If you need to learn about Google PageSpeed Insights, this blog post is for you.
Your website’s speed has a direct impact on conversion rates and SEO. If you don’t take time to make improvements, it can be a costly mistake. Remember, if your site is slow, you are losing business. Google has also supported this fact by stating, “Speed equals revenue.”
Suppose you are wondering why; the answer is that users are more likely to bounce from slow websites. In addition, this probability increases by over 100% if the page load time exceeds 6 seconds.
Speed is crucial for a website, and to test your page load time, Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a perfect resource for finding and fixing all issues causing your site to perform poorly.
What is Google PageSpeed Insights?
If you are a newbie in digital marketing, you’re probably wondering what PageSpeed Insights is. To be precise, it is a free tool that analyzes webpage performance on mobile and desktop and provides users with insights on how to increase page speed scores.
PageSpeed Insights: The Google tool will access your website’s performance metrics and give you a score between 1 and 100 to summarize its overall performance.
What is a Good Google Page Speed Score?
If you see a score of 90 or above, your site performs well. On the other hand, a Google speed score of anywhere between 50 and 90 means that improvements are needed. A score below 50 is considered poor.
As per Google, a good page speed score is 90 or above. If it is between 50 and 90, you must take appropriate actions to improve the current score.
What Causes Google Speed Score to Drop?
Speed is a crucial element in WordPress development. A slow website can prove to be a disaster for your business. Having that said, here are a few factors that contribute to making your Google speed score poor:
- Too many advertisements
- Unoptimized images
- Utilizing an outdated CMS
- Incorrect JavaScript implementation
- Excessive HTTP requests
- High dependency on Flash content
- Too much traffic
Why Does Page Speed Matter?
Google announced the Core Web Vitals update in mid-2021. This update strongly focuses on speed as a critical ranking factor. It also considers the following factors:
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Speed Index (SI)
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
- Time to Interactive (TTI)
- First Contentful Paint (FDP)
- TBT stands for Total Blocking Time.
This update has highlighted that page speed has become an even more vital factor in SEO. Google wants website owners to provide a better user experience, and fast websites are one way to do this.
If your website is fast, you’ll have better chances of seeing your pages ranked at the top. At the same time, slow sites will witness a drastic drop in rankings and traffic. Consider using a link-building service and increasing your visibility to improve your search engine rankings.
How To Increase Page Speed Score?
Now that you know more about Google PageSpeed Insights, it’s time to test your site and learn how to increase your page speed score. Here is a list of the best practices to boost your score quickly.
1. Optimize your Images
Too many and poorly optimized images are the most significant reasons pages take more time to load. Images take up more space, which could slow down your website and eventually increase your bounce rate. High-quality images aren’t bad all the time, but that doesn’t mean you should use the highest resolution. If you want to optimize your images to reduce load time without hurting the quality, you need to compress them.
There are many tools online that can help you compress images quickly. If you run a WordPress site, you can use plugins like WP Smush to detect compressed images automatically. You should also avoid using PNG format and convert images to the WebP format. WebP is currently Google’s recommended image format for all websites.
2. Integrate AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source HTML framework that optimizes mobile web browsing. It removes unnecessary content so your web pages load faster on mobile devices.
While using the internet on your phone, AMP-version websites open in a simplified manner so that you browse through pages like you are using an app.
3. Minify CSS, HTML, JavaScript
Minification removes or fixes unwanted or duplicated data without affecting how a browser processes HTML. It also removes unnecessary duplications, characters, and spaces in the HTML file.
By minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, you’ll witness a reduction in the size of these files. Also, the page load speed will improve as the files become smaller. This process can be automated for WordPress users by installing plugins like HTML Minify and WP Rocket.
4. Avoid Post-Click Landing Page Redirects
A post-click landing page redirect is a process in which a user is sent from one page to another. This happens when a user clicks an ad or link or submits a form. Redirects can be very frustrating for users and slow down your website.
That is why it is advised to avoid them as much as possible. Each time a user has to be redirected, page loading stops, adding seconds to your page’s load time. Even Google recommends avoiding redirects. Here are some common redirect patterns;
- example.com uses responsive web design, and no redirects are needed – fast and optimal!
- example.com → m.example.com/home – multi-roundtrip penalty for mobile users.
- example.com → www.example.com → m.example.com – prolonged mobile experience.
5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Be sure to upload the image of the correct size. Otherwise, you will run into speed issues. WordPress handles this automatically by creating multiple image versions at the upload time. However, if you use a different CMS, you may need to resize the image manually.
With a CDN, the server load is distributed across different locations, and the assets are served from the location closest to the user. The closer the data, the faster the loading time.
6. Prioritize above-the-fold Content
Above the fold, content is displayed on the user’s screen without scrolling down. This content should be loaded as soon as possible so that the user does not have to wait long for it to appear on the screen.
Remember, whether you need to see your most important content first or have a carousel that needs to rotate quickly, make your most important content available as soon as possible.
It also attracts users, as the first fold sets the first impression you make on them. They’ll immediately know what you are offering without getting distracted. This way, you can resolve the query “how to increase page speed score.”
7. Choose a Lightweight Theme (For WordPress Users)
If you own a WordPress site, your theme will play a significant role in helping you get a good Google PageSpeed score. Not all WP themes are good, and ass different developers design all the themes, you can’t trust them all. In order to find the right one, you’ll have to go through reviews and even test a few of them by either going for free trials or free versions.
If an update is shown, immediately update the plugin to avoid any errors in your website’s performance.
Consider Taking Professional Help
If you have a budget and are short on time, you can always get professional help from an agency that can provide dedicated service to solve your page speed issues. WPExpert’s WordPress speed and performance optimization services are ideal for solving your problem. With the help of innovative techniques, you can experience a website faster than ever. You’ll get the following services from the agency once you hire them;
- WordPress site optimization
- Performance optimization
- Security optimization
- Minification of HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- Implementation of CDN
- Content optimization for the first fold
- Enable GZIP compression
- And much more.
If you aren’t ready to work on your site on your own, this power-packed all-in-one speed optimization service will increase your Google PageSpeed Insight score quickly.
These tips are the answers you seek in your query about increasing a page speed score.
How Does a PageSpeed Insights Score Impact SEO?
Page Speed is an influential Google ranking factor. Therefore, web developers and website owners must improve page speeds to attain better ranking in SERPs.
As you know, slow loading times annoy website visitors and entice them to leave your websites. On the contrary, users interact with your website and stay longer if pages load instantly.
Overall, it dramatically improves user experience, and search engines, including Google, Yahoo, etc., give weightage to sites offering excellent user experience.
Hence, improving the PSI (PageSpeed Insights) score is necessary for better search rankings. However, to rank your sites higher in search engines, you should concentrate on other crucial aspects, such as content quality, backlinks, and technical SEO.
Wrap Up
We hope you liked our blog post explaining Google PageSpeed Insights. When improving the page speed score, you should not underestimate its importance.
Additionally, you must follow the above-described suggestions regarding page speed score to load your web pages faster.
As a result, it will enhance user experience and improve your search engine rankings. Moreover, you will likely see increased website traffic and reduced bounce rates.
Lastly, the role of Google PageSpeed Insights score again comes in handy as it helps you take specific action to increase the web page speed.
