Quote from James A.Hart on July 14, 2025, 11:17 am

Website speed became mission-critical the day Google switched to mobile-first indexing.
Why? Because over 60% of all searches now come from mobile devices — and that number is only going up.

If your site loads slowly, you’re not just annoying users —
you’re telling Google that your site doesn’t deserve to rank.

Here are the essential tools that will help your site load faster and perform better:

1. Autoptimize (Free)

Every time someone visits your site, their browser has to load a ton of code to display everything —
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more.

Autoptimize streamlines this entire process by aggregating, minimizing, and deferring code
so that your pages load as fast as possible.

It’s simple, free, and works great out of the box.

2. WP Rocket (Paid)

While Autoptimize cleans up your code, WP Rocket takes things a step further by
preloading your site’s pages, images, and scripts into the browser’s memory.

This means when a user clicks to view your page, it’s already partly loaded —
delivering instant speed boosts.

It’s one of the most effective caching plugins in the WordPress ecosystem.

3. EWWW Image Optimizer (Paid)

Images are often the biggest culprit when it comes to slow load times.

EWWW Image Optimizer automatically resizes and compresses your images,
so you don’t have to manually shrink them in Photoshop.

The result? Smaller file sizes, faster pages, and zero loss in visual quality.

Bottom line:

Speed is no longer a luxury — it’s a ranking factor.

These three tools — Autoptimize, WP Rocket, and EWWW —
give you a battle-tested combo for faster load times and better SEO performance.