Google Page Speed
Why You Should Care About Google Page Speed
In years gone by we may have told you not to pay much attention to the Google Pagespeed test as despite its name, previously it was not really a good indication of the actual speed of your website. That has now changed. Google has updated its test and it is now vital that your website pass if you want the chance of showing up in Googles results.
Before we go any further we recommend you click the button below and test your site now. It will open in a new tab/window so you do not lose this page.
So What's The Aim?
To ensure your site is not penalized in their rankings, you need to be aiming for at least a score of 85/100 for your mobile speed, ideally, you would really want both scores in the "green" which is above 90/100 on the results page.
What Does The Test Now Measure?
This new version of Pagespeed is a little bit more than a speed test. It now measures what Google consider to be the core vitals of your website. In non-tech speak they are not only judging the speed of your site but how well it is built, specifically when it comes to providing the best user experience possible.
My Site Is Not Passing Now What?
There is no point in sugar-coating this if your site is not passing then it needs to be optimised. The exception to this rule is if you happen to have a huge advertising and marketing budget and do not need traffic from Google. Even if you do you should still be making sure your site offers a great user experience as this will increase the number of sales or leads your site creates.
The Bad News
Passing this test is not easy. Googles rules are very strict and getting that winning grade will depend on quite a few factors:
- Your hosting needs to be FAST. Cheap slow hosting will quite simply not cut it any more. Both your users and Google demand speed. Let's be clear on this your site needs to load in 1-2 seconds or faster. Cheap hosting normally means there are thousands of sites on one server all sharing the same resources that is never going to be fast.
- Your site needs to be well-built. There are tons of great-looking themes out there for WordPress the problem is most of them are packed with hundreds of functions and bells and whistles that your site is probably not even using. All these bells and whistles add extra code to the background of your website which slows it down.
- The number and choice of plugins matter, they can also slow down your site. Not all plugins are created equal, some of the really poor ones that can seriously impact the speed of your site. Too many plugins can also have an impact.
- You may need to think again about the design of your site. There are lots of web designers out there, but you would be surprised how few of them will build a site with speed in mind. What is the point in all that snazzy design if no one is seeing it because it is too slow to load?
- You need to start considering how many functions you are calling from other sites. Some plugins EG Facebook feeds, Instagram Feeds, stats, social sharing, ads and even fonts pull in data from other sites this can have a huge impact on speed as not only is the visitors' device waiting on a response from your website it is waiting on the other sites too.
The Good News
Right now you are on WP Speed Heros website and we know how to make your site fly. How much it will cost will depend on how well your site has been built and how good your hosting is. The great news is if we cannot make your current site pass the Google tests with our excellent optimisation we can always help you rebuild it so that it does.
Results We Have Achieved
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