up DNS prefetching with a WordPress performance plugin such as Perfmatters or WP Rocket.

#2 Reduce external content

It's even better for your WordPress page speed if you reduce external content as much as possible. If you encounter this error message, it is best to reconsider whether you really need everything that is currently integrated on your website via external services.

If so, you can also use lazy loading to display some of the content only when website visitors actually scroll to the point where it is embedded on the page. You can do this with plugins such as a3 Lazy Load, for example.

#3 Optimize your fonts

Fonts may not appear to be a major performance hog at first glance, but they can certainly harm your page speed. This is always the case when, like Google Fonts, they come with large stylesheets that first have to be loaded externally or integrated locally.

One solution is secure web fonts or system fonts such as Arial, Helvetica or Verdana, which are pre-installed on every device. They ensure the best loading time and do not cause any GDPR problems. If you are currently using two or more fonts, you should also consider whether you can reduce them.

If you do not want to use secure web fonts, you should add the font display attribute swap. This way, your page will always load a secure system font first and switch to your actual font later. This usually happens so quickly that website visitors don't even notice the change visually.

Most performance and caching plugins include this function. However, you can also add it manually to the CSS files of your theme. To do this, search for the @font-face rule and add the attribute "font-display: swap;".

#4 Prioritize visible content

Page speed is not only determined by raw numbers, but above all by what the user perceives: the perceived loading time. So if you want to optimize your WordPress page speed, you should focus on the area "Above the Fold", i.e. what is visible without scrolling.

You should prioritize visible content and functions that your visitors have directly on the screen when they call up the page. This means that the browser should ideally receive the information it needs first when a website is called up in order to display the visible area as quickly as possible.

In practice, however, resources that are only needed later often block rendering in the visible area of the page. To fix this and improve the perceived loading time, you have several options:

• Introduce prioritizations: Here you determine what should be loaded first. For example, you can prioritize images to the back and only load them once the content has been completely requested (lazy loading).
• CSS- und JavaScript-Dateien nach unten verlegen: JavaScript und CSS im Head der Seite können das Rendering im sichtbaren Bereich blockieren. Am besten verlegst du daher alles, was du zum Beispiel an Skripten und CSS-Dateien nicht sofort benötigst, ganz nach unten auf deine Seite vor das abschließende </body>. Falls das nicht geht, kannst du CSS und JavaScript auch asynchron laden lassen.

#5 Deactivate unused WordPress features

By default, WordPress has some functions activated that you probably don't need. Nevertheless, they are always loaded in the background - and slow down your website. If you want to take your page speed to the next level, you should always check whether you can disable unused functions.

These include, among others:

• Pingbacks: WordPress interacts by default with other websites that allow pingbacks and trackbacks. If you don't need this feature, you should deactivate it.
• Revisions: WordPress automatically creates revisions of all your posts. This can be useful, but over time it accumulates a lot of junk data that makes your website slow. You should therefore limit the revisions.
• Emojis: Since version 4.2, emojis have been part of the WordPress core. This means that the scripts are always loaded when someone accesses the page - regardless of whether they actually use them. This costs valuable loading time.
• Gravatar: Gravatar sends requests to external servers in the USA with every comment by default, which slows down the performance of your website and is also difficult in terms of data protection.

Although these and similar features only have a minimal impact on your loading speed individually, together they can make a real difference. If you deactivate them, you reduce the number of HTTP requests and thus pay for one of the four main parameters for your WordPress page speed optimization. Most of these unused WordPress basic functions can be deactivated with just a few clicks using Perfmatters or WP-Optimize.

Conclusion: PageSpeed is not everything

In summary, beyond the basics - such as activating caching, relying on fast hosting or sorting out plugins - there are a few adjustments you can make to fine-tune your WordPress page speed even further.

Overall, however, you should never let the Google PageSpeed Insights score drive you crazy. Although it reveals optimization potential and provides you with a good orientation, it is by no means the measure of all things. Getting bogged down in the pursuit of a perfect 100 out of 100 points can also be a waste of time.

Not all optimizations always make sense in individual cases, especially with a content management system as extensive as WordPress. It is therefore much more important that you check and optimize the actual and perceived loading time of your website.

Frequently asked questions about WordPress page speed

What influences the loading time of a website?

There are many factors that influence the loading time of a website. Among the most important are the size of the website, the number of HTTP requests, the compression of data packets and the optimization of the perceived loading time. The foundation for a good loading time is always a powerful and fast WordPress hosting.

How long can a page take to load?

Studies show that mobile users in particular simply stop loading the page in online stores if it takes longer than three seconds. Ideally, the loading time should be no more than two seconds.

How important is page speed?

Page speed, i.e. the loading speed of your website, can determine whether users engage with you and your business or leave your website early. It has a significant impact on the user experience and also affects the Google ranking of your website. In the worst case scenario, your conversion rate will also suffer if loading times are too long.