Jetpack Boost

Jetpack Boost supercharges your WordPress website’s performance and improves web vital scores for better SEO. This guide explains how to use Jetpack Boost on your WordPress.com website.

Install Jetpack Boost

To add Jetpack Boost to your site, take the following steps:

1. Visit your wp-admin dashboard.
2. Navigate to Jetpack → My Jetpack (or Jetpack → Dashboard if using the default interface style).
3. Scroll down to the Boost card and click the “Boost your site” button (or the Performance and Growth card and click the Install Boost button and then the Manage Boost button if using the default interface style):

4. Select either the free or paid plan.
5. After selecting the plan, you will be redirected to the Jetpack Boost dashboard (Jetpack → Boost) where your current scores for Mobile and Desktop will be calculated:

Jetpack Boost Optimization Options

Jetpack Boost has several optimization options:

• Optimize CSS Loading: Extract critical CSS to move important styling information to the start of the page, helping pages display your content sooner. Regenerate critical CSS manually on the free version of Jetpack Boost or upgrade to automate this process.
• Defer Non‑Essential JavaScript: Run non-essential JavaScript after the page has loaded so that styles and images can load more quickly.
• Concatenate JS: Consolidate multiple JavaScript files into one comprehensive script and shrink it to reduce site loading time and number of requests. If needed, you can exclude specific JS strings from concatenation.
• Concatenate CSS: Combine multiple CSS files into a single, minified file to reduce site loading time and the number of requests. If needed, you can exclude specific CSS strings from concatenation.
• Image CDN: Deliver images from the Jetpack Content Delivery Network. This is the same CDN provided with your WordPress.com plan, so toggling this setting on or off will also change the setting at Jetpack → Settings → Performance.
• Image Guide: This feature helps you discover images that are too large. When you browse your site, the image guide will show you an overlay with information about each image’s size. Learn more about how to use the Image Performance Guide.

Many different factors can influence your site’s loading time, so we recommend experimenting with the above features to discover which combination of settings produces the best Overall Score. If you have other optimization plugins installed, we don’t recommend having the same types of optimization enabled in both plugins, as it is unlikely to benefit your site and may cause unexpected issues.