How to Increase Google PageSpeed of WordPress Site?

Before jumping on how to increase Google PageSpeed score of WordPress site, let’s understand what Google PageSpeed Insight is, why its important and different criteria’s used by google PageSpeed Insight tool to score the web pages.

What is Google PageSpeed Insights?

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a valuable tool developed by Google to help website owners and developers understand how users experience their web pages on both mobile and desktop devices. It provides essential data and recommendations to improve the page’s performance and user experience. Today, we are going to explain what is it and how to increase google PageSpeed score for WordPress Sites.

The insights provided by PSI come from two types of data: lab data and field data. Lab data is collected in a controlled testing environment, which allows for more accurate debugging of performance issues. It simulates how a page behaves under specific conditions, providing valuable metrics and identifying potential bottlenecks.

However, lab data has its limitations as it may not fully represent real-world scenarios. It doesn’t consider the various network conditions, devices, and user behaviors that can influence page loading times in actual usage. This is where field data comes into play.

Field data is collected from real-world user interactions and experiences. It reflects how actual visitors perceive the website’s speed and performance under different circumstances. This type of data offers valuable insights into how the website performs in the wild and provides a more accurate understanding of user experience.

The combination of lab and field data in PSI allows website owners and developers to gain a comprehensive view of their site’s performance. Lab data helps identify technical issues and potential optimizations that can be made in a controlled environment. On the other hand, field data reveals how real users interact with the website, giving a more practical sense of how the site performs in everyday usage.

By utilizing both types of data, website owners can make informed decisions and prioritize improvements that enhance the overall user experience. Improving the page speed and user experience not only pleases visitors but also contributes to better search engine rankings and increased user engagement on the website. Therefore, taking advantage of PSI’s insights is crucial for optimizing and refining websites to meet the expectations and needs of users in the real world.

Understanding the PSI Report!

The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) dataset is the driving force behind real-user experience data in PageSpeed Insights (PSI). This dataset provides a comprehensive overview of real users’ experiences on a webpage, as it captures key performance metrics over a 28-day collection period. These metrics include First Contentful Paint (FCP), First Input Delay (FID), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Additionally, PSI also presents data for the experimental metric known as Time to First Byte (TTFB).

The FCP metric measures the time it takes for the first piece of content to be painted on the screen, while FID measures the delay between a user’s first interaction and the browser’s response. LCP, on the other hand, records the time it takes for the largest piece of content to be painted. CLS quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content, and INP measures the time from user interaction to the next paint. TTFB is an experimental metric that measures the time from the user’s request to receiving the first byte of data.

For PSI to display user experience data for a specific page, there needs to be an adequate amount of data for that page in the CrUX dataset. However, there are instances where a page may not have enough data. This could be due to the page being newly published or having a limited number of real user samples. In such cases, PSI defaults to a broader level of data analysis, known as origin-level granularity. This level of analysis includes all user experiences across all pages of a website.

However, there may be situations where even the origin-level data is insufficient. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as the website being new, having low traffic, or the users not meeting the data collection criteria. In these scenarios, PSI may not be able to provide any real-user experience data.

Google PageSpeed Score – Good, Needs Improvement, Poor

The quality of user experiences can be classified into three categories: Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor, according to PSI (PageSpeed Insights). The thresholds set by PSI, in alignment with the Web Vitals initiative, are as follows:

These ranges indicate the acceptable performance levels for each metric. If a website’s performance falls within the “Good” range, it is considered to have a good user experience. If it falls within the “Needs Improvement” range, there are areas that can be improved to enhance the user experience. However, if the performance exceeds the thresholds in the “Poor” range, it indicates a poor user experience, and significant improvements are necessary.

How to Increase Google PageSpeed of WordPress Site?

Increasing the Google PageSpeed of your WordPress site involves several strategies that are aimed at optimizing the speed and performance of your website. Here are several ways to accomplish this:

1. Choose a Good Hosting Provider: Not all hosting is created equal. Some hosts offer better hardware and software configurations that lead to a faster website. [Majorly Impacts, FCP and TTFB]
2. Use a Lightweight WordPress Theme: The design of your website can heavily impact its speed. Lightweight, minimalist themes are usually faster than feature-rich ones. [Overall Impact]
3. Optimize Images: Large image files slow down your site. Use image optimization tools such as Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, or ShortPixel to automatically compress your images without losing quality.
4. Enable Caching: Caching can greatly speed up your site by storing frequently accessed data so it doesn’t need to be reloaded every time a user visits your site. There are several great WordPress plugins for this, such as WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache.
5. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network): CDNs store a cached version of your website on a network of servers located around the world. This ensures that users can load your site from a server that is physically closer to them, reducing load times.
6. Minify and Combine CSS and JS Files: Many WordPress plugins and themes load multiple CSS and JavaScript files. This can slow down your site. Use plugins like LiteSpeed Cache or WP Rocket to minify and combine these files.
7. Limit the Number of Plugins: Having too many plugins can slow down your site. Only keep the ones you really need and delete the rest.
8. Optimize Your WordPress Database: Over time, your WordPress database can become bloated with unnecessary data. Use a plugin like WP-Optimize to clean it up.
9. Limit Post Revisions: Every time you save a post, WordPress creates a revision. These can add up quickly and slow down your website. Use a plugin like Revision Control to limit the number of revisions that WordPress keeps.
10. Lazy Load Media: Lazy loading is a technique that only loads images, videos, and other media as they come into view for the user, which can significantly speed up the initial load time of your website. You can use plugins like a3 Lazy Load or WP Rocket to easily enable lazy loading on your WordPress site.
11. Avoid Hosting Videos Directly: Hosting videos on your WordPress site can consume a lot of bandwidth, which slows down your site. Instead, upload your videos to a platform like YouTube or Vimeo and then embed them into your posts.
12. Regularly Update Your WordPress Core, Plugins, and Themes: Updates often include performance improvements and bug fixes that can make your site run faster.

By following these steps, you should see a considerable improvement in your site’s PageSpeed score. Remember, speed optimization is an ongoing task, and there are always new techniques and technologies becoming available to help improve your site’s performance.

Google PageSpeed Improvement Plugin for WordPress

LiteSpeed Cache is another very powerful caching and optimization plugin that you can use to increase the Google PageSpeed of your WordPress site. It has a comprehensive set of features that cover many of the strategies mentioned above. Here’s how you can use it:

1. Install and Activate the Plugin: Navigate to the “Plugins” section of your WordPress dashboard, click “Add New,” and search for LiteSpeed Cache. Click “Install” and then “Activate.”
2. Enable Caching: LiteSpeed Cache provides robust caching solutions. You can enable it in the settings to reduce the amount of time required to generate a page, thereby speeding up your site.
3. Image Optimization: The plugin also offers an image optimization feature, which can reduce the file size of images without losing quality. This helps to speed up page loading times.
4. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: LiteSpeed Cache has options for minifying CSS and JavaScript files, which can help to reduce their size and improve loading times.
5. Combine CSS and JavaScript: Similar to minification, combining these files can reduce the number of HTTP requests that are made to your server, speeding up your site.
6. Browser Cache: This feature stores static files (like CSS, JS, and images) in the visitor’s browser so that they don’t need to be downloaded again on subsequent visits.
7. Database Optimization: The plugin includes database optimization tools that allow you to clean up and optimize your database.
8. Lazy Load Images and Iframes: This option allows for faster initial page loading by only loading images and iframes when they are in the viewport.
9. Critical CSS Generation and Load CSS Asynchronously: These options help eliminate render-blocking resources and improve the perceived page load speed.
10. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 Push: This will help in reducing the latency caused by the multiple round trips between the browser and server.
11. DNS Prefetch and Preconnect: You can use these options to tell browsers in advance to resolve DNS and make connections before they are actually needed.
12. Serve WebP images: WebP images are significantly smaller than their JPEG and PNG counterparts, serving them can help speed up your website.

Remember, when you’re configuring the settings, it’s best to test each change one by one to make sure nothing breaks on your site. LiteSpeed Cache is a robust tool, but as with any caching or optimization plugin, it’s possible for certain settings to conflict with your theme or other plugins.