Are optimal PageSpeed scores achievable with WordPress?
I have thoroughly investigated this question and continuously engaged with this topic over the past few years. While there are seemingly countless blog posts on this subject, I am pleased to dedicate time to clearly articulate my personal experiences. Initially, it's evident that a comprehensive Content Management System like WordPress inherently introduces considerably more overhead compared to simple HTML-based websites. However, this does not imply that your web server cannot manage it efficiently. WordPress has undergone continuous development since the inception of its Open Source project, and it's worth noting that it has successfully facilitated very favorable PageSpeed scores for websites.
Are Google Page Speed Scores of 100% Realistic?
In my research, I frequently encountered questionable YouTube videos that boasted perfect 100% scores according to the Google Page Speed Index, having exclusively tailored their sites for this metric. Upon closer examination, these WordPress websites often comprised little more than a few blog texts and one or two heavily compressed images – a rather limited achievement.
Unfortunately, over time, the notion has become prevalent that Google's Page Speed is arguably one of the most critical factors for determining an outstanding and high-performing website, and that sites not achieving exceptionally high speeds with scores above 90 would immediately incur substantial ranking penalties within the Google algorithm. This is a considerable misconception.
While it is accurate that speed has gained importance compared to several years ago, this particular aspect is certainly not among the top 10 current ranking factors. The Google algorithm is exceptionally complex, with well over 1000 factors and more than 10,000 distinct signals contributing to search result placement today.
Fundamentally, the user experience (UX) of the website holds the most critical importance. Your website must offer the optimal match for the searcher and their query. Numerous other factors are more significant in this regard, including high-quality content !!, relevant terminology, formatting, supplementary resources, grammar, linguistic proficiency, on-page factors (keywords, meta descriptions, etc.), duplicate content, site architecture, and many others.
Concerning PageSpeed, it is entirely adequate for your site to load efficiently and be fully functional on both mobile and desktop devices. When consulting PageSpeed Insights, you should aim to cover at least two-thirds of the critical elements and ideally rank within the upper orange tier. Avoid excessive preoccupation with this metric; instead, prioritize investing your time in substantial adjustments for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rather than merely pursuing higher scores.
What about WordPress itself?
The positive news is that WordPress itself will not impede achieving rapid loading times; its performance is solely contingent on how you implement the system for your specific requirements. As an experimental measure, you can install a vanilla WordPress instance with a lightweight standard theme from the repository on your server. Assuming you have secured a reasonably professional hosting provider, you should observe excellent Google Insights scores. Subsequent modifications, however, demand greater scrutiny and should be executed judiciously.
Why is my WordPress Website so Slow?
This question cannot be answered universally, as it is contingent upon numerous variables. However, as previously outlined, I would consistently advocate for commencing with a pristine foundation, specifically a fresh WordPress installation, because the subsequent decision can be absolutely pivotal: theme selection. This is frequently where issues arise, determining whether WordPress sites perform optimally or poorly.
The majority of extensively developed and feature-rich themes available on the market are, first and foremost, substantial in size. This phenomenon arises because as sales and user adoption increase, so do the demands for additional functionalities and configuration options, often resulting in theme options alone spanning numerous pages. Consider that each of these configuration options typically corresponds to at least one additional functionality that must be loaded. Candidly, how many of these functions are genuinely essential for your specific requirements?
The same principle applies to the WordPress system in general. It inherently includes numerous functionalities, not all of which may be essential for your specific website. Consequently, you can deactivate unneeded WordPress functionalities immediately following installation. While many users may not be aware of how to perform this manually, a beneficial plugin exists to assist with this process. You can locate this plugin within my Top 8 WordPress Plugin list, situated in the latter section of this blog.
What about WordPress Plugins in Relation to PageSpeed?
The prevailing principle here, as is frequently the case, is 'less is more.' Each plugin you install expands your WordPress system with new functionalities and options that are loaded upon a user's visit to your website. This often results in the creation of undesirable render-blocking resources, as plugins frequently incorporate external sources, scripts, and additional overhead, not all of which may be essential for your specific objectives. Moreover, conflicts commonly emerge between disparate plugins, leading to interoperability issues, and each additional plugin introduces a potential security vulnerability within your system.
This represents a significant drawback inherent in the vast array of plugin providers within the WordPress ecosystem. One often lacks insight into the quality of the underlying code, effectively placing blind trust in the accuracy and meticulousness of the respective plugin developers. From my experience, I can affirm that a considerable number of these are subpar. Consequently, exercise discretion when selecting plugins and ensure all unused ones are removed from your system.
What Makes My WordPress Website Particularly Slow?
When comparing the previously discussed points—theme selection, plugin count, and an overload of WordPress functionalities—these factors are comparatively less impactful than the subsequent critical item on this list: the judicious management of media assets.
The appropriate management of images is fundamentally critical for web performance. WordPress inherently facilitates this by generating various-sized thumbnails from your uploaded images and typically deploying them contextually. For instance, a medium-sized thumbnail, rather than the original image resolution, is loaded as a blog post's featured image, a task WordPress handles automatically. Regrettably, this functionality is often limited, leading to frequent misinterpretations or instances where users inadvertently employ incorrect image dimensions. If, for example, you select an original-sized image from the media library for a blog post and embed it within a container that occupies merely one-quarter of your webpage's width, you can be certain that the image is excessively large for the constrained container, thereby immediately degrading your website's performance. This oversight is, unfortunately, severely penalized by Google.
Fundamentally, images should always be optimized for web delivery. I advise ensuring that your image file sizes never exceed 300 KB. Furthermore, it is crucial to strip all image metadata during a web export process, utilizing tools such as Photoshop or GIMP, and to adhere to prevalent web image formats.
Optimizing your images alone will account for the most significant improvement in loading speed. Do not solely depend on image optimization and compression plugins to automatically resolve all issues. These tools typically do not reduce a 2-4 MB image to 300 KB, and even if they do, it's often not with the sophisticated algorithms that professional software like Photoshop employs to generate a sharp and cleanly compressed image suitable for Retina displays at 300 KB. However, that is a separate discussion. A robust image optimization plugin is certainly beneficial, particularly if you are already managing an active website.
How Should I Handle Videos and Fonts on the Site?
Following image assets, video embeds typically constitute the second priority, with uploaded PDFs or custom fonts being the third. I would generally advise against uploading videos directly to the WordPress media library. Instead, embed them, for instance, via YouTube in a GDPR-compliant manner and as a modified iframe. This approach mitigates data transfer to YouTube and prevents videos from loading immediately upon page access. Regarding fonts, prior to the GDPR's impact, utilizing Google Fonts was highly convenient; however, this is no longer feasible without data transfer, necessitating local hosting as the optimal solution. While this introduces additional overhead, it can be mitigated through intelligent caching. Regrettably, this specific aspect is a common default in most WordPress themes, and even when Google Fonts are not actively employed, the connection to Google is often maintained, resulting in redundant resource loading.
What Else is Important for My Website Performance?
These topics include caching, compression, lazy loading, CDNs, and more, which require a profound understanding for successful implementation. If one is not yet proficient in this area or lacks the technical background, significant improvements can still be achieved for a website by selecting professional plugins with minimal configuration.
Current WordPress plugin recommendations are available in the lower section of this blog. A detailed post on this topic will also be provided if there is sufficient interest.
Here is an overview of the most important points
- Professional Website Hosting
Numerous providers and comparison portals exist in this domain. We would personally recommend a WordPress-specialized provider such as wpengine or raidboxes, as they offer not only a robust support team but also a comprehensive suite of advantageous services perfectly tailored to your system. - The Right Choice of WordPress Theme
Carefully assess the functionalities required for your WordPress website and avoid immediately opting for the largest and most popular theme. An advanced WordPress user should build their website on an exceptionally lightweight and clean base theme or develop a custom one. - WordPress Basic System Configuration
Eliminate unnecessary overhead and deactivate WordPress functionalities that are not required. - Lean and Appropriate Plugin Selection
Limit the number of plugins to the absolute minimum to avoid unnecessary loading times and potential security vulnerabilities. - Correct Usage of Images and External Media
This is an absolute imperative for high-performance websites; significant focus should be placed on this topic. - Caching, Compression, Lazy Load, CDN
Effective caching is indispensable and can fortunately be implemented relatively easily with quality plugins. Furthermore, file and script compression, lazy loading of images and videos, and the utilization of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) provide the final refinements that ultimately contribute to improved performance metrics.
Conclusion
As has likely been observed, the domain of website PageSpeed is contingent upon numerous factors, which, unfortunately, often delve into complex technicalities too quickly for non-experts. Nevertheless, we are confident that high-performance WordPress-based websites can be developed by anyone in a few steps, starting with a deliberate and straightforward foundational structure. With some experience and expertise, even excellent scores of 95 points and higher are achievable according to PageSpeed Insights and similar tools, even for extensive sites with greater functionality.
Should there be interest in our current setup and the plugins, themes, page builders, and hosting offers we currently utilize, please refer to the article on Web Development & Web Design – Agency Work Best Practices 2023.
