May progress Report - Page Speed Improved and AMP validation
The WA community is so amazing to me. Before I can ask a question, someone already asks for me. In my progress of improve my page speed, I have gone through the following.
- I try to look for the suitable themes. I learned from the community answer, needs to look for responsive theme. But I cannot improve with the new responsive themes.
- Someone highlights generate press in the community but I saw some members said cannot work for him, so I do not try to use the generate press theme.
- I heard some plugins can help, like WP optimizer, Kraken Image Optimizer but the page speed does not improve at all.
- I asked to site support why my page speed is low. The advice is look into my image optimization for improvement, cache and speed can be taking care by the WA server.
- For image optimization, I have tried many times but not success. I test my page speed and look into the insight report, the report told me to compress my images, embed my videos and change my site theme.
- First I replace all my images from my pages one by one, with proper compress and saving in library to ensure the compression is completed successfully before insert to my pages. Page speed for mobile improve a little.
- Second I try to embed video one by one follow the procedure, page speed improve a little but still in red zone.
- Third I replace my embed videos with URL text link only, my page speed increase to yellow zone.
- Fourth is I have to change my theme. On this day I read in page speed question, one member said generate press work well for her. I think I should give generate press a try. Once I replace the theme with generate press, my page speed improve a lot to green zone.
- After a week, Kyle presentation come with all page speed at full points. A perfect page speed to push me work harder. I saw Kyle using EWWW image Optimizer in his presentation videos. I found the plugin but too advance for me to use. Later the page speed test lead me to use WP Imagify.
- Imagify can compress my image in the library more aggressive but take long time. When I install a new image, this Imagify compressing like no ending, I just don't care and continue my work but finally it do complete the compression process for me. WP asks for rating for Imagify, I give three stars only asking them to improve the compress speed.
- Now my page speed is in green zone but still cannot reach 100 desktop and 100 mobile.
At the same time, I am looking for AMP validation which is more difficult than mobility friendly.
- First I was asked to clear Java script by Google Search Console which I read in page source is pointing to emojis image. I add a free plugin called Really Disable Emojis.
- Second I was asked to improve structural data, I re-write my content to emphasize my keyword in each paragraph which is my title.
- Once done, I take live test for my URL in Google Search Console, the error is clear. I requested for re validation.
- The next day I found AMP valid becomes more and more valid, still have one error pointing to emojis because of my website maintenance for few hours with site support. I try new plugin causing my site frozen. Later site support advice me to remove it.
Attached is page speed result and Google Search Console validation result.
I have little knowledge about SEO/Plugin/Theme/Page Speed and many others. But I am happy learning from the community questions and answers, I managed to solve my site issue. Of course quite often, my site freeze or error many times, site support is my fire fighter to save my site.
Thanks you to all community members giving me a lot of good questions and solutions.
Recent Comments
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Interesting article Stephen. I have been "experimenting" with increasing speed on my site as well. From having scores down to 47 for mobile and 75 for desktop, i now have 99/100 on desktop and 83/85 on mobile. These are Pagespeed Insight numbers.
I changed from Speakers Outlet theme to Generatepress and installed Lazy Load plugin to get this increase.
I will do some more work on the numbers related to the mobile score, but for now, I am happy with the result.
Thanks for sharing that Generatepress can work for you. I have plan to use a3 lazyload plugin for compress images and use Youtube videos for my pages.
I didn't know anything about those things either. It's something I have to learn but it's a slow process.
Now I replace with URL Text link only. I attached the post link here.
https://bestbuyelectricbikes.com/take-care-your-bike-see-youtube-videos/
Hi, please go and have a look. None of those Youtube links on your page is working. It says the page is broken. And a better solution I have been using is to make use of a lazy load video plugin that lazy loads videos embedded via url or via iframe. (So btw what I mean by embedding via url and what you mean by embedding via url are two different things. I embed via url through using the "add media button", also the way you add images). In applying the lazy load video plugin, the video will only start loading once someone hits play, so it will not affect your page speed at all.
I have a small opt in page issue I am trying to sort at the moment in regards to the colour of text in my contact form 7 image on my home page, but if you want to go and check what it looks like you can go to my Embird site listed in my profile. The video on my home page is making use of lazy load. This not only made a small change to my page loading speed, but a massive difference.
I have entered your website to try the video, it is impressive. I will try the lazy load video plugin, I hope it works for me. I appreciated your sharing and help given to me. Thank you.
That little tweak made that page that previously run 79 on desktop and only 41 on mobile now running 98 on desktop and 72 on mobile and that is after all my home page where there is usually a lot more going on than on other pages. So yes there are other little issues going on that can still help improve mobile speed perhaps a bit more, but just to show you that one little tweak made a world of difference.
And don't let anyone like Google or whomever try convince you that embedding a YouTube video etc. does not slow down your page speed dramatically. It does lol. I am saying this in relation to an article I read by Google saying, maybe! Not maybe, definitely lol.
Thanks for your clear advice to me about embedded the video. I believed Kyle's teaching keeps our page with CIAO, which is captivating, Informative, Accurate, and Opinionated. Other than that should be simple and clean to ensure page speed is 100 all the time.
Have you consider using a3 lazyload plugin, which is design for mobile phones.
Thanks for that recommendation in regards to mobile. No, I have not. I am a bit confused tbh as my premium theme already have a slider to activate lazy load, so is worth investigating if that is also applicable to mobile. That lazy load feature activated on my premium theme obviously did not include the lazy load of videos which required an additional plugin for it. So is worth investigating. Thanks.
I do not I am right or not, this a3 lazyload plugin may cause Jaya script to my page to get AMP valid, so I hesitate to use it. How you get your AMP valid by Google?
I cannot comment on this as I am not using it. I asked my brother about it. He said he used it before but he mentioned to me that it effected his load speed in a bad way apparently and messed up his Google validations. But this is obviously not to say this is the case in general. This was just in his experience and why he decided to not bother with it anymore. You may be better off asking someone else for advice on this. Apologies, I could not be of any more help on this matter.
You are welcome. I have continued to experiment today and found a different way of improving the quality of my YouTube video embeds without the use of lazy load and it seemed not to have effected my load speed by much at all. The video thumbnails are now much better quality. The reason I think for this is that I am embedding the videos straight via url through the "add media" button and not through an iframe that is the normal way YouTube videos are usually embedded. The iframe seems to be very taxing on load speed.
Saying all this, I had some weird experiences from day to day that site speed tests did not always seemed to be consistent from day to day as it should be. I will keep on monitoring the site speed for some days and then if all is well I may do a post on here to explain how I went about the process.
You are welcome to visit my home page once again if you want to go check the difference in the quality of the thumbnail now, now that lazy video load is not enabled.
Guess what Stephen lol. I am also experiencing a mystery atm. Throughout the day I have been monitoring my home page speed. I started off with 98 on desktop and 72 on mobile when using lazy video load. That was up from 79 on desktop and 41 on mobile when using iframe embed.
It did not seem to make much difference in terms of speed when embedding directly via url through the "add media" button. I then did an experiment and switched off the lazy load and I consistently got very close to the same good scores without lazy video load activated and I thought I had the solution. However when scanned some hours later I got 77 on desktop suddenly and only 33 on mobile which was a massive mystery to me as this is what it was before activating lazy load. Actually a bit worse on mobile as mobile used to be 41 while the desktop did not change at 77.
I contacted my theme developer having a rant asking what am I supposed to do about the speed. I have tried everything and the method they suggest I use to embed my video through their customised block for YouTube (similar to Gutenberg blocks) which essentially adds the video via iframe does not improve my load speed at all. It sits at around the same kind of stats of 77 desktop and around 33 on mobile now where before it was 41 on mobile.
I just woke up in the middle of the night at 04:18 in the morning and decided to test home page speed again and guess what. Now suddenly my speed was down to 59 on desktop and only 17 on mobile without me making any changes at all?
So I am totally gobsmacked at the moment as how can stats start changing so dramatically without me making any changes whatsoever?
So I am also at the point where I have told my theme developer that I am pulling my hair out of my head now and I am once again considering activating the lazy video load, but the only issue with this is that the thumbnail honestly does not look quality as when not using lazy video load, as with lazy video load it seems to produce some lower quality screenshot of some kind as thumbnail to use for the video etc. and is just not the kind of look I want.
The issue I also experience is that the lazy load only works when I embed the video via url through the "add media" button and if you embed a video this way you have no real control over the size of the video as is the case when you embed via iframe.
The lazy video load does not work when I embed the video via iframe through the premium theme block provided (similar to Gutenberg blocks kind of).
When I paste the embed iframe code directly from YouTube then those videos do not adapt to mobile but stretch over the screen. I have found that I can make use of a site called embedresponsively that will manipulate the iframe code for you so it will adapt to mobile, but still this does not solve my page load speed issue.
So don't worry lol. My speed battle also still continues. I may try out other lazy load video plugins perhaps that may work more effectively and if all else fails I will go back to the lazy video load method I was using (despite me not being that happy with the quality, although not unacceptable) that managed to get me desktop speed of 98 and mobile speed of 72 at some point.
I have open a youtube account using my website links, I can collect every youtube videos regarding electric bikes to categorize it. I invite my users to visit my youtube link.
Also I have open a Instagram account, keeping all images for my website for users to visit and increasing followers in instagram.
I think it is workable than putting videos on my page to becomes low speed.
Well I don't know. For me it sort of kills the experience for visitors. I can easily take a screenshot of a video and then link it to my YouTube for example for visitors to go watch it there but it is annoying to direct them away from my webpage. The video is complinenting the article and they would most likely want to finish reading the article and won't make any sense for them to keep on being directed away from the article they reading.
Yes, you can make the video open up in a new window, but still it is annoying to me and the visitor.
This is not the way it should be that we can't even embed a video on our page.
Something sinister is happening on my home page though or in my theme as this is not normal for the site speed to crash the way it does. My brother is using generatepress and this is not happening to him being effected in such a massive way like I am through the embed of one video.
You however may have to use a lazy video load solution or send people directly to YouTube as I saw you add loads of videos on one page. Just look at other sites though and see how they do it and think about the user experience.
If you was visiting a website article would you like to be directed away from the article each time you want to watch a video mentioned in the article? No, you would probs wanna watch the video right there and then on the page.
But yeah idk. I am also still looking for the perfect solution also.
Thanks a lot for your advice. I agreed it is not wise to divert away from our visitors. It is better to keep them on our page. I should take out one of my pages with videos out of the AMP validation. I can target desktop users until there is the right solution. Once you have a good answer, please give me a message to follow you. I admire your persistent pursuit of success.
I will let you know. For now still in communication with my theme developer and WA trying to find solutions. The weirdest thing is that checking my other pages some of the stats of pages that just ran 99 on desktop and 72 on mobile last week is suddenly running 61 on desktop and 22 on mobile? I made zero changes to this particular page and other pages. So what is going on at the moment is a mystery to me. It is not only an issue with videos on page exclusively at the moment coz many of my pages that now runs slow does not even contain any videos, slider or anything.
Something strange going on at the moment. Will let you know when I have more news.
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Great post I’m happy your speed is up
Thanks, Dorrie. You are welcome.