WordPress speed audit

Find Out What’s Really Slowing Your Site Down

PageSpeed Insights hands you a score and a wall of vague suggestions. A speed audit hands you the exact culprits: which plugins, which images, which server settings are costing you seconds. You get a prioritized fix list sorted by impact, not a 60-page report nobody reads.

800+Sites audited
18+Years building WordPress
50+Checks per audit
48hTurnaround

What’s actually killing your speed

🔌

Plugin overload

47 active plugins, each loading CSS and JS on every page. You don’t need 47. You need 15 that work well together.

🖼️

Unoptimized images

4MB hero images served as PNG, no WebP, no lazy loading, no responsive srcset. Images are usually the single biggest bottleneck.

🌍

Wrong hosting

Shared hosting packed with 40 other sites and a 2-second server response. No caching plugin fixes a slow server.

💾

Database bloat

100,000 post revisions, 50,000 spam comments, orphaned plugin tables. Query time creeps up every year you ignore it.

📜

Render-blocking assets

20 CSS files and 15 JS files in the head. The browser can’t paint a single pixel until they all download and parse.

⚙️

Caching that fights itself

Three caching plugins fighting each other, missing browser cache headers, no CDN. Every request gets built from scratch.

What’s in the audit

A prioritized action plan, not a data dump. Every finding comes with the fix, the expected gain, and the effort to ship it.

  • Full waterfall analysis in Chrome DevTools and WebPageTest
  • Plugin performance audit with load time measured per plugin
  • Image optimization assessment with a real savings estimate
  • Server response analysis: TTFB, DNS, SSL, connection time
  • Database query profiling with slow queries identified
  • Caching review across page cache, browser cache, and CDN
  • Core Web Vitals breakdown with fix priorities
  • Prioritized plan: quick wins first, then medium, then long-term

What changes after

A PageSpeed score of 34Knowing exactly why, and how to hit 90+
Guessing which plugin is slowPer-plugin load time data
Random fixes from forumsA plan ordered by biggest impact
Generic adviceSpecific fixes for your exact stack

How I audit your site

1

Baseline measurement

I test from 5 global locations on real devices, mobile and desktop, throttled 3G and fast WiFi. Real conditions, not lab fantasies.

2

Deep dive

Waterfall analysis, plugin profiling, database queries, server response. I find every millisecond you’re wasting.

3

Prioritized roadmap

Every issue documented with impact, effort, and the exact fix, sorted so the biggest wins come first.

4

Walkthrough

We go through the report together so you or your dev can execute with zero guesswork.

Why a diagnosis beats a guess

I’ve watched people spend a weekend compressing images when their real problem was a 2-second TTFB on cheap shared hosting. The audit kills that guesswork. On a typical build I take sites from a 3.8s LCP down under 1s, but only after the data tells me which lever actually moves first.

If you’d rather I do the fixing too, I also handle performance optimization, Cloudflare cache setup, and full technical SEO.

A WordPress speed audit that names the real culprit

Before you buy another plugin or switch hosts, get a diagnosis. I audit your WordPress site end to end and hand you a ranked list of exactly what’s slowing it down and what to fix first, in plain language.

🖥️Server and hosting

  • Uncached and cached TTFB tests
  • Hosting and PHP version review
  • Object cache and Redis check
  • CDN and edge configuration

🖼️Front-end and assets

  • Image weight and format audit
  • Render-blocking CSS and JS
  • Font loading and third-party scripts
  • LCP element analysis

🗃️Plugins and database

  • Plugin performance profiling
  • Autoloaded options and bloat
  • Slow query detection
  • Heartbeat and admin-ajax load

🗺️Prioritized fix list

  • Issues ranked by impact
  • Quick wins vs bigger jobs
  • Exact settings and tools
  • Optional done-for-you fixes

WordPress speed audit questions, answered

What does a WordPress speed audit include?

It covers your hosting and TTFB, caching, images, CSS and JavaScript, fonts, plugins, and database, plus a Core Web Vitals review. You get a ranked list of what’s actually slowing the site and the exact fixes, so you stop guessing and buying plugins that don’t help.

How is an audit different from just optimizing the site?

The audit is the diagnosis; optimization is the treatment. The audit tells you precisely what’s wrong and what to fix first. You can then hand it to your developer, do it yourself, or have me implement it. Fixing without diagnosing is how sites end up with ten caching plugins and no speed.

Will you tell me if my hosting is the problem?

Yes, and it often is. I test uncached and cached TTFB from your visitors’ region and compare it against what good hosting delivers. If the origin is slow, no plugin fixes it, and I’ll say so plainly rather than sell you settings that can’t help.

Do you check Core Web Vitals?

Yes. I review your real-user LCP, INP, and CLS from field data, not just a one-off lab test, and map each failing metric to its cause, so the fix list targets what Google actually measures.

Can you implement the fixes too?

Yes. The audit stands alone, but most clients want the fixes done. I can implement the full list, from caching and image optimization to database cleanup and a CDN, and re-test to confirm the gains.

How long does a speed audit take?

Usually 2 to 4 business days for the audit and report, depending on site size. If you want the fixes implemented, that’s scoped separately once you’ve seen exactly what needs doing.

Stop guessing why your site is slow

Get a prioritized speed audit in 48 hours that tells you exactly what to fix first, and what it’ll buy you.

Get my speed audit →