Semalt Presents Easy Ways To Improve Page Speed And Core Web Vitals For WordPress

Core Web Vitals and WordPress go hand in hand, especially if you plan on performing exceptionally online. However, to stay on top, you must continually learn new ways to improve your page speed and your Core Web Vitals (if you haven't optimized for CWV, you should contact us immediately). 

The page experience update is here, and if you haven't prepared, you should have begun noticing certain changes to your rank on SERP. If you haven't, you shouldn't wait to have that sorted. Either way, this article has been designed to show you particular hacks that will improve your site. 

Since these updates won't be enforced in full force immediately, industries still have some time to ease into the update. 

According to John Mueller, Google plans on enforcing these updates gradually. Just like the HTTPS update, when it rolls out, it doesn't seem like it makes any difference, but over time you begin to notice changes. When last did you see an HTTP site? This tells you how quickly and quietly these updates take effect. 

As a business owner, you always want to be on the winning side, and to do that; you need opportunities and a strategy to utilize them.

Here are some insider tips to keep you ahead of everyone else.

This is a core web vital hack, and luckily for non-WordPress users, it is also open to every website. Cloud Flare offers a lot, but for now, we will be focusing on its free service that includes speed enhancement.

If you've been looking to boost the speed of your site, this is definitely something we recommend. With a simple setup, you could solve one of the most challenging issues that come with owning a site. 

Note that not everything works for everyone, so you can tweak a few settings until you achieve one that's perfect for your site. Learn to test. 

No, we aren't referring to the 2013 Google algorithm update but the WordPress Plugin. And this only applies to websites that use WordPress. 

We've used a good number of different speed and caching plugins, and each one seems to perform better depending on the scenario. However, Hummingbird performs exceptionally, especially when you have a good hosting provider. We felt it important to mention your hosting provider because other plugins may perform better depending on the host. 

We like and use Hummingbird because it isn't just your regular caching plugin. It can connect to Cloud Flare, which allows us to make certain updates and modifications remotely. On the surface, it looks quite basic, but when you understand its settings and what you should and shouldn't do, it becomes quite interesting. 

This is another WordPress plugin that fixes problems quickly. This plugin allows us to stop scripts from loading on specific pages or sets of pages. Social sharing plugins are a great example. 

Using them, you will notice how they don't directly impact performance scores. We tried using this, and here is what we noticed. 

After deactivating our Hummingbird plugin, we got a score of 35. If you install and set up the Asset Cleanup plugin, you will see an interface, and you will need to spend some time understanding it. This is also where their testing mode becomes handy. 

For some scripts, you immediately know whether or not you need them, but for others, you will be unsure, and that is when testing comes in handy. When you're on devs or testing mode, you may want to consider disabling all of them; then, you activate one after the other. As you turn on each one, you test for their functionality. This was the strategy we used. 

After a while (roughly 20-30 minutes), we began to notice changes in our speed.

Individually, these hacks all have their benefits, but you must wonder just how powerful your site can become if you decide to use all three hacks together. Well, sorry to let you down, but in our experience, it doesn't seem to work well. 

The score and real-world timing only got worse after we combined any two. This was quite shocking as we expected Asset Cleanup and Flare to work well together. However, we can't be sure, so we haven't completely written off that idea. 

Regardless of how good or bad, the situation is, it is important that you continue testing. That is, if you decide to take on this endeavor yourself.