Why speed matters for SEO and conversions
Google uses user experience signals such as Core Web Vitals: a slow site can lose rankings and increase bounce rates, especially on mobile.
WordPress is flexible but can become heavy with too many plugins or an unoptimised theme. Start by measuring with PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse.
Hosting and PHP: the foundation
Hosting with NVMe storage, up-to-date PHP, and adequate memory limits reduces time to first byte (TTFB).
Check your PHP version in the control panel: supported, recent versions improve both performance and security.
Light theme and essential plugins
Remove duplicate or unused plugins. Each active plugin can add queries and scripts on the front end and in the admin.
Prefer themes that load only the assets they need and support native lazy loading for images.
Images and media
Resize images before upload, use modern formats (WebP where possible), and enable lazy loading for below-the-fold images.
Caching and database
Page caching (plugin or server level) avoids regenerating every request in PHP. Combine with browser caching for static CSS/JS.
Periodically clean post revisions and expired transients to keep the database lean.