How to improve Google Pagespeed Insights

Investing time in harnessing the power of SEO in your organization is an essential component of having a strong web presence.

The appropriate SEO strategy may assist in boosting your website’s rating in search engine results pages (SERPs), bringing more visitors to your site when they search for certain keywords.

Page speed has been one of the most critical variables influencing your website’s SEO performance, and hence ranking, since Google’s Core Web Vitals upgrade in mid-2021.

Fortunately, there are several things you can do to increase your page performance and raise your Google PageSpeed Insights score.

This post will go over some of the greatest strategies to increase this so that you may rank higher and make the most of your web presence.

Let us dive into it and boost your page speed…

Google PageSpeed Insights Definition

Google PageSpeed Insight is a service provided by Google to assist you in measuring and improving the performance of each web page of your website.

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) reports on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.

PSI gives information about a page from both the lab and the field. Since lab data is collected in a controlled environment, it can be used to figure out why something isn’t working right. But it might not show bottlenecks in the real world. Field data is helpful for capturing how users really feel in the real world, but it has a smaller set of metrics.

An open-source tool called Lighthouse collects and analyzes lab data, which is then combined with data from the Chrome User Experience Report dataset, which is data from the real world.

Enter the URL of your website, click “Analyze,” and you’ll get a score that summarizes how well it works and a list of suggestions.

It examines and rates your website’s performance – the page load – on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the best. A website with a PSI score (also called pagespeed insights score) of 85 or above is considered to be performing well. While a website with a PSI score of 0-30 is considered to be performing poorly. Anything in between is considered ‘Needing Improvement’ but, in reality, is deemed to be average if not above average.‍

The PageSpeed Insights tool measures three primary aspects of your website that tend to impact a site’s loading time:

‍1. The server response time is the time it takes for the server to send the first byte of information to the browser. The time to first meaningful paint is the time it takes for the content on the page to first appear.

2. The download time is the time it takes for the full page to be downloaded.

3. The total page size is the size of the page in bytes.

While there are dozens of factors and a handful of metrics being calculated for PageSpeed Insight scoring it also gives you suggestions on how to enhance your score.

Google PageSpeed Insights can be used to assess the website performance of both your desktop and mobile web pages.

You may also run tests on services like GTmetrix (which combines your PageSpeed Insights and YSlow results) and WebPageTest. Your scores across several tools are unlikely to match perfectly, demonstrating how arbitrary these figures may be.

What matters most is the actual speed of your website. To put that into perspective, we’ve seen sites with average loading speeds of less than 500 milliseconds (which is really lightning fast!) but no PageSpeed Insights score of 100/100.

The perceived performance of your site should also influence your approach to speed optimization. Your visitors do not care about your Google PageSpeed Insights score. They simply want to see your content as soon as possible.

The goal of using Google PageSpeed Insights to test your site’s speed isn’t to get a high score. Instead, it’s to identify issue areas on your site so you can improve them and reduce both actual and perceived loading times. In the end, increasing site performance is crucial to the success of any SEO or conversion optimization campaign.

There are several critical factors that influence website speed, which we will examine further in the following.

Increasing Your Google PageSpeed Insights Score

Step-by-step SEO for your website assures that your website will rank higher over time.

You may for example employ a variety of on-page SEO tactics to increase the exposure of your website. Also critical to understand is where your website sits. As said, there are numerous speed test and optimization tools accessible to you, especially if your website is based on WordPress.

The Truth About Scoring 100/100 in Google PageSpeed Insights

We see many website owners and developers obsessed with achieving perfect PageSpeed Insight Scores. Unfortunately the most overlooked aspects looking at those speed scores are usually the Google pagespeed insights recommendations given with the page speed score. You can always improve your loading time by using Google PageSpeed Insights, but it is still not essential. For example, there is no final test of performance. Unlike pagespeed analytics, Pingdom Tools lets users test their websites performance from a variety of places and devices.

Why Is Page Speed Important?

The Google update for Core Web Vitals focuses on website performance as a significant ranking element. This upgrade was announced in mid-2021 and has been gradually rolled out.

Core Web Vitals take the following elements into account:

Delay in the first input (FID)
Blocking Time in Total (TBT)
The Very First Contentful Paint (FDP)
Speed Index for the Most Contentful Paint (LCP) (SI)
Cumulative Layout Change (CLS)
Time to get interactive (TTI)

As a result of Google’s upgrade, page speed has become an even more important aspect in SEO.

A quick website delivers a better user experience, which Google considers when determining performance.

Some statistics why Page Speed is so important

According to a recent study by Google, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. Another study found that a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. And yet another study found that 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance are less likely to buy from the same site again. Clearly, page speed is essential for both user experience and conversion rate optimization. If your website is slow, you’re losing out on both fronts.

Netzwelt improved Core Web Vitals and saw advertising revenues increase by 18% and page views by 27%.
Vodafone improved their LCP by 31%, resulting in an 8% increase in sales, a 15% increase in their lead to visit rate, and an 11% increase in their cart to visit rate.
Yelp reduced First Contentful Paint (75th percentile) by 45% and Yelp Page Complete (75th percentile) by 25% and saw a 15% improvement in their conversion rate.
Websites that load quickly move to the top of search results, while those that take their time fall to lower ranks. Google’s ranking algorithm gives higher keyword rankings to websites with fast-loading pages rather than sites with slower-loading pages. Worse, conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with every additional second of load time. Improving site speed is non-negotiable to any search engine optimization and conversion optimization strategy.

Analysis of a Google Page Speed Insight Test Report

The comprehensive PSI report includes lab data, field data, opportunities, diagnostics, and audits that have been passed.

The color-coding throughout the report makes it easy to identify the portions of the website that are functioning well, those that require improvement, and those that are underperforming.

Red represents inadequate performance
Green indicates satisfactory performance
Yellow indicates how much improvement is required

FIELD DATA

The report for the preceding 28 days is displayed in the Google PageSpeed Insights field data. As it is comprised of aggregated data from the CrUX report, it is always accompanied with distribution bars, and no web page performs identically for consumers.

The four field data metrics capture distinct features of load and speed time. Except for CLS, they are all measured in milliseconds or seconds.

First Contentful Paint (FCP) refers to the time required for the initial image or text to load.
LCP: Largest Contentful Paint is the amount of time needed to load the largest image or text.
First Input Delay (FID) is the time it takes the browser to respond to the user’s initial interaction.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Any page movement in the viewport is measured by CLS; a CLS score below 0.1 is acceptable and above 0.25 is poor.

LAB DATA

It contains statistics and data from the Lighthouse API, which measures FCP, CLS, LCP, time to interactive, speed index, and overall blocking time. The speed index measures how quickly an image or text appears during page load.

Total blocking time is the amount of time that elapses between full interactivity and the start of the final communication protocol (FCP). Time to interactive is the amount of time till the page is fully interactive.

Google PageSpeed Insights lab data does not have a progress bar. It simply has time stamps and generated reports from the lab test.

You’ll notice that Field Data and Lab Data don’t match exactly. That’s absolutely normal. The Lab Data is created under fixed conditions, while the Field Data uses actual loading speeds collected over time.

When looked at in combination, the Field Data and Lab Data should give you an idea of your site’s actual loading times. As we mentioned earlier, this is more important than your overall PageSpeed score, so you’ll want to pay attention to these numbers.

POSSIBILITIES AND ANALYSES

In the possibilities part of the Google page speed test report, specific ideas for enhancing website speed are provided. After the opportunity report has been prepared, this tool will provide information for customizing your content management system when you choose the dropdown menu to view specific information about the following stages.

Similarly, the diagnostics section highlights performance best practices for the application. After clicking on the dropdown of each practice, the root cause of the problem will be revealed.

PASSED AUDITS

Look for the audits report that has been passed if you want to determine whether the page is operational.

1. HOW ACCURATE ARE GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS?

The surprising point is that the Google page speed test score is not truly accurate.

They cannot rate a user’s true website experience. However, it does affect SEO. According to Google, page experience plays an important role in ranking. And page speed plays a crucial role in building a good user experience.

2. WHAT’S A GOOD GOOGLE PAGE SPEED TEST SCORE?

The Google page speed test score ranges from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better the website’s performance is. A score of more than 85 indicates a user-friendly website and increases the possibility of ranking higher in SERPs.

3. IS GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS RELIABLE?

Though Google PageSpeed Insights provides a detailed analyzed report of the webpage’s performance; however, it is not as reliable as other tools present.
A few other tools are Sematext, Pingdom Speed Test, Uptrends and GTmetrix.

11 Ways to Improve Google PageSpeed Insights

Let’s have a look at the actions required to improve your Google PageSpeed Insights Score.

1. Avoid Redirections to Post-Click Landing Pages

The process of redirecting a user from one web page to another is known as post-click landing page redirects.

They can occur after a user clicks on a link, an ad, or fills out a form.

Redirects are inconvenient for users and slow down your website. As a result, it is critical to avoid them as much as possible.

There is a common assumption among new online entrepreneurs and web veterans alike that redirection would allow them to track more information about their website visitors.

While collecting data generally is a wonderful idea, there are other ways to achieve it that do not entail annoying your consumers (and lowering your Core Web Vitals score while slowing down your page speed loading time).

In other words, redirects are a no-win situation. If you must redirect, make the procedure as simple and quick as feasible; if you can’t, don’t do it.

2. Turn on compression

The growth of web page size continues, Google’s recommended best practice of keeping a website under 500 KB in size is also nowhere near being met, on average. Here comes Compression into hand. Compression is the technique of lowering data size by removing superfluous characters.

This can be accomplished by employing a compression algorithm or a compressor. Compressing the data on your website might result in a considerable reduction in page size. For our customers it is best practice to enable almost every time compressing images. For a WordPress Site there are several plugins available who do compress quite well, WP-Rocket or Smush to name only two. Compression can be further improved by utilizing smaller pictures (or even image file formats like WebP).

3. Minimize CSS, HTML, and JavaScript

The technique of deleting all unneeded characters from a file is known as minification.

This can be done manually or with the help of a minification tool, WordPress does have a ton of plugins which minify your CSS and JavaScript files.

Our personal favorite WordPress plugin against slow pages is as mentioned WP-Rocket (Costs $49 per year but in our opinion it is worth it), it reduces CSS files and removes unnecessary JavaScript and CSS scripts effectively. Others do this job without any costs, for example the open-source plugin Fast Velocity.

When files are minified, their size is decreased, resulting in a faster loading time for your website, especially on mobile networks.

4. Enable Browser Caching

Every time a person views your website or your blog post, it does not have to load from the beginning. Users won’t have to download all of the same content again and again when they revisit your website because it will be stored in their browser cache.

The same notion applies to how your website is given to the user’s browser as it does to how your browser normally keeps certain files (ensuring they don’t have to be downloaded again the next time you visit a website or even click on a different page within the same site).

This is known as utilizing browser caching or leverage browser caching, and it may help you improve your Google PageSpeed Insights score significantly.

Enabling browser caching requires editing (or creating) the .htaccess file, which is usually better implemented by a skilled web developer. But with numerous plugins available, browser caching in WordPress is easy to enable even without touching the .htaccess file.

5. Prioritize Above-The-Fold Material

Above-the-fold content is that which is displayed on the user’s screen without having to scroll down.

This material should load as quickly as possible so that the user does not have to wait long to see it.

Whether you have crucial material that must be displayed first or a carousel that must spin swiftly, focus your efforts on having the most critical content available as soon as feasible.

This also improves user attention span since they can see what you have to offer straight away without being sidetracked by other things going on in their lives.

6. Improve Server Response Time

The server response time is the amount of time it takes for the server to react to the browser of the user.

Many things can influence this time, including the type of server you’re using, the load on the server, and the network connection between your server and the user.

If you are currently using a sluggish hosting company, it may be time to move to a faster one.

Sometimes shared hosting implies that resources are shared across several websites. This might cause your website’s server response time to be sluggish.

Consider choosing a dedicated hosting service or upgrading to a VPS. Usually nothing improves your performance score better than a change to a dedicated hosting.

7. Remove JavaScript and CSS that cause rendering issues

Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS may affect your page speed score. Those are scripts and styles that prevent the page from rendering. Funny enough, Google Analytics own script may be one of those.

REDUCE MAIN-THREAD WORK

The main thread cannot handle user requests when processing your site’s code. If the main-thread work of your site takes longer, it can lead to a poor user experience.

Minimize JavaScript files execution time

If Javascript files execution is having a significant impact on the performance, Insights will notify you with a separate recommendation. This implies that the user will not be able to see any content until the scripts and styles are loaded.

Use the relevant tags in your HTML document, minify your scripts and styles, or load them asynchronously to remove render-blocking JavaScript files and CSS from your website.

There are several methods to accomplish this, so do your homework to determine which option is ideal for you.

REMOVE RENDER-BLOCKING RESOURCES

You should halt any render-blocking resources in addition to removing any render-blocking JavaScript and CSS.

Render-blocking resources are photos, movies, plugins or other files that prevent the page from rendering, preventing the user from seeing any content until the files are loaded.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. You may use the PageSpeed Insights too, the Core Web Vitals reports discover which resources are causing the issue. Once the resources have been discovered, they can be optimized or loaded asynchronously.

Usually there are two solutions you should consider:

If you don’t have a lot of JavaScript or CSS, you can inline them to get rid of this warning. This process refers to incorporating your JavaScript and/or CSS into your HTML file. You can do this with a plugin like Autoptimize. However, this is really only valid for very small sites.
The other option is to defer your JavaScript. This attribute downloads your JavaScript files during HTML parsing, but only executes it after the parsing is complete. Scripts with this attribute execute in order of appearance on the page.

9. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of servers that stores and distributes material to consumers.

This material can range from static items like photographs, infographics, and videos to dynamic files like scripts and styles.

A CDN can boost your website’s performance and speed by caching static files and delivering them from a nearby server.

Consider implementing a CDN if you do not already have one to increase the speed of your website

There are several WordPress CDNs accessible, so do your homework to choose which one is ideal for you. One of the most popular ones for sure is Cloudflare which can be used free of costs. If you want to dig deeper, we recommend the article “WordPress CDNs: 5 Best Choices for Your Website” from Hostinger.

10. Use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source initiative that seeks to enhance website speed on mobile devices.

AMP is based on current web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This means you can utilize AMP without having to change your website.

AMP pages are optimized for mobile devices, enabling them to load websites fast and efficiently on mobile networks.

However, there are various challenges for website owners, bloggers, and marketers:

AMP uses a limited set of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This means you cannot add certain widgets and features to your mobile AMP website. This limits your ability to add smart email optin forms, facebook like boxes, and other dynamic scripts.

While Google AMP supports Google Analytics, it does not support many other analytics platforms. Same goes for advertising options which are limited to select few advertising platforms.

Google is pushing AMP pages despite their limitations by giving them a boost in mobile search.

If a substantial portion of your traffic comes from mobile searches, you may benefit from implementing AMP support to maintain and improve your SEO. Finally implementing AMP on your website is a smart choice to raise your website’s ranking in most cases.

11. Make use of WordPress themes that load quickly

WordPress’ themes are not all made equal.

Some WordPress themes are optimized for speed and efficiency, while many others are not.

There are several WordPress themes available, so you should be able to choose one that fulfills your requirements while also offering an excellent user experience in terms of page speed loading. For some of the most popular themes out there we recommend reading the article “2022’s Most Popular and Best WordPress Themes (Expert Pick)“

As a result, some of the fastest WordPress themes available may drastically increase your website’s speed while others may raise your load time significantly.

Long-Term Considerations

Aside from the aforementioned elements, here are a few more to consider when it comes to long-term SEO performance.

Improve Your CWV By Monitoring Your Website’s Performance

This should be done on a frequent basis to guarantee that your website runs smoothly.

There are several tools and services available to assist you in monitoring the operation of your website. Running Google PageSpeed Insights audits on a regular basis is a useful approach to check the performance of your website.

Don’t forget about the Core Web Vitals

Don’t forget about the Core Web Vitals (CWV). They collaborate to deliver a complete picture of performance. Core Web Vitals are a part of Googles Ranking factor.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and First Input Delay (FID) are all important factors in detecting and addressing possible website issues.

Understanding what each component consists of and how it might be enhanced is a critical factor. There are particular characteristics of cumulative layout shift (CLS) that you should be aware of and enhance. These elements will boost your overall page speed.

Taking a comprehensive approach to your website’s performance can assist guarantee that all components work together to give the greatest user experience possible.

Beetter Conduct Regular Website Audits

Conducting frequent website audits is a fantastic approach to guarantee that your website is working properly. It’s also a fantastic technique to identify and resolve any performance issues that may present.

Running a website audit in five simple stages entails:

Data Collection from Websites

This entails obtaining information about your website, such as page size, number of queries, and response time.

This information may be acquired using a variety of tools, including Google PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest.

IDENTIFYING WEBSITE PROBLEMS

After you have collected all the data, you must identify any website faults.
Malware, render-blocking resources, sluggish sites, lost chances, and caching difficulties are examples of these.

TROUBLESHOOTING WEBSITE ISSUES

Optimizing pictures, minifying scripts and styles, loading files asynchronously, altering your WordPress theme, or using a CDN can all help to resolve website difficulties.
Checking for the Resolution of Website Issues
Re-running a website audit will confirm that any issues have been resolved.

MAKING A FINDINGS REPORT

A report of your findings may be utilized to track your website’s progress over time.

These procedures should assist you in identifying and correcting any performance issues on your website.

Conclusion

You may enhance your Google PageSpeed Insights score and make your website function more smoothly by following the guidelines in this article.

Remember to keep an eye on your website’s performance and make modifications as needed.

This will assist to guarantee that your website functions efficiently, that your users have a positive experience, and that your SEO efforts are not squandered.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good Google Pagespeed Score?

Any green score (90+) is considered good, but note that having good lab data does not necessarily mean real-user experiences will also be good.

Why does the performance score change from run to run? I didn’t change anything on my page!

A lot of the variability in your overall Performance score and metric values is not due to Lighthouse. When your Performance score fluctuates it’s usually because of changes in underlying conditions. Common problems include:

A/B tests or changes in ads being served
Internet traffic routing changes
Testing on different devices, such as a high-performance desktop and a low-performance laptop
Browser extensions that inject JavaScript and add/modify network requests
Antivirus software

Lighthouse’s documentation on Variability covers this in more depth.

What is google pagespeed insights?