Understanding your website’s performance, especially page speed, is crucial when it comes to running an effective and efficient blog. In a nutshell, a slow blog means the potential for losing business. Although it may seem like gibberish at first, learning a bit about Google PageSpeed Insights will give you insights on potential bugs to fix and real-time user experience.
What is Google PageSpeed Insights?
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool provided by Google that has the sole purpose of helping analyze your website’s performance while giving you suggestions for making it better. The fact that it’s free is one thing; however, it’s also considered one of the best and most popular page speed analysis tools out there.
In fact, we use the tool as part of our WordPress plugin speed tests, as well as on our WordPress theme speed tests, and WordPress hosting speed tests.
Using a color-coded 100 point scoring system, GPSI will provide you with a report that will have your website’s performance score at the top. A key to keep in mind for scoring is:
- 90 or above: good (green).
- 50-90: needs improvement (orange).
- Below 50: poor (red).
At SiteSpeedSteps.com we also use these same types of color coding to help readers understand whether a WordPress plugin, theme, or hosting could reduce the performance of their blog or website.
GPSI uses the Lighthouse tool to audit for performance, SEO, accessibility, and more. Overall, this will collect and analyze lab data about your website. Keep in mind that poor performance scores can negatively impact search rankings and therefore affect traffic and revenue.
What metrics does Google PageSpeed Insights measure?
We touched briefly on the fact that GRSI uses lab data, but in addition to that, GPSI also measures field data. Lab data comes in handy when looking for performance issues that affect performance. Field data is your go-to for understanding the real-world experiences by people actually visiting your site.
While both of these are a powerful combo, you should know that neither of these have anything to do with actual load time.
Load time measures how long it takes for your website to initially load and how long it takes for individual pages to render in the browser once a link to them is clicked on. If you notice a slow load time, this is where GPSI can help identify where the issue is and help you resolve it.
Although you may not see the actual metrics, or what this tool tests for, wrapped in your score are the following:
- First contentful paint
- First meaningful paint
- First CPU idle
- Time to interactive
- Speed index
- Estimated input latency
These will, however, show up in categories labeled: field data, origin summary, lab data, opportunities, diagnostics, and audits.
Why bloggers and website developers should pay attention to GPSI
It’s a running rule of thumb that when Google gives you insights, you listen. That is, if you want traffic from the Google search engine results pages.
One of the top reasons bloggers and website developers should attempt to learn a thing or two about GPSI is because Google has clear sent messages throughout the SEO community that speed matters. It just does.
Fast page speeds and lower bounce rates gives your website better chances for showing up at the top in search rankings. They also create a better user experience by rendering data quickly on both desktop and mobile devices AND a lower bounce rate can sometimes be used as a signal that users like your content and stick around your site longer to read more.
The good news is the results provided by the GPSI tool will give you key insights on elements that could be slowing down page speed, creating slower load times, and hindering your user’s experience. There is a technical aspect to this tool that most everyday bloggers may not understand, but most webs developers should.
If you are a blogger reading this and thinking, “How can I use Google Page Speed Insights to improve my blog?” No worries! There are many tools, plugins and resources that can help put your report into action and give it a higher score.
5 tips for improving your GPSI scores
Now that you understand what GPSI is and does, here are a few tips that you can use to speed up your WordPress blog.
Tip #1 – Run a lightweight theme
Before choosing a theme, make sure you have an idea of what you want your website to look like. Then make sure the theme is:
- supported by the developer
- compatible with the most current version of WordPress
- easy to customize
With these tips in mind, you can then focus on finding a lightweight theme that is both mobile responsive and loads in the browser fairly quickly.
Keep in mind that as your business evolves, your website should, too. This means that your WordPress theme should be flexible enough to allow you to adapt your site. If you do end up changing your theme as your site evolves, be sure to test the new theme for speed, as well.
Tip #2 – Minimize the number of plugins that are installed and activated.
As enticing as it may be to get all the plugins, it’s actually not a good idea.
The idea that less is more definitely stands true when it comes to WordPress plugins. The more plugins you have installed and activated, the greater your chances are for conflicts and slowdowns.
Pro Tip – Inactive or deactivated plugins do not load when your WordPress pages are requested by the browser. That means that a deactivated plugin cannot hurt your site speed. It can, however, create security risks if it is not kept up to date. Best to remove plugins if you don’t need them anymore.
I personally consider plugins to be little bits of code magic, but each one creates overhead to your site, in return slowing them down. If your WordPress backend is jam-packed with plugins all in the name of having an awesome frontend, ask yourself these questions:
- Do I really need the plugin?
- Could the plugin be replaced with HTML or or a widget?
- Is there a more lightweight plugin that offers the same functionality?
- How soon can I deactivate and/or uninstall the unused plugin(s)?
With these questions in mind, start minimizing the number of plugins you have. Keep in mind that you can deactivate a plugin just in case you plan to use it later.
Tip #3 – Optimize images using tools like lazy load and image compression.
Do you like to include lots of pictures or images in your posts? It’s okay if you do, but just know that lots of images could also mean lower pagespeeds and load times.
Instead of dialing back on the amount of images you’d like to use in a single post, opt for a plugin that can optimize the size of your photos while also offering the ability to lazy load the images. This will wait to load the pictures until they are close to being visible to the reader.
In the heat of optimizing and compressing, the one thing you don’t want to do is sacrifice acceptable quality for a lower file size. However, you do want to find that balance so your page performance climbs in points.
One of the most popular ways to do this is to compress them before you upload them to WordPress. There are tools to do this for you, with the most popular being Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo.
Also, be sure to choose the right file type for your image. The three main types are:
- PNG: produces the highest quality but the largest image sizes.
- JPEG: adjustable so you can find the best quality and file size.
- GIF: best for animated images, and only uses 256 colors.
There are also image optimization plugins you can use, but remember the tip above: use it if it’s only absolutely necessary and if it won’t conflict with other plugins already in use.
Tip #4 – Minify and optimize scripts and CSS.
The main goal for minification and optimization is less characters and smaller file sizes, which in return will boost the metric for faster loading web pages. By default, your website’s load depends on all your CSS resources being downloaded before the page starts to render. Hence, reducing the scripts and CSS means your page will start to get painted quicker.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that understanding and utilizing GPSI can positively impact your blog. Access the tool here, use the tips mentioned above and take your time understanding what this means for your website.
Keep making any necessary tweaks until your score gets in the green. You’ll notice the benefits of the changes, and your visitors will too!