Fast page loading times for a website are essential for your business to succeed. Unfortunately, people have become increasingly more impatient when it comes to waiting for websites to load. In fact, according to a recent study, 53% of Internet users abandon websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Search engines like Google have made it a point to give importance to the user experience, and page loading time is a critical factor in providing a seamless journey to the internet users on your website.
This article explains what PageSpeed Index (PSI) is and how you can optimize your website to increase its score.
PageSpeed Insights (PSI) generally measures how well a page follows Page Speed principles. Some of the best practices include
1. Optimize images
2. Minimize HTTP requests
3. Leverage browser caching
4. Optimize CSS delivery
5. Optimize JavaScript delivery
A higher PageSpeed Insights score usually means that a page is faster and follows more of the PageSpeed Insights principles.
Google's ranking algorithm gives higher keyword rankings to websites with fast-loading pages rather than sites with slower-loading pages.
Scale Your Page Speed Optimization Efforts with Quattr The current process of optimizing for page speed-related issues is typically a page-level exercise. The Quattr platform highlights page speed issues across your site and gives you ways you can improve your page load time.
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Speed Index is a score that measures how quickly the content of a web page is displayed visually. Introduced in 2012, Speed Index metric has become critical for evaluating website performance. In 2018, Google announced that page speed would also serve as a ranking factor for mobile searches, highlighting the growing importance of fast-loading pages for mobile users.
Google’s core goal for search is to help users accomplish actions as quickly and efficiently as possible. To achieve this, Google places significant importance on page loading times. A fast-loading website is critical for providing a seamless user experience and improving your website’s search engine rankings. One study found that your ROI can be impacted by as much as 20%; for every second your site takes to load on mobile devices.
A high PageSpeed Insights score also means that your website is likely to perform better on various device types.
While Speed Index is an important metric that measures how quickly the content of a page is displayed visually, it is part of a broader set of performance metrics known as Core Web Vitals. Understanding and optimizing for Core Web Vitals can provide a more comprehensive approach to improving your website's performance.
Core Web Vitals are essential metrics defined by Google to evaluate the user experience of a website. These metrics are critical for understanding and improving your site’s performance. The three main Core Web Vitals are:
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Google’s ranking algorithm favors websites with fast-loading pages and excellent Core Web Vitals scores. A higher ranking often translates to more visibility and traffic. Conversely, if your website takes a long time to load, you run the risk of not appearing in Google’s search results as often as your competitors' sites that load faster. This is especially critical as more users access websites via mobile devices, which may have slower internet connections.
The PageSpeed Insight tool by Google calculates the page loading time of your web pages. Let us first look at how the PageSpeed Insights tool calculates your site’s loading time. Then we will explore calculating the Speed Index metric more granularly. First, it makes sense to understand how PageSpeed Insights (PSI) scores and, more granularly the Speed Index metric is calculated.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool gives you a score between 0-100, with 100 being the fastest loading time. A website with a PSI score of 90 or above is considered to be performing well. While a website with a PSI score of 0-30 is considered to be performing poorly. Anything in between is considered ‘Needing Improvement’ but, in reality, is deemed to be average if not above average.
While there are dozens of factors and a handful of metrics being calculated for PageSpeed Insight scoring. The PageSpeed Insights tool measures three primary aspects of your website that tend to impact a site’s loading time:
1. The server response time is the time it takes for the server to send the first byte of information to the browser. The time to first meaningful paint is the time it takes for the content on the page to first appear.
2. The download time is the time it takes for the full page to be downloaded.
3. The total page size is the size of the page in bytes.
As a general concept, Speed Indexing is the score of the average time it takes for your page and its content to be available and visible to a browser/user. Today’s Speed Index scoring has had some additions added to help make it more viable as a metric. One of the biggest additions is the inclusion and comparison of HTTP Archive data. This effectively gives Lighthouse and the PageSpeed Insights tool the ability to create a baseline and enables them to compare individual pages and their metrics like Speed Index.
The result of this is a simplified scoring system for the Speed Index metric. With each color-coded score, there is an associate value. This is compared with and shown in seconds. The scoring rubric is the following:
1. Green (fast): 0-3.4 Seconds
2. Orange (moderate): 3.4-5.8 Seconds
3. Red (slow): Over 5.8 Seconds
There are a few things that can bring your page speed scores down. One of the biggest culprits is unoptimized and oversized images. If your website has a lot of images, it can take longer to load if they are inappropriately sized for the page and unoptimized for a user's network.
Another thing that can affect your page speed score is the number of HTTP requests your website makes. HTTP requests are the requests your browser makes to load all the elements on a page. The more requests your website makes, the longer it will take to load.
One other common trend for a poor page speed score is under-serving your website. Or more technically bandwidth-throttling your site from its housed server to the end-user. This often occurs with cheap or shared hosting options from hosting companies and registrars. While this usually affects smaller sites and businesses it can affect larger sites especially if the site usage and access are not increased as the site and its popularity expands.
There are many ways you can improve the page loading speed of your website to increase its Page Speed Index. Almost anything you do to optimize your site and its pages tend to lead to better PageSpeed Insight scoring. Below we will share some of the best ways to improve your Speed Index scores.
The first thing to examine is the server and network utilization. Images are another thing to evaluate within this utilization. You only need to understand one simple question:
“Is there enough bandwidth available?”
If not, then you should consider creating a content delivery network (CDN), which will help optimize site files and offload some of the traffic from the server. Furthermore, you can use your CDN to serve static resources like images, CSS files, and scripts from global servers instead of hosting them on your own local servers which might be poorly distributed or too remote from other servers that may be closer to the user. This will help reduce latency in serving those resources which will increase the page speed index score.
You can also reduce the amount of traffic on your website by using browser caching. This means that users won't have to download all of the same content again and again when they revisit your website because it will be stored in their browser cache.
Reduce the size of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other types of files on your site. This will decrease the overall load time as well as the number of bytes transmitted over the network. Be sure to use only what is needed and not more than necessary. For example, use CSS sprites instead of multiple images for particular elements in your design so that each image isn't downloaded separately from different sources each time it loads on screen.
Finally, compress images using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress your images. You should also resize them if they are too large. Lastly, you can also set images to load as the page is scrolled through. Commonly referred to as lazy-loading it effectively delays content from being fetched by the browser until a trigger occurs. This trigger could be a user scrolling to an element, a time delay, and more. This will defer some data transferring and could also help save you bandwidth usage over time.
While similar to improving your overall PageSpeed Insight scores. Your Speed Index scoring can often improve by almost any optimization or improvement made to a page. However, beyond general optimizations, there are 3 specific suggestions provided to optimize your site's Speed Index scores.
1. Text Visibility During Webfont Load
2. Reduce JavaScript Execution Time
3. Minimizing Main Thread Work
Making sure your site and page content remains visible while the page and its design are being loaded can make a positive impact on your Speed Index scores. Ensuring this happens is of course easier said than done. But with some slight code or even theme file changes is completely doable for almost anyone.
Including the HTML code [font-display: swap] in your [@font-face] page style can help you avoid the default hiding of text while font styles are being loaded. Here is a quick example of how this can look inside of a page’s HTML coding.
Dropping the time it takes to execute JavaScript can be done in a multitude of ways. Some basic recommendations that can help improve these processes
3. Cache Code with PRPL Patterning
This last one is certainly not for the faint-of-heart or technically timid. It is however something that can make a massive impact on the way your site and its page load. As a general overview, your browser has a render process. This process is responsible for taking raw HTML code and effectively building the page. This building process includes the information, formatting, styling, functionality, and more.
All of this processing and rendering is done mostly by default with something called the ‘Main Thread’ acting like the step-by-step instructions to build the page. Effectively the Main Thread is what your site uses to tell the browser what to grab and when a page is being requested from a server.
In a general sense optimizing Main Threading for Speed Index scoring means telling the browser to fetch the content, formatting, and styling before fetching everything else like functionality, images, javascript, etc. for the page.
At a high level here are the top things to review and optimize when minimizing Main Thread work.
1. Script Execution Evaluation
2. Styling and Layout Handling
3. Page Rendering Priority
4. Parsing HTML and CSS Coding
5. Script Parsing and Compiling
6. Checking a Page’s Memory Usage
Lastly for those who are curious here is a great resource to learn more about Main Threads.
You can use the following tools to test the loading speed of your website. These tools will also help show what is either passing or missing their own inspections and scoring rubrics. Each one provides solutions that when made can help ensure your website loads quicker.
1. PageSpeed Insights
Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is a great way to test the loading speed of your website and get suggestions on how to improve it. To use the tool, simply enter the URL of your website and click the "Run Test" button. PageSpeed Insights will then test the loading speed of your website and provide you with a score. The score is based on several factors, such as the page size, the number of HTTP requests, and the page loading time. PageSpeed Insights will also give you a list of recommendations on how to improve the loading speed of your website. Some of the recommendations may be to optimize your images, reduce the number of HTTP requests, and minify your CSS and JavaScript files.
2. YSlow
YSlow is another tool that you can use to test the loading speed of your website. It is a Firefox add-on that analyzes the loading speed of your website and provides you with a score. The score is based on several factors, such as the page size, the number of HTTP requests, and the page loading time. YSlow will also give you a list of recommendations on how to improve the loading speed of your website. Some of the recommendations may be to optimize your images, reduce the number of HTTP requests, and minify your CSS and JavaScript files.
3. GTMetrix
GTMetrix is another tool that you can use to test the loading speed of your website. It analyzes your website and provides you with a score based on the Page Speed and YSlow scores. It also gives you a list of recommendations on how to improve the loading speed of your website. Some of the recommendations may be to optimize your images, reduce the number of HTTP requests, and minify your CSS and JavaScript files.
The current process of optimizing for page speed related issues is typically a page by page improvement exercise. This can prove to be difficult and time-consuming, especially for enterprises with thousands, millions, or even billions of web pages. Quattr was built from the ground up to solve this problem and more.
The Quattr platform highlights page speed issues across your website and gives you ways you can improve your page load time. The platform also ranks these recommendations in a unique and one-of-a-kind way that is proprietary to Quattr. Simply put Quattr will show you prioritized improvements based on potential traffic to be gained. This is done through a series of processes looking at all your web pages, weekly evaluation of pagespeed index, rankings, impressions, clicks, traffic, and all of the above for your competition. This helps direct your page speed improvement efforts to places with greatest benefit to your users and to your SERP rankings.
The eventual outcome of Quattr's powerful and unique processing is that you get a targeted list of optimization efforts. Along with it you also get insights and a confident measurement of how these efforts will impact your business goals and improve your business and website's ROI.
While we covered the Speed Index metric pretty much exclusively here. The Quattr platform helps scale your site's page speed optimization efforts. While also help you improve the overall core web vital scoring of your website.
While tools like Quattr, PageSpeed Insights, YSlow, and GTMetrix are invaluable for diagnosing and addressing page speed issues, a holistic strategy that includes regular audits, content optimization, and server performance enhancement is crucial for sustained success.
Regular performance audits allow you to proactively identify and address issues before they significantly impact user experience. By regularly assessing your website's speed and functionality, you can stay ahead of potential problems and make informed adjustments that enhance performance.
1. Scheduled Reviews: Conduct monthly or quarterly audits using tools like Google Lighthouse and WebPageTest to identify slow-loading pages and areas needing improvement.
2. Benchmarking: Compare your site’s performance against industry standards and competitors to understand where you stand and what can be improved.
3. Actionable Reports: Generate detailed reports highlighting specific issues like large images, unoptimized scripts, and excessive HTTP requests. Use these insights to create a prioritized action plan.
Continually optimizing your content is essential for maintaining a fast-loading website. This includes compressing images to reduce file sizes, minifying code to eliminate unnecessary characters, and using efficient coding practices to streamline your site's structure and improve load times.
1. Image Compression: Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to reduce the size of images without sacrificing quality. Implement responsive images to serve appropriately sized images based on the user’s device.
2. Code Minification: Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files using tools like UglifyJS and CSSNano. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be loaded by removing unnecessary characters.
3. Lazy Loading: Implement lazy loading for images and videos to ensure they only load when they are about to be viewed, reducing initial load times.
Investing in high-quality hosting solutions and utilizing Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can significantly reduce latency and enhance load times for users around the globe. By improving server performance and distributing content more efficiently, you ensure a faster and more reliable user experience.
1. Quality Hosting: Choose a reputable hosting provider that offers fast server response times and scalable solutions to handle traffic spikes.
2. Content Delivery Network (CDN): Implement a CDN like Cloudflare or Akamai to distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing load times by serving data from the nearest location to the user.
3. Server Optimization: Optimize server settings by enabling compression (e.g., Gzip), caching static content, and reducing the time to first byte (TTFB) by using fast DNS services and optimizing database queries.
Google Page Speed in SEO measures how quickly a website's content can be rendered in a web browser. It measures the time it takes for a web page to load in a web browser and is used to help improve the overall user experience of a website.
Google Page Speed is a factor that is used in the ranking algorithms of search engines, so website owners need to optimize their sites for speed if they want their sites to rank well in the SERPs.
Speed Index is a metric used to measure the average time it takes for a web page to become visually complete, or what is known as “above the fold” in web design.
Several ways help reduce the Speed Index include optimizing images, minifying codes, caching content, and leveraging browser caching. Additionally, it is vital to remove any unnecessary content, minimize redirects, and use a CDN.
Quattr's AI-first platform evaluates like search engines to find opportunities across content, experience, and discoverability. A team of growth concierge analyze your data and recommends the top improvements to make for faster organic traffic growth. Growth-driven brands trust Quattr and are seeing sustained traffic growth.
Try our growth engine for free with a test drive.
Our AI SEO platform will analyze your website and provide you with insights on the top opportunities for your site across content, experience, and discoverability metrics that are actionable and personalized to your brand.
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