Last Updated on September 19, 2021 by scottkandh
A great amount of gratitude to Hugo Guerreiro, who wrote these settings for his blog (on Facebook, May 21, 2021) to improve his page speed to 99 on mobile and 100 on desktop and for me to change mine to 21 on mobile and from 38 to 84 on desktop (see Google PageSpeed Insights section on How to look at the Effectiveness of your SEO below).
This post contains affiliate links, I’ll make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.
What I’ve done is to refine the settings for people like myself that want to improve their SEO and new bloggers who want to have faster speeds. With this blog post, you should be able to make your changes in WP Rocket in no time at all.
If you would like to see “all” of the before and after changes (for my SEO improvements from October 2020 approx. to present) see my post called How to look at the Effectiveness of your SEO. (for the good and the bad). To me improving SEO (for all of its factors that programs provide) remains to be a mystery.
What I’m doing with this blog post is provide you with the settings that will help increase your page speed. The easiest way to change all of these settings is in WP Rocket. WP Rocket doesn’t have free versions but they do have a 14-days money-back guarantee. So give it a whirl and see if it works for you and cancel in 14-days if you’re not satisfied.
I’ve put all of the settings that you need to change in alphabetical order (that way you can use these as a checklist. Below I’ll add an image to where you can find each of the settings in WP Rocket. And they’ll be laid out as you find them in each tab.
Table of Contents
Suggested changes to make in WP Rocket
- ☐ Activate Preloading – see Preload
- ☐ Activate sitemap-based cache preloading – see Preload.
- ☐ Combine CSS files – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Combine JavaScript Files – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Control Heartbeat – See Heartbeat
- ☐ Delay JavaScript Execution – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Enable Caching for Logged in WordPress Users – see Cache.
- ☐ Enable Caching for Mobile Devices – see Cache.
- ☐ Enable for Iframes and Videos – see Media.
- ☐ Enable for Images – see Media.
- ☐ Enable Link Preloading – see Preload.
- ☐ Load JavaScript Deferred – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Minify JavaScript files – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Minify CSS Files – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Optimize CSS Delivery – see File Optimization.
- ☐ Replace YouTube Iframe with Preview Image – see Media.
- ☐ Separate Cache Files for Mobile Devices – see Cache.
One item that wasn’t in the suggestions from Hugo (in case your HTML file is too big and surpasses the minimum average size is to use a plug called autoptimize. I was in the middle of updating the SEO Audit file when this was brought to my attention. I ran the autoptimize and mobile changed from 21 to 30 and from 84 to 86 on desktop. To me and from what I’ve been told by my host provider (SiteGround) PageSpeed Insights is one of the best indicators for your true speed.
This is the results after running the autoptimize plug-in.
The last time that I ran page speed insights the list of things that I had to do was running off of the page. I’m no expert when it comes to SEO so proceed carefully with these settings, especially the ones that heed a warning.
The things that I need to improve on my website (for desktop) are:
Opportunity Estimated Savings
- Preload key requests 0.99 s
- Remove unused CSS 0.44 s
- Eliminate render-blocking resources 0.19 s
- Remove unused JavaScript 0.16 s
This is what I need to change to improve the mobile speed.
- Reduce initial server response time 2.82 s
Cache > Mobile Cache
- Enable Caching for Mobile Devices
- Separate Cache Files for Mobile Devices
Cache > User Cache
- Enable Caching for Logged in WordPress Users
File Optimization > CSS Files
- Minify CSS Files
- Combine CSS files
- Optimize CSS Delivery
File Optimization > JavaScript Files
- Minify JavaScript files
- Combine JavaScript Files (read the warning below). Me personally, I wouldn’t risk it. Because I don’t know enough about this subject.
- Load JavaScript deferred
- Delay JavaScript execution
Media > Lazyload
- Enable for images.
- Enable for iframes and videos.
- Replace YouTube iframe with preview image.
Preload > Preload Cache and Preload Links
- Activate Preloading
- Activate sitemap-based cache preloading
- Yoast SEO XML Sitemap (if you’re using Yoast SEO)
- Enable Link Preloading (under Preload Links)
Heartbeat > Heartbeat
- Control heartbeat (don’t reduce activity because that could break your plug-ins or your API).
Images – I used to use ShortPixel then when I changed to SiteGround now I use the SG Optimizer plug-in. I seem to remember getting notified when I enabled WP Rocket that there was a conflict so I had to turn one or the other off.
CDN – I don’t use CDN. Although it’s free with SiteGround I had a problem that my images weren’t loading properly so I’m not messing with it. It’s not worth messing up the website that I’ve spent so much putting together. I’ll worry about that when I sell my blog to someone else who wants to buy it and knows what they’re doing. (like that will ever happen).
Please consider looking at these other posts on my website:
Proven Checklists to Start a Blog, Grow a Blog, or Monetize it!
Self-Reflection: Three Months of Blogging
8 Canva Tips: A cheat sheet for new bloggers
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