I've spent quite a bit of time on performance optimization for my site and I'm right there at the finish line for getting all the green good scores in search console for mobile usability and core web vitals. The last outstanding thing is getting my LCP under 2.5 seconds for my blog posts.
I'm consistently getting 2.6-2.7 and I can't quite figure out why. The LCP element is the <h1> tag on my blog posts and there are no above-the-fold images.
Example URL With Higher LCP
Let me say that I am using a Beaver Builder website and some marketing tags like GA, GTM, etc but I've spent a lot of time analyzing my script and style loads to create an optimal experience with preconnects and preloads of various resources. I know it's a big ask to try to get a site like this down in load time. I'm on Kinsta hosting with low TTFB, full-page caching and CDN. I am also using the Perfmatters plugin to control various aspects of load times.
I've done everything I can think of to get the LCP down and it seems like the <H1> tag is visible almost immediately but then may be repainted later towards the end of the page load, but I can't figure out the cause of this.
Anyone out there feeling generous that could take a look?
Page Speed Insights URL
as i can see Pagespeed is showing aggregated real user experience of your entire domain, not of this specific pages but for all pages on this domain.
DOM content load time for your page on mobile is around 3sec, that means your LCP has to be greater than this
You need to reduce your DOM content load time first. You need to prioritize your network calls such that redundant dependency needs to be minimized
And also for desktop page, you are lazy loading first fold image which is not considered as a good user experience and might be contributing to LCP for desktop version of your page, also impact negatively for your SEO
Related
Please check this Screenshot: Page Insights Image
I have marked in it. I have 2 Questions:
Why the website is loading after 4-5 Slides in the Page Insights.
Why the FID is not fetching in Page Insights.
Thanks
Could be any number of reasons. A few slides of non-content are expected for most sites. The filmstrip is suppose to show how it loads (in your case the menu loads first, then the image), rather than how slowly it loads. The stats above are more important but they do show it being slow. Page speed insights will give plenty of advice and guidance on improving your performance below the filmstrip.
FID is a measure of how long it take from interaction (I.e. clicking on a button) until that interaction is processed. Many static, content, sites (e.g. newspapers, blogs and other articles) will not have an interaction (scrolling don’t count as interactions for FID for example) so it’s perfectly normal for there to be no FID score there. In this case FID is ignored in terms of whether you pass or fail Core Web Vitals so no FID is effectively the same as a passing FID.
I have a problem with lcp score in core web vitals (mobile). My LCP score is 3 seconds. The required lcp score is 2.5 seconds in mobile. I have tried everything. Have optimized images with a premium plugin (EWWWW Image Optimizer). Serving the files through a CDN. Reduced the network requests to a minimum and applied other things which are common. The only way I can get the lcp score down is by removing gtag.js. This reduces the lcp to 2 seconds but I really need this script for analyzing the traffic. Is there any other way I can reduce the LCP? HAve tried all the suggestions listed in Lighthouse. Removed Unused CSS,JS. Defered Loading of Images, CSS, JS.
The PageSpeed Insights results that stand out to me are:
Avoid an excessive DOM size (1,889 elements)
Minimize main-thread work (3.5 s)
In the mobile test, PSI reports 3.5 seconds spent on the main thread, with 1.275 s on style and layout. I think some of this can be attributed to the large DOM. So try to find ways to trim excess content or markup from the page to simplify the HTML structure.
Script evaluation also accounts for 0.987 s, suggesting that there is significant JavaScript code that runs on page load. I'm not too familiar with GTM but based on the results it does seem like it's contributing a lot to main thread consumption (2.88 s). Some things to check are disabling or removing unnecessary services in GTM, as these third parties can be adding excess JavaScript, and optimizing the services you do need so that anything not absolutely necessary for the initial page load is deferred until later. See the Loading Third-Party JavaScript guide for some additional advice related to GTM.
On the live site, the slider image is the LCP, and this is loaded via CSS. The browser does not know to load the image until the CSS is loaded and it knows the image is needed on the page. You could speed things up with a preload on that image.
You're also using a lot of web fonts. You would free up bandwidth for the main image by reducing the number of fonts.
I put my homepage through Google's PageSpeed test and it gave me a score of 69 for Mobile and 95 for Desktop. The one and only issue being a Render Blocking CSS.
Now, all my web pages on my website are Above the Fold. i.e. There is no scroll involved anywhere. Given this, personally I feel I should not be doing anything special, since the CSS is required to view my page the way I designed it, right from the get go.
If I do asynchronous loading or something, it'll end up showing the content on a black and white un-organised page, just before the intended output.
Do I ignore Google? It would mean that I'd never score 100/100, and wouldn't that affect my SEO chances?
TL;DR — No, you don't have to. But in most cases, it helps, indirectly.
Render blocking is in place to prevent FOUC.
Ideally you should only load the CSS responsible for rendering the "above the fold" of your page as render blocking and all the rest of your styles using async methods.
However, most sites load all their CSS as render blocking. Why? Because most websites do not afford a CSS specialist to customize their CSS loading for their specific case. They'll sometimes pay for a theme, but that's it.
Themes are not typically optimized from this point of view because there is no way to know what elements the user will want in their above the fold area.
Is this a huge problem?
NO.
First of all, all of this is only about when the user loads the very first page of your website. All the other pages will use the cached stylesheets (already loaded on first page visited) (unless you load different stylesheets for different pages).
And second of all, the general idea that Google lowers your page's SEO score for having render-blocking CSS is, technically, wrong. They do penalize for a lot of other reasons (like accessibility, readability and responsiveness issues) but not for having render-blocking CSS.
However, there is an indirect correlation between the two.
Google Page Speed is a tool telling you how you can improve the loading speed of your page or to leave the impression the page loads faster.
if you fix the problems it identifies, the page will load faster or at least it will seem to load faster
if your page is or feels faster, there are less chances users will hit the back button while waiting for your page to load.
THIS user behavior is where the SEO penalty comes in. Google registers any such behavior as a general "user did not find what he was looking for on that website" and lowers the page's SEO score for whatever the user searched for
Any method of keeping users from hitting the back button in the first 30 seconds after they left for your website (that will keep the bounce rate down) is a good method to fight SEO penalties.
And... it's true: one of the most efficient methods is to make your page load faster.
Others include:
make the loading process look professional (place correctly sized placeholders for images, so the page doesn't jump around when loading);
keep FOUC as close to 0 as possible
render something, rather than nothing
if possible, give users a general idea of how much of the page has loaded (in %)
make the website loadup with some basic schema of what's on longer pages. users will read the schema, trying to figure out if they're on the right page and they won't notice the loading time - since you give them something to do while waiting
cut the "bla bla" and try to be honest about whatever your page has to offer
I can't emphasize this enough: it really pays off to be honest. There is a huge difference in results, SEO wise:
If your page is about A, but you want to show this to users looking for B, do not tell them you've got B and don't hide it from them. Just tell them:
"Look, this is not B, it's A, but here are a few reasons why you should consider A instead of B."
Most users will read those reasons. Especially if they're well written, they address real problems, and they don't look like they're just trying to buy time.
A very good idea is to place your strongest argument second or third in the list (second if first is rather long, third if first two are not so long).
The reasoning is: if you place it further down, many users don't read past three weak arguments - they label the entire list as unconvincing and go back.
Also, if you place the arguments in the order of their importance, the user will realize it and, as soon as they reach two arguments that are not convincing, they'll assume it gets worse further down the list and, again, they'll hit back button.
But if you place a second or third argument stronger than the previous ones, they will read through the entire list hoping to find another one.
Now, if your arguments are compelling, the user will go for A instead of B => Win.
If not, they will still go for B, but at least they'll do it later (after they read your reasons), and the penalty will be much smaller, if any (the longer time a user spends on your page, the less the penalty, should they press back) => No loss.
If you can keep the user occupied for more than 30 seconds, you're typically in the clear SEO wise. And that's the really important SEO issue at hand, not render-blocking per-se.
In the end, it is totally possible to create a page with a very low score on Page Speed while having a very high SEO score. It's unlikely, but totally possible.
A client of mine is adding content to his Wordpress. The site is www.airsolid.ca.
He uses "portfolios" to add his different boat models. All seems fine except when we click "all boat models" in the section where it lists all items, it takes up to 30 seconds to load.
Here is the direct link to the section:
http://www.airsolid.ca/bateaux/
Any idea on what I could change to make it load under 3-5 seconds? I have a feeling it loads all images at once... and since there are many, it takes way too much time. Ironically, he doesn't even want the images to show when he lists them.
Use https://tools.pingdom.com to monitor what's loading, how long it's loading, etc. You can see if images or scripts are holding it up.
Since the screen is white while it's loading, I'd imagine it's a query issue. You can use the Query Monitor plugin to help determine the cause.
I used pingdom and got these results: https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ekJpVY/http://www.airsolid.ca/bateaux/
It had 1 request until the ~22 second mark at which point the CSS/JS/Image requests came in, which means that it's not being held up by scripts or images.
The page is only ~2mb, which means it's not loading all the images either. I'd start with Query Monitor - it's definitely something server side, probably a faulty WP_Query or other issue in a PHP loop.
I have installed and customized WooCommerce Product Pages on my WordPress site, but one of the product category pages takes about 7 seconds on average to load. Other category pages load in around 3 seconds. I am struggling to find the reason for this. There are less products on this page than other pages and less sub-categories. I have installed plug-ins such as 'W3TC' and 'Better WordPress Minify' but it hasn't made much difference.
Has anyone else experienced an issue like this and if so, would you mind sharing how you resolved it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Using caching plugins is fine and dandy but the reason these pages load slowly is simply the data model that WordPress uses, post-types and the metadata look-ups. The only way to truly get speeds up is good hosting and turning on Object Cache on the server.
We enable this on a WP-Engine site and it was night and day. 12 seconds turned into 2.5 seconds.
Object caching
Object Caching is designed to capture queries to the database and store them in memory. This allows you to run an "expensive" query - a query that takes a long time - one time, and then reuse the results again. When used properly, Object Caching can give your site a speed boost by reducing the time that is spent accessing the database. Please note that this change can take a while to take effect.
There can be many reasons for a WordPress pages to load slower. But you problem seems to be unique.
Here are some useful tips by which you can speed up your page loading:
Optimize Your Images
The page on which you are having issue might have High Resolution Images.
Avoid displaying flash on your Page
Avoid too many advertisements
Cut off the Unnecessary ads from the page.
Do not use inline cascading style sheets
Besides utilizing inline cascading style sheets make a CSS file and call up file on all page of your site that will likewise help in repressing download speed.
Put stylesheets at the top - Put scripts at the bottom
Utilize javascript at the bottom of the page this will serve to load up your page fast. When web browser download javascript it will finish downloading your internet site data, and so any analog downloading will end while browser request Javascript downloading.
Use CSS Sprites
A CSS sprite is an an image comprised of other images used by your design as something of a map containing the coordinates of all the images. Some clever CSS is used to show the proper section of the sprite when your design is loaded.
Here you do not have to load multiple images which are used on you site. Just loading of a single sprite image will do all your work.
Limit Your External Scripts
There might be a issue that external script is being loading on that page. You need to check and limit the same.
Add LazyLoad to your images
You can use this technique to load the page part by part.
Control the amount of post revisions stored
I saved this post to draft about 8 times.
WordPress, left to its own devices, would store every single one of these drafts, indefinitely.
Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks
Let me know if the problem resolves using these tips for you site.
The list of suggestions that WisdmLabs mentions above is great!
However, I'm not sure if you've seen the plugin for Wordpress called W3 Total Cache. It has a load of built in functionality to automatically improve the performance of your Wordpress web pages.
It's free and worthwhile using if you are looking to improve the performance across your whole site.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/