Enterprise WordPress SEO: A 90-Day Core Web Vitals Playbook

Authored by: Joe Hall

 

Website speed and general page performance has been a central component of modern SEO ever since Google introduced its Core Web Vitals metrics in 2020. These three metrics are not simply best practices for page performance optimization but are also uniquely tied to Google’s ranking algorithms. Because of that, optimizing them is a critical component of any Enterprise WordPress SEO strategy.

Core Web Vitals (CWV)

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content above the fold (like a hero image or headline) to become visible, reflecting perceived load speed.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures how responsive a page feels by tracking the delay between a user interaction and the next visual update.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how visually stable a page is by tracking unexpected layout movements during loading, such as buttons, text, or ads shifting while a user tries to interact.

Monitoring Core Web Vitals

The best way to monitor CWV during your optimization process is through Google’s PageSpeed Insights API. You can easily use this API with crawling tools such as ScreamingFrog and others to retrieve CWV metrics on a per URL basis. This is helpful when measuring the impact after optimization work is done, however to fully understand if CWVs are impacting your SEO you should monitor the Experience reports inside Search Console. The CWVs in this report come from real world Chrome users over the last 28 days in the Chrome UX Report. Because it generally takes around 28 days to aggregate this report, you should monitor changes with at least a month leeway.

Optimize For Core Web Vitals With Performance Best Practices

The steps required to optimize for CWVs will vary from site to site as each site is built completely differently with different server configurations, design assets, and even unique content optimizations. Therefore if you really want to get serious about tackling CWV metrics you should consider working with a seasoned professional to help you develop a custom page performance strategy. However, before you make that investment you should consider at the very least adhering to these WordPress performance best practices.

Minimize Your Use Of Plugins

It seems as though almost every time I login to a new client’s WordPress backend I find an array of random plugins installed and activated. Oftentimes 25% to 40% of them are not even needed and are just eating up valuable system resources for no reason. To get the best performance from your web server you should eliminate unneeded plugins and only rely on plugins that are critical to the function and operation of your WordPress site. Furthermore, inactive plugins that are still installed can pose a security risk if not updated. Therefore, for better page performance and ongoing management, it’s best to eliminate any plugins that are not in use or not needed at all.

Use A Minimum of PHP v8.0 or v8.3

PHP 8.0 rolled out in November 2020 with a handful of very powerful performance features including JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation, and additions to OPcache. Both of which add tons of new speed capabilities. Despite it being 6 years old I still see many servers running on pre 8.0 versions of PHP. (I updated 2 servers this week actually.) Check with your hosting provider to make sure you are on at least 8.0 or better yet 8.3.

Use a CDN like CloudFlare

A CDN like Cloudflare improves performance optimization by serving cached versions of your website’s assets (HTML, images, CSS, JavaScript) from data centers located close to users, reducing latency and Time To First Byte. In many cases this level of caching can make server lags and slow responses almost completely nonexistent. It also uses Brotli compression, and some image optimization. Considering that they do all of this for free, it has to be the one performance tactic with the highest ROI.

Use A WordPress Performance Plugin

There are literally thousands of different WordPress plugins that focus on page performance and speed. The plugin that you decide to use should be unique to your website’s needs and also should consider any unique aspects of your server. I usually advise clients to refer to their web hosting company for the best recommendation on which speed plugin to utilize. Some WordPress hosting companies have modified their hosting environment to work well with a specific plugin provider.

 

No matter which WordPress performance plugin you decide to use, you will need to enable specific settings and configure them to your site’s needs. Page speed optimizations are never a “set it, and forget it” exercise. Even though the specific features that need to be enabled may vary for each site, I highly advise most websites enable the following options within their site speed performance plugin.

 

• Defer JavaScript – When enabled this tells the web browser to delay loading JavaScript until other elements of the page such as markup and design assets are loaded. The only caveat to this feature is that it should be tested in an isolated environment before pushed to production. Especially if your website is highly dependent on JavaScript. Otherwise it can provide a much faster page performance as other assets are loaded first.
• Lazy Load Images – This option tells the web browser to delay loading images that are not in the user view. This will prioritize images above the fold first, and then load images found as the user scrolls, second. This eliminates delays in loading if there are large images found. By default WordPress includes this on images found inside Posts’ and Pages’ content. However this should still be enabled for images found within the website theme itself that may not be included in WordPress’s default image handling.
• Preload Featured Images – Oftentimes WordPress themes will embed featured images at the top of the post or page content. Because these images are within the user view or “above the fold” we can have the plugin preload these images along with the initial HTML rendering. This will dramatically speed up the featured image that is typically in the user’s initial view.
• Preload Theme Fonts & Styles – This feature works the same way that the feature image would however would be implemented sitewide and would load the CSS and font files at the same time the initial HTML is loaded. This can eliminate things like content layout shifts that are the result of different font sizing and may even eliminate render blocking issues from CSS files that are delayed.

 

Core Web Vitals are an important part of the SEO process. Especially for enterprise sites that want to seek more visibility in competitive search results. While the individual tactics required to optimize your CWVs may be specific to how your site is built, you can make improvements following basic best practices mentioned in this article. While each of these are meant to be straightforward and easy to apply, it is likely you will need to continually monitor the impact of these changes and adjust your settings and tactics as you go, to get the best results. Either way any WordPress site can improve their Core Web Vitals with diligent and focused attention to detail. Good luck and happy ranking in 2026!

 

Author bio: Joe Hall is the Principle Engineer and Chief SEO at Cloud22