Google PageSpeed Insight: How to Optimize your Performance?
You might have heard about using Google PageSpeed Insights that can help to optimize and check the speed of your web pages and sites. Moreover, you can easily use this tool and improve your results with the help of it.
This guide sums all the important key factors you need to learn about Google PageSpeed Insights. Keep on reading.
1.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is a beneficial tool if you want to improve user experience and SEO.
It is important to note that users do not like a slow website and when your webpage takes too long to load Google takes notice. However, your users move to another webpage.
Let’s discuss it in detail.
The slow speed of your webpage deters the users from staying on your website regardless of how they find you.
It could be through organic search, paid advertising, or a referral link.
Therefore, you would want to improve your page speed for the sake of your users and your keyword rankings.
Google’s Page Speed Insights or PSI can help you do the above.
Let’s learn more about it in detail.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Page Speed Insights or PSI is an online tool by Google that helps to evaluate the loading speed of a web page.
The evaluation this tool performs separates the score on mobile devices from the performance on desktops.
Moreover, it also offers practical suggestions for optimizing the speed of your web pages.
This makes PSI intuitive and simple to use, which is also free.
Thus, understanding the motive behind creating such a feature can help you think differently.
What Motivates a service like Google PageSpeed Insights?
User Experience is one of the most important factors that Google uses to encourage the creation of faster and lighter pages.
Users do not like to wait too long to find the information in their browser.
Think about how many times have you been impatient while waiting for a page to load on your phone or your desktop?
You will realize that most of the time this happens, the delay is only a matter of seconds.
So if 1 second seems like a week to the user, slow sites negatively affect your navigation experience.
Moreover, neither you want it nor your users want it.
According to Google’s Industry benchmarks for mobile pages, speed shows that the majority of the websites are beyond perfect and this is across all the industries.
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2.
Google PageSpeed Insights: Working
The score your site receives when your type your URL into the PageSpeed Insight is not random.
Your need to fully understand the analysis process in order to make it accurate and reliable. So what exactly does Google use when determining which rating web pages should receive?
Keep on reading to learn more about it.
Basically, PSI takes care of two factors:
- it analyzes the loading time of your page and how many resources it has. These include plugins, code scripts that communicate more often with the server and make your page take longer to load, etc.
- Compares this data with the average of all the pages it analyzes
After all the comparisons PSI makes, it shows a simple but objective report that shows:
The average loading time of your web pages, the losing time of your pages, final speed score, and suggestions on how you can optimize your loading time.
So how does the grading works?
The grading goes from 0 to 200 and is defined when the algorithms compare the page with best practices.
These algorithms are created by Google itself and help to optimize performance scores.
The grades depend on how much room is there for improvement and optimizations, i.e. how many recommendations points you need to apply.
The ranking goes like this:
- good: score from 80
- average: score between 60 and 79
- bad: score form o to 59
Using Google PageSpeed Insights Report
Using PSI report is very easy, and you just need to access the PageSpeed Insights and type the URL to see the results.
After adding your URL, the results show up on the page.
You can fix the errors and get better results. In the following image, you can see the “opportunities” and “how to fix them”.
Once you click on them, you can see which files are slowing down the page and how you can resolve them to reduce the time it takes the server to respond.
Receiving the diagnosis is quick and easy, however, only do it when you are ready to proceed with the “treatment” and optimize your site.
Why is it Important to Get a Good Score on Google PageSpeed Insights?
A good rating on PSO means that your site has a satisfactory SEO configuration.
This is due to the fact, that just like Mobile-Friendly and Mobile First, the loading speed on smartphones is one of the important criteria most pay attention to, even by Google itself.
However, the advantages go further!
A site with agile pages contributes to the user experience, which translates into lower bounce rates, longer visitor’s time on the page, increase in traffic, and growth in the number of leads.
However, it is important to note that in E-commerce, the effects of page speed are even more critical as the sales and conversions rates as well as the number of cart dropouts directly affect this metric.
According to the QuBit survey, in 2012, online retailing was losing about 1.73 billion pounds or 2.27 billion dollars per year in global sales.
Moreover, an important factor to consider is that over 57% of searches on the internet come from mobile devices alone.
Another study worth considering is by Walmart that indicates the impact of loading time on conversions.
All of the factors change the way you understand the consumer’s journey.
Additionally, the familiarity of users with digital platforms, online sales, and transactions also contribute to consumers becoming more sensitive to the quality and security of the website they access.
Thus, slow sites, particularly, checkout and payment pages with loading failures should never arouse much distrust.
3.
10 Key Factors to Achieve Highest Score
In order to score 100, it is important to follow the report recommendations and optimize your site as soon as possible.
Moreover, it is important to note that each site has different situations, thus, in this section, we will discuss 10 key factors or grades you need to improve and how you can do that.
Keep on reading to learn more.
The following are the 10 important key factors you need to consider to score 100 in PSI.
1# Less HTML codes
If your website has been around for a while or has been built without the best practices of Google, then optimizing HTM code often goes unnoticed
One of the important facts is that the way the code is organized helps to determine how the servers will read your information.
Moreover, it also considers how long it will take to appear on the screen.
Often duplicate code or stages that you use off purpose gets in the way.
For this, you do not need to review the entire code structure to make necessary changes.
There are HTML compression tools that can do this job for you automatically and quickly.
Some of these tools even work as CMS plugins.
2# Using Cache
One of the main elements of PSI review is the number of resources that the browser needs to assimilate from your page.
This includes fonts, scripts, images, etc.
Through cache, all of this is stored in the memory of the browser.
Thus, your browser will only lead the elements one and every time the user changes the page, their browser will only remember them and pull the important info from the cache.
However, you do not need to optimize your sire to make good use of this possibility.
Plugins like W3 Total Cache can help you carry out this procedure and offers other procedures to optimize the code.
3# Resource Compression
One of the most important elements that affect the loading speed of your page is the images.
This makes compression one of PageSpeed Insights’ most recurrent recommendations.
In most cases, individuals forget to compress the images which weigh a lot ad slow down your website.
As the internet is becoming more and more visual, it is common to have many files of this type and there is nothing better to use a good compressor to reduce the size of big files.
The same goes for CSS and Javascript.
Together with HTML, they consist of the whole page thus, there is more than obvious that the compression of files will make the performance better as well as the overall PSI rating.
For this purpose, you can use TinyPNG to compress the images before posting them on your blog post.
4# AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages
AMP or Accelerated mobile pages is another initiative from Google to make sure that the site page load faster on mobile devices.
The idea here is to offer a more basic mobile experience without factors that would work better in the desktop versions as well.
Moreover, by taking these unnecessary features, the website speed gets higher.
Thus, it is better for your users to have a fast and straightforward experience than a full-featured version of the site in which they would force them to long to see the content.
5# Reduce the Size of Pages
It is important to note that the more resources your page has, the more time it will take to load as it will make it heavier.
In general, often images and videos contribute the most to the pages.
However, you should also consider the total size of the JavaScript and CSS files.
To help you understand more about the weight of your page, look at the average size of the webpage on both desktop and mobile.
In 2020, the average desktop page weighs about 2080 KB, while on mobile it weighs 1885KB.
6# Externally Uploaded Videos
Imagine what a video would weigh, if the images on your web page are heavy?
Except for special cases, like restricted platforms or content that needs a higher degree of security, the recommendation is that your videos are always hosted externally.
One of the most media platforms you would choose to use is YouTube and Vimeo.
These platforms not only allow easy integration of their players in other sites but also help you to promote your brand improve search results.
However, if you are providing restricted content like paid online courses, both media offer non-listing options.
This is a feature that hides your video from searches and only allows access from a single link that you can attach yourself.
This includes using HTML within your pages.
7# Minimize Javascript and CSS Files
This one is one of the most neglected problems, this is why you would ignore this one most often.
According to a survey of SEMRush, 68% of the sites have non-minified JavaScript and CSS files.
Minimizing these two means reducing or simplifying the codes and you can easily do this by removing unnecessary lines, commonest, and blanks.
These files are behind the whole visualization of your site and you sometimes write it to facilitate future editing.
Moreover, you can change them with various plugins.
If you worry about how will you change them, then it is important to note that you do not need to master any of these languages to perform this procedure.
There are different tools you can use it for like Fast Velocity Minify, WP super Minify, or Online YUI Compressor.
Remember to make a backup of your files before using any of the above solutions.
There is always a possibility that the theme of your site or some file may be affected.
Therefore, be careful and make sure to do some testing.
8# Compressed Files
Gzip is a web file compression format that acts as a help if you fight for a good page speed score.
By compressing the CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files in your database, the size of your pages can be reduced, if not more.
Moreover, since all the browsers today are compatible with this feature, nothing changes for those who access your site.
Some of the servers automatically do it, thus, you can verify that your site has this type of service by testing your URL.
You can use tools like Varvy SEO Tool Site.
However, if this is not the case for you, you can choose to leverage browser caching with plugins like WP Fastest Cache.
This tool offers the above options.
9# Clean Redirections
Most often a sequence of redirections that forces the browsers to load several pages in a minimum amount of time rather than the loading of the page, compromises the website speed.
It is important to note that this issue is common in large websites that have already made many address migrations, protocol changes, duplicate pages, etc.
These redirections accumulate and make the link path of your pages longer and longer.
Therefore, make sure to keep your sitemap up to date.
This can help users to reach your website’s current addresses.
However, only implement redirections that are necessary like with pages that contain important external links.
As for others, make sure to delete them as soon as possible.
10# Improved Server Performance
This is more observable in blogs, news channels, and e-commerce websites that receive a lot of traffic.
As your website evolves, you need to make necessary changes to maintain the pace of growth and one of them is your hosting plan.
Thus, make sure to invest in a dedicated server capable of supporting a large number of simultaneous visitors as well as reducing slowness and system outages.
Virtual stores that are not geared up for longer periods of greater demand like that in Christmas are usually surprised by these basic problems.
However, there are other factors that server performance may compromise.
These include outdated software, slow database queries, memory limitations, and even local power management or computer cooling failures.
Therefore, it is important to activate the support of your hosting company in case there slow loading speed of your page persists.
Always opt for renowned and well-referenced companies when hiring this type of service.
Should Google PageSpeed Insights Be your Only Reference?
You may have already come across pages that mention the minimum number for your evaluation of PSI. There are different variables and you do not need to give up all the features when loading.
For some the ideal sore is 95, while others may recommend getting a 100, however, do not get carried away. According to Google, a score above 90+ is ideal, between 50 and 89 manes that your site needs basic adjustments, and below 50 indicates your site needs critical repairs.
It is important to note that PageSpeed has its limitations, and you can choose to use other tools to view your website loading speed. These include GT Metrix, Pingdom, Stage Analyzer, etc.
Moreover, if your website loading speed is slow it will lead to a high dropout rate, few conservations, low organic traffic, etc. Thus, Page Speed is an important factor you need to take care of.