How to Improve Core Web Vitals in WordPress

Core Web Vitals are a Google ranking factor. Here are practical steps to improve all three metrics on your WordPress site.

Improve LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

• Use a caching plugin — Page caching is the #1 improvement for LCP.


• Optimize your hero image — Compress it, use WebP, and add fetchpriority="high".


• Eliminate render-blocking resources — Defer non-critical CSS and JS.


• Use a CDN — Serve assets from nearby edge servers.


• Enable GZIP/Brotli compression — Reduces transfer size.


• Upgrade to HTTP/2 — Multiplexing speeds up resource loading.

Improve INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

• Reduce JavaScript — Deactivate unnecessary plugins that add JS.


• Delay third-party scripts — Load analytics, ads, and chat widgets after user interaction.


• Break up long tasks — Use requestIdleCallback for heavy operations.


• Reduce DOM size — Aim for under 1500 DOM elements.

Improve CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

• Set image dimensions — Always include width and height attributes.


• Reserve space for ads — Use min-height on ad containers.


• Use font-display: swap — Prevents invisible text during font loading.


• Avoid inserting content above existing content — Don't push content down after load.

Quick Wins

1. Install a caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache)


2. Enable Gzip/Brotli compression


3. Optimize and lazy-load images


4. Remove unused plugins


5. Use a lightweight theme

Verify with InspectWP

InspectWP checks many factors that impact Core Web Vitals: compression, HTTP/2, image count, JS/CSS file count, and HTML size. Use these metrics as a starting point for optimization.