- Your Google PageSpeed score
from Google's PageSpeed insights tool
is one of the most visible scores for a website owner,
especially after all the new updates
and changes to the rating system.
Receiving a low score in red
means your website isn't up to standards.
And if you're watching this video,
you probably know the feeling.
- We don't have to sit alone in those feelings.
We have 10 practical steps
to get a perfect PageSpeed score on Google.
However, you should know, a good PageSpeed
does not equal a good user experience.
As a site owner,
you should care more about the consistent speed improvements
because studies show that improving your load time
by just 0.1 second, can boost conversion rates by 8%.
- And with that said, let's take a look at those steps.
Now, I would say upgrading to a dedicated hosting plan
at a reliable provider is probably the first step to take
if you're serious about web performance.
The investment in dedicated hosting,
is considerably more than shared hosting plan,
but the benefits of fast loading times,
high uptime availability, security,
and support is well worth it.
There's no solution that can overcome bad hosting,
so consider the investment and select your foundations
from which your website is built on carefully.
- Now you'll wanna select a lightweight theme.
If you're on a CMS like WordPress,
selecting a lightweight website theme
is vital to load speed.
Basically the more server requests
and the larger a page file size may be,
yeah, you guessed it,
the longer it may take to deliver your theme
and site content to a user.
That's why a poorly written website theme
can significantly increase your website's load time.
- And you'll wanna think about purging your plugins.
So installing additional plugins
can also add significant overhead to your server,
and end up increasing load times.
Try researching plugins
and monitoring your site's performance using lab data
after adding or deactivating each one.
- Now let's talk about your website's JavaScript.
So reducing and optimizing your website's JavaScript,
otherwise known as eliminate render-blocking resources
isn't a quick fix,
and it will require an experienced developer
to analyze your website's code.
But there are several all-in-one plugins that can help
minify or defer your JavaScript.
Pro tip, and I got this from Nealey,
it's always best to test these plugins
in a staging environment before deployment to production.
- But on top of this, make sure you optimize your images.
Now, optimizing images
is a little less of a technical change,
and easier to do for business owners
than optimizing JavaScript thankfully.
Now, reducing the image size or differing off-screen images
or lazy loading as it's commonly called,
can also improve that mobile experience
and decrease bandwidth usage on your site.
Speeding it up.
- When a website loads information like static content,
a CSS file, external resources, scripts,
and more needs be requested.
Browser caching gives a web browser
the choice of retrieving that information
from a previously stored version, or the server,
and makes a big difference in terms of
how quickly a web page loads.
And to see a boost in PageSpeed scores,
enabled browser caching, using it all in one plugin,
a specific caching plugin, or a managed hosting service.
- Then next we recommend
setting up a content delivery network or CDN.
Now these cache images and content,
which enables pages to load more quickly for users
accessing your web pages with larger resources.
Check with your web host to see if you have access to a CDN.
And if so, see if it can be enabled
to help address these slow loading pages.
- Let's talk about code minification and compression.
So minifying code is particularly useful for HTML, CSS,
and JavaScript files because unnecessary or redundant data
is removed without affecting
how the resource is processed by a web browser.
And if all of that sounds a little too technical,
I know it does for me, many plugins today
offer code minification and compression as a feature.
- And while PageSpeed insights
is the most visible speed testing tool for small businesses,
there are several other performance tools
that can offer different perspectives
on how to improve PageSpeed.
Some options include Testmysite.io
and Chrome developer tools to name a few.
- Even if you do all of the steps perfectly,
you still might not get that 100 out of 100 on your own.
An all-in-one service that combines caching,
image optimization, lazy loading,
code modification and compression for you
could be what gets your site to perfection.
Unfortunately, there's no quick fix
for Google PageSpeed scores.
If you are a DIY business owner
who's comfortable with diving
into the details of your website,
now you have a checklist to make your website faster
and get close to a perfect 100 score.
- Or if these steps are just a bit over your head
or low on your priority list,
contact your friendly neighborhood web developer
so they can do the job for you.
That is a wrap, but your journey doesn't have to end here.
I promise you, we have over 200 videos
for you to continue watching and learning.
- Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe.
Thanks for watching, this is The Journey.