Google Speed Insights and website optimisation
What is Google Speed Insights? Improve your website’s search engine ranking
We live in a constant rush, and every second is for us of as precious as gold. When browsing the internet, we have a choice of a whole range of websites, all vying for our attention. As the owner of a website, you must bear in mind, that ongoing analysis and updating of your website is the foundation for achieving success. Good performance and speed of the website, translate into both its search engine ranking, as well as the user experience. In the following article you will find information on using the popular tool Google PageSpeed Insights in measuring the performance of your website.
What is page loading speed?
Page load speed is a metric that measures the time between the request to display the website (e.g. clicking on a link) and the complete loading of its elements. It is significant in terms of the search engine optimisation of the website and retaining the user on the page.
Too long a time to load the page may lead to an increase in the bounce rate (bounce rate), which consequently leads to reduced conversion rates and shorter sessions on the website. Furthermore, search engines regard such a website as unattractive unattractive, so they display it in lower search results.
Measuring website performance using Google PageSpeed Insights
The performance of a website can be measured using using numerous tools. One of these is the free Google PageSpeed Insights. By analysing your website, it will rate it on a scale from 0 to 100 points, as well as in terms of its responsiveness. In addition, the tool analyses the time taken to display the first element of the page (FCP), the website’s responses to user commands (FID), loading of the largest text block or image (LCP) and scrolling through the content after the page has loaded the page (CLS).
Google PageSpeed Insights also suggests all possible ways to optimise your website. You can use the recommendations provided by the system to improve your website’s performance. The most common suggestions are:
- Minifikacja kody HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Compression of files (multimedia, graphics etc.)
- Order of content rendering
Search engine optimisation of a website www, and page loading speed of a page
There’s no doubt that Google PageSpeed Insights enables you to implement more effective measures to help improve your website’s search engine ranking. However, remember to plan any optimisations with other important factors in mind as well, including those related to SEO (internal linking, keywords, file names, meta descriptions and alt text, etc.)
Some extensive websites, despite a low score on Google PageSpeed, load relatively quickly and rank highly in search results.
Drawbacks of the Google PageSpeed Insights tool
Like any tool, Google PageSpeed Insights has its drawbacks. One of its clear downsides is that:
- We do not always know the location of the test server. For this reason, we cannot be certain how far away it is from our server, and whether this might therefore reduce our result,
- In most countries, the average internet speed is faster than that indicated by Google’s tool. We can therefore refine this figure using Google Analytics or other website speed measurement tools (Pingdom, GTmetrix, etc.)
- The tool does not take into account the content displayed on the page when elements that do not affect the usability of the site are loading in the background at the same time.
To sum up, Google Speed Insights is a tool that will help you improve your website’s performance. It will enable you to optimise your website so that it ranks higher in search results and complies with UX guidelines.
