Websites need to work day and night to attract new customers. Nowadays every business needs a website so your potential customers can reach you. It doesn't need to be super trendy or full of functionality but it does need to be fast and pagespeed index is how you measure it. If your website is slow – Google and your visitors might leave you "out in the cold" and not show your website anywhere near the top results positions.
Most businesses spend a lot of time and energy creating their websites but with time (or sometimes even from the start) the website get's slow because Google and users demand everything to show right away and they both have no patience.
In this article we will explore what is website pagespeed, how to measure it, how to optimise it and how it affects your websites position in the Google results.
What are PageSpeed Metrics?
Think of pagespeed metrics as your website's fitness trackers. They measure how quickly your pages load and perform, giving you insights into what's working and what needs a little tune-up.
Name of the game is Google pageSpeed insights and getting good scores in it. If your website is optimised for Desktop and Mobile– good. You will rank well in Google results and your website visitors (aka users) will keep using your website – assuming you have something interesting for them.
If your website is not optimised and performs badly (getting low PageSpeed score) then you will be punished. Not only by Google but also by your website visitors. They will just be leaving the website without doing much on it.
That will lead to your website having high "Bounce-rate". This is not the best thing in the world. Far from it. Google sees that people are leaving and if they were not interested – let's not send other to that place too.
First thing you need to do is head to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your website address. After waiting about 30 seconds you will be presented with PageSpeed insights scores – separately for Mobile and desktop. They are both important but it seems that Mobile scores are increasing in its importance so keep that in mind.
For majority of websites Desktop results will be a bit better – this is normal and to be expected.
How fast is fast enough?
If your score is 80+ for Mobile and 90+ for desktop – you are doing better then most.
It doesn't mean there is nothing to improve – it just means that the "low-hanging fruits" or easy-to-do things have been taken care of.
Great job! Good start.
If you want to go for the even better scores – the invested time will be higher and results will improve slower then when fixing the "simple" things but if you want to be on top search results – this might be what you actually need. What has been holding your website back so far.
If your results are less than the 80+ for mobile and 90+ for Desktop – you should find someone who can help you improve your website so Google ranks your website a bit higher and your users don't leave because of your slow website.
Why PageSpeed Metrics Matter
Website PageSpeed isn't just about impressing your visitors with fast speeds. It's about keeping the users around and preventing them from leaving to your competitor website. Google (and other) studies show that website page has direct affect on bounce-rate (how many users leave without doing much on your site) and conversion rate.
Google and other search engines (in EU we don't care much about other ones tho) love speedy pages. They consider pagespeed as one of the ranking factors, so a faster website could mean better visibility in search results.
Types of PageSpeed Metrics
You will be presented with some terms your might not fully understand at first but here is a short explanation for the main ones:
- Page Load Time is the total time it takes for your page to load completely. Just like waiting for your morning coffee, no one likes a slow pour.
- Time to First Byte (TTFB) is all about the server's response time. The quicker the server responds, the faster your page can start loading for your visitors. Keep in mind that this metric is also affected by how your website is coded un set-up on the server – not just the server itself.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP). This measures how long it takes for the first piece of content to show up on your page. You want it to happen fast to keep your audience engaged. Even if the visitors can't do anything yet – they know something is happening and they will get to use the website soon.
- Time to Interactive (TTI) tells us when a page becomes fully interactive for users. The users can already see the website but can't do anything. It's like waiting some someone to finish their story before joining the conversation. Can be frustrating if it is too long.
- Lastly, we have Total Blocking Time (TBT). This metric focuses on how long it takes for your page to become interactive after the user initiates an action. It's like waiting for the elevator doors to open after pressing the button – you want it to be quick!
There are quite a bunch more but Google and us will mainly focus on these. Hope that this was not too boring for you. Apologies!
Page load time – how fast this one needs to be?
Altho website PageSpeed is an important metric we need to put down some milestones to understand if this is good enough or we need work on ourselves / our websites a bit more.
Online your can find a lot of confusing and old info (research from 2011 is as good as from stone-age) about this topic but a good rule of thumb is to make sure that your website is fully functional in about 2.5-3 seconds or less. If your website is not loaded by then – a lot of users will just leave and try their luck with another Google result. Hope this is not your competitor.
For e-commerce websites it is easier to measure. They loose significant part of their revenue if their website is a second slower. The number thrown around is if your website is 1 second slower then your conversion rate is lower by 7% but I am not able to verify how the study was made or is it relevant in our markets.
Suggestions for improvement – your to-do list of website improvements
In case your scores are not ideal this list is your your guide to getting better. There will be things that bring more value and thing that will bring less. My suggestion is to work on the "low-hanging-fruit" or the ones that will have the largest impact first. Then you can re-test your website and decide if you want to invest more into it or is it enough.
Most of the websites I check when scrolling a bit down to "Diagnostics" section will see things like:
- Minimize main-thread work,
- Reduce JavaScript execution time,
- Serve images in next-gen formats,
- Reduce initial server response time,
- Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy
- and many, many more.
If the score your received from the test is less then ideal – I suggest contacting your agency that made the website and asking for improvements.
Most of you will need to do these things:
- Optimize Images: Compress those images without sacrificing quality. No one wants to wait for a high-res picture to load when they're just browsing your website. Not so long ago Google added so called "NextGen" image formats like WebP. It makes the image file size a lot smaller while maintaining the image quality. These images might not be great for printing but will be great on all digital media – and will make your website faster. Most new websites have this built in where you can upload a file and it is automatically converted in WebP or other NextGen format. Also consider (automatically) making different image sizes for different screen sizes so you don't show the same large image to your mobile users as you do to users that have a 4k monitors. That would be wasteful of resources and like shooting yourself in the foot.
- Minify Code: Many websites have excess code loading every time a users visits. This keeps your website slow and users leaving. Just because your website has it – doesn't mean it needs to load it very time.
- Utilize Caching: Caching stores the data that users access more frequently, so your site doesn't have to fetch it from the database every time.
Proper caching can work wonders for your pages peed. Trust me – you really need this.
- Upgrade Your Hosting: Choose a hosting provider that prioritises speed, reliability, regular updates and keeping your website optimised to these regular Google suggestions / demands that if ignored will let your competitors go past you in the Google results. This is why we suggest to look for a "Managed hosting" provider. Most of them will look after your website – not just provide a server.
Shameless plug – we "FORGET hosting" are a managed hosting company and can help you with this part – and also all the other things you need for website Pagespeed improvements.
If you don't have anyone to help you with or are not confident in the people who created your website – contact us and we will help you deal with this.
To summarise: Faster PageSpeed gives better Google SEO ranking and keeps users longer on your site
In the world of website optimization, pagespeed plays a crucial role in determining both user experience and search engine rankings. Understanding pagespeed metrics is like having a fitness tracker for your website – it tells you how well your site is performing and where improvements are needed.
Altho I only mentioned a few things you need to take in consideration to make sure your website is working fast you don't need to implement everything that was listed. If you will implement at least a few of the suggestions (like image optimisation) and get your results for Google Pagespeed insigts up even a little bit – you will see big impact on SEO results and how users interact with your site. The hope is that this will help you to get at least a few more customers instead of them going to your competitors.
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If you have made it this far – you are awesome!
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