Ways to Improve Google PageSpeed
Harnessing the power of search engine optimization for your business is an essential part of having a successful online presence.
The right SEO strategy can help improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) so that more people find your website when they search for specific keywords.
Since Google’s Core Web Vitals update in mid-2021, page speed is one of the most important factors affecting your website’s SEO and overall ranking.
Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to improve your PageSpeed and improve Google PageSpeed Insights score.
In this article, we will discuss the best ways to fix it to improve your ranking and increase your online presence.
What is Google PageSpeed Insights?
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool provided by Google that allows you to measure and improve the page speed of your website. It analyzes and rates your website’s performance on a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the best. And it gives you suggestions on what you can do to improve your score.
You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to measure the page speed of both desktop and mobile websites.
How does Google PageSpeed Insights work?
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that allows you to test and analyze the performance of your website.
Enter the URL of the website you want to check. Google then assigns an overall score between 0 and 100 based on various performance optimization best practices. Factors such as performance, progressive web applications and accessibility of your website are evaluated, among others.
As mentioned above, the overall score is not the most determining factor. First, check Google’s recommendations for improving the quality of your website. Among the
Google metrics, you’ll also find Lighthouse (Google’s open source tool for general website optimization) for an in-depth evaluation of your URL. The performance check is similar to Google PageSpeed Insights, but you also get an assessment of your best practices, accessibility and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis. A Google PageSpeed Insights Score of will definitely affect your ranking on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
However, Google considers more than just the number here. If you get a score of 100/100, it does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be at the top of the SERP. Therefore, looking behind the scenes of 100/100 meters is even more important.
Improve Google PageSpeed Insights Score
Image Optimization
Images that are too large are the most common cause of slow WordPress sites. The larger the image files on your website, the longer your website will take to load.
Image optimization is therefore an important step to improve your website speed. Optimization involves resizing and compressing image files so that they can be downloaded and uploaded faster. Optimizing a good image involves two steps. First, be sure to edit the image before uploading it to the site.
To do this, you need to decide where the image will be used and what size it should be. You can then use a tool like Pixlr to crop and keep the image as small as possible. Sometimes even changing the file type can reduce the size – for example, jpg files tend to be smaller than png images.
Second, install an image optimization plugin on your site – we recommend Smushi (we use it at Pedalo). Not only does it compress images after they’re loaded – which increases page speed – but it also includes several other image optimization features, including lazy loading.
Enabling caching
If you enable caching on your website, your website data may be stored locally in temporary storage locations called caches. This means that browsers can load your website files more easily and you don’t have to re-download everything from your server every time your website needs to.
Caching therefore speeds up your page load speed, especially when people return to your site a second or third time. This is very easy to implement in WordPress with a free plugin like W3 Total Cache.
CSS, HTML, JavaScript Minification
Minification is the process of removing all unnecessary characters from a file. This can be done manually or using the minimize tool. Minifying files reduces file size, which speeds up the loading time of your website.
Speed up server response time
Server response time is the time it takes for the server to respond to the user’s browser. This time can be affected by many factors, such as the type of server you are using, the load on the server and the network connection between your server and the user.
Here’s an article on how to optimize your WordPress site if that’s the platform your site runs on. Also, if you are currently using a slow hosting provider, it may be time to switch to a faster one.
Sometimes shared hosting means sharing resources between multiple websites. This may cause slow response time on your web server. Consider using a dedicated hosting provider or upgrading to a VPS.
Use a Content Delivery Network
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers used to store and deliver content to users. This content can be anything from static files like images, infographics and videos to dynamic content like scripts and styles.
CDN can improve your site’s performance and speed by storing static files and serving them from a nearby server. If you are not currently using a CDN, consider using one to improve your site’s performance. There are many different WordPress CDNs available, so find out which one would work best for you.
Amp Plugin
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source project that aims to improve the performance of websites on mobile devices. AMP is built on existing web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This means you can use AMP without changing your site. AMP pages are designed for mobile devices and allow them to load websites quickly and efficiently. Under normal circumstances, implementing AMP on your site is a good idea.
Enabling GZIP compression
With GZIP compression, your website files are transferred between your server and users’ browsers as lightly compressed versions. This makes browsers search and website loads much faster.
We recommend installing the WP-Optimize plugin with the GZIP compression option. This plugin will also be useful in the next step when we start minifying the sites
