Google is judging your website all the time – and not just its content. Google PageSpeed Insights (GPSI) is essentially a report card for your site, grading on the quality of its technology and structure. The good news? Everyone’s capable of making straight A’s.
It’s time to demystify boosting your GPSI score. With a bit of concentrated effort, you can easily bump up your score, which will get you higher search engine rankings, increased conversion rates and a better reputation. What’s not to love?
The Important Stuff
First off, you need to understand what Google is looking for. Mainly, they want to know how much time it takes from the second a user clicks on your link to the second they start seeing content on your site. Here’s a breakdown of key factors that impact your GPSI score:
1. Server Speed and Hosting Quality
The first factor Google evaluates is how fast your server responds to requests. This initial interaction, often called the “time to first byte” (TTFB), is crucial for speed. Just a heads up – if you’re buying through shared hosting providers that try to do $20, $50 a month type hosting, they’re typically going to be slower.
To improve your server response time:
- Invest in high-quality hosting. Avoid shared hosting options that cram multiple websites onto a single server, because this will slow down your site.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This can help reduce latency by distributing your content closer to your users.
2. Page Structure, Resource Management
Beyond server speed, Google also considers how efficiently your pages load and render content. Are you forcing pages to load every single image, regardless of whether it’s being displayed at the moment? Are you lacking browser and server-side caching? These kinds of things can significantly slow down your site as it forces the browser to load unnecessary resources.
To help your page structure:
- Implement lazy loading. This ensures that images and other resources are only loaded as they come into view.
- Minimize JavaScript and CSS files. Unnecessary or poorly optimized code can delay rendering. Use tools like Minify and Gzip to compress these kinds of files.
- Compress and optimize images. Use appropriate formats and compress images to reduce their size without sacrificing quality.
- Reduce plugins and widgets. Only use essential plugins or widgets, and ensure they are optimized. Regularly audit and remove any that are not needed.
- Implement caching: Use browser caching to store static resources and enable server-side caching to improve server response times.
- Optimize web fonts: Limit the number of font families and weights used, and make sure your fonts are loaded efficiently.
- Streamline the DOM: Keep the Document Object Model (DOM) size manageable by reducing the number of elements on a page.
3. Understanding Google's Categories
GPSI evaluates your site based on several categories, and each one is going to impact how your site ranks. You’ll want to make sure your site is in tip-top shape overall, but there are a couple of things you should prioritize.
- Performance: This includes everything that affects the speed at which your content is rendered on the screen. Basically, everything we’ve already talked about.
- SEO: Make sure you’re still following technical SEO guidelines, like using appropriate meta tags and structured data.
- Accessibility: Make sure your site is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Aside from the fact that everyone should have access to information on the internet, accessibility is also factored into your overall GPSI score.
Know What Scores You’re Shooting For
The world of online publishing is a competitive one. Your GPSI score could make all the difference in your site’s visibility and success, but achieving a perfect score is challenging, especially on mobile devices. If you’re getting in the 50-60 range on mobile, you’re doing well. It’s tough to achieve scores higher than that because of the limitations of wireless connections and smaller devices.
Desktop is a totally different thing, and fortunately, it’s easy to score higher. An A+ score on desktop would be anything above 90. Hit that level, and you’re a GPSI Rockstar! Trust us, your site will have no problem hanging with the big dogs.
