How to Use Google PageSpeed Insights: A Beginner’s Guide
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool that analyzes the performance of your website on both mobile and desktop devices. It provides insights into how quickly your pages load, identifies potential issues, and offers recommendations for improving page speed, which is a crucial factor in both user experience and SEO.
A fast-loading website not only improves user experience but also positively impacts your search engine rankings. This guide will walk you through how to use Google PageSpeed Insights, interpret its reports, and implement the suggested improvements.
Step-by-Step Guide
Access Google PageSpeed Insights
- Go to Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Enter the URL of the web page you want to analyze in the provided field.
- Click “Analyze” to start the process.
Review the Performance Score
After analysis, you’ll see an overall performance score ranging from 0 to 100.
- 90-100: Good – Your page is performing well.
- 50-89: Needs Improvement – Some issues need to be addressed.
- 0-49: Poor – Significant optimization is required.
The tool provides separate scores for mobile and desktop performance, allowing you to assess and compare both experiences.
Understand the Core Web Vitals
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. Aim for LCP to occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page starts loading.
- First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. Aim for an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. Aim for a CLS score of less than 0.1.
Explore the Diagnostics Section
- Opportunities: Lists specific recommendations to improve page load times, including estimated savings in milliseconds.
- Diagnostics: Offers additional insights into areas that could be optimized, such as image sizing, server response times, and the use of efficient cache policies.
- Passed Audits: Displays what your page is already doing well, such as using HTTPS or having a valid robot.txt file.
Implementing PageSpeed Insights Recommendations
- Optimize Images
- Use formats like WebP or compressed JPEG/PNG files to reduce image size without sacrificing quality.
- Serve images in the correct dimensions to avoid unnecessary resizing on the client side.
- Leverage Browser Caching
- Enable browser caching to store frequently accessed files on users’ local devices, reducing the need to download them again on subsequent visits.
- Minimize CSS and JavaScript
- Remove unused CSS and JavaScript to reduce the amount of code the browser has to load and process.
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files to reduce file sizes and improve load times.
- Improve Server Response Time
- Consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to reduce server load and improve load times for users in different geographical locations.
- Optimize your server settings and database queries to reduce the time it takes for your server to respond to requests.
- Enable Text Compression
- Use GZIP or Brotli compression to reduce the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files before sending them to the browser.
Fundamentals of Google PageSpeed Insights
What is Google PageSpeed Insights?
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool developed by Google that analyzes web pages and provides insights into their performance, particularly in terms of speed and user experience.
Key Metrics in Google PageSpeed Insights
- Performance Score: A numerical score that reflects how well your page performs on various devices.
- Core Web Vitals: Critical metrics like LCP, FID, and CLS that Google considers important for user experience.
- Opportunities and Diagnostics: Specific recommendations and detailed reports on how to improve your page’s performance.
SEO Benefits
Optimizing your website using PageSpeed Insights not only improves user experience but also enhances your site’s search engine rankings. Faster sites are favored by both users and search engines, leading to better visibility and potentially higher conversion rates.
Common Terms & Metrics
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): Time it takes for the first piece of content to be painted on the screen.
- Time to Interactive (TTI): The time it takes for the page to become fully interactive.
- Speed Index: A metric that shows how quickly the content of a page is visibly populated.
Summary & Checklist
- Summary of Steps:
- Access Google PageSpeed Insights and enter your URL.
- Review your performance score and Core Web Vitals.
- Analyze the Opportunities and Diagnostics sections.
- Implement the recommended optimizations.
- Re-analyze your site to check for improvements.
- Checklist:
Use this checklist to ensure you’ve covered all aspects of optimizing your website using Google PageSpeed Insights.