PageSpeed Insights: I Unraveled The Mystery
The measurements at Google PageSpeed Insights can be an eye opener on how your website is performing. Google wants us to optimize our pages, not only on Desktop, but especially for Mobile. More and more people browse the internet on their mobile phone, so our websites need to be especially optimized for mobile use.
Luckily for us are these days all WordPress themes mobile responsive. All we need to do is make sure that all the content we upload and publish is optimized as well.
Causes Of Low PageSpeed Insights Score
The biggest causes for a low PageSpeed Insights score are:
- non-optimized images
- before-the-fold render-blocking scripts
- non-optimized javascript and CSS
- remote calls on javascript and CSS
- lack of local-caching for resources (expire time)
- server side delay
Post/Page Content Images
The biggest issue regarding your site's speed is images. So when I went into my site and started optimizing, I downloaded all my images (wp-content / uploads / ) and optimized them using tinypng.com and my DropBox for storing and re-downloading them.
It was a long process and after completion I tested my pages.
To my horror I found an even lower percentage and speed on both mobile and desktop. I left it alone for a while, not knowing where to take it from there, until today.
So today I went in there again and wondered what was bothering my speed. I used Google PageSpeed website itself to find out what sort of issues I could do something about.
External Javascript
It took a little while before realizing that I had been linking from an external source (MailChimp) for a longer while. I even had linked up stuff in the header that was no longer in use (popup subscribe forms etc). Still it was being loaded at the beginning of the page.
After I removed the extra lines of code that were externally hosted by MailChimp, the site became somewhat faster, but the problem wasn't solved yet.
SiteSpeed
Here at Wealthy Affiliate we have a special server-side caching system, called SiteSpeed. It is special technology that minimizes JavaScript and CSS and caches everything for you so that your site will be delivered to your visitor at the fastest rate possible.
I have of course SiteSpeed switched on. Now that I no longer have Javascript outsourced, but plain locally, the site got a bit faster.
Theme Related Images
But it wasn't until I found another culprit of my websites' speed. According to PageSpeed Insights I could save another 90% on compression of an image. It was something I never had dealt with before. It was a small line divider image of my theme as well as the search icon (looking glass).
You would think that those that create these awesome premium themes, would also optimize everything, but that wasn't the case.
I downloaded the image belonging to the theme that PageSpeed Insights had mentioned to me. In fact, I downloaded all I could find, just in case I could save some speed there. I optimized them and re-uploaded them.
WHAM! Amazing! Suddenly my 31% page speed went up to 91% and that was just desktop. My mobile speed went from a meager 20% to a high 88%! WOW!
So don't think "I always optimize my images, there is nothing more I can do to fix", because there might be some images in your theme that are causing your low ratings!
If you need any help with optimizing your website, please leave a message and I will see what I can do!
Steven
Recent Comments
36
Thanks Steven for this great information. I have taken note so as I can use this on my site.
Cheers Jae
You are welcome Jae!
Feel free to drop a line (PM) when you need any help with it.
You can also check out my tutorial on the PageSpeed Insights Tool that we got inside the Wealthy Affiliate Platform: WA PageSpeed Insights Steven
Hi Steven, thank you for this wealth of information. You put a lot of time in to researching to making it work and I appreciate you sharing this.
I checked my site speed and it says 82%... I think that's good I hope. I have this bookmarked as well.
Hi Monica!
Yes, a score of 82% is probably big time in the green. That is a great score. There might still be some room for improvement though. With the SiteSpeed module enabled and the optimizations applied, you can reach a score of 91% or higher on desktop and a similar high score for mobile. What is your Mobile score?
I will gladly help you out personally over a PM.
Steven
Hey Tom,
Are you confused about where to find the PageSpeed Insights Tool within Wealthy Affiliate? I wrote a tutorial about it that you can find here: Using FTP To Access Your Site You can also go to Google's PageSpeed Insights Tool itself at: WA PageSpeed Insights and analyze your pages and website speed on desktop and mobile. It will also tell you what you need to optimize to improve your score.
If you need any help optimizing your website, you can contact me for more help.
Steven
Thanks Steven for your help. I will go through it all carefully. I am not the smartest cookie in the jar with a computer.
Tom.
That is not a problem at all for me, Tom. I have worked with many older and younger people not all that smart with a computer. I taught them how to use the computer or the systems they had to work with in their line of work.
I'm willing to help out with whatever problem you are struggling with.
Steven
Some years ago I was told by a so called entrepreneur to find a teenager to teach me how to use a computer. A bit hard to do in the Australian bush. My Skype is thomas.short46
Tom.
Hi Steven, I have just spent the last 2 days trying to everything possible to optimize my speed. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for the offer!!
Max
Hey Max,
Great to hear that you are also looking into the speed of your site. It is absolutely essential to have a fast accessible website for both mobile and desktop.
Feel free to contact me on PM to get any help specified to your need. I will do my best to help you out.
You did a great job racing your pages with the help of the WA server side and overcoming JavaScript and Css problems. Good job Steve!
This is great info, Steven. Glad you got it sorted out.
Determination and diligence really paid off there.
Shame on the theme developer.
All the best!
David
Thanks David!
Yes I am extremely happy for now that I got this sorted, I can concentrate on building out more content. It was sort of a hurdle to have a lot of content that no-one could reach fast enough. Visitors were put off by a slow loading website. This is now solved.
And indeed shame on the developer. I think I will write an email to the team behind it (StudioPress) and suggest them to do something about it.
All the best to you too!
Steven
Thank you, Steven:) I checked my site speed this morning, and need to do some work! I may need some help trying to figure it all out. I appreciate your offer:)
Blessings:)
Suzi
Thank you! I actually did a google speed test on my site, and got the results an hour later. It said that almost everything was good:). I was worried that it was going to be worse than it was! I appreciate you offering to help:)
Blessings:)
Suzi
I am having somewhat similar problems so I am glad to find this post Steve. My problems started after I started adding images from Site Content. They are supposed to be optimized already but maybe I need to compress them with tinypng also. I used to do that with all the images I used before.
Thanks!
Jessica
Hi Jessica,
Yes I also thought that SiteContent did optimize everything properly. I haven't actually checked this yet, as I generally do not use SiteContent yet for my image material.
You know where to find me if you need some help (PM).
Steven
Thanks! I should take the photos out, recheck to see what the speed is, then if that is the problem, compress them and add them back in and see if that works.
I also don't know if I should move them further down in the content since now they are at the top and I am getting penalized a bit for the photo being 'above the fold' I think.
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Wow that's amazing. I have bookmarked this for reference. Thanks Stephen. ~Mark
Thanks Mark and you are welcome.
Steven