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What to do when Google says your WordPress site is slow

Por workalibur 3 min de lectura

Google has a free tool that measures how fast your website is. You enter your address and it gives you a score from 0 to 100, one for mobile and another for desktop. It also tells you what to change to improve it.

This is how you can use PageSpeed Insights to improve your WordPress:

  • Analyze your site: use PageSpeed Insights to see how your WordPress is doing. It will tell you where to improve, such as the images or the weight of the code. It also tells you whether your site keeps a ready-made copy of each page, so it doesn’t have to build it every time.
  • Act on what it tells you: after the analysis, PageSpeed Insights gives you a list of changes to make your site faster. Apply them in your WordPress.
  • Keep a ready-made copy of each page: plugins such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache do this for you. This way your server responds faster and your site loads more quickly.
  • Lighten your images: WP Smush or ShortPixel reduce the file size of the images on your WordPress. Each page weighs less and loads sooner.
  • Lighten your code: Autoptimize or WP Minify make the code on your site lighter. Pages take less time to load.

Apply what it tells you and your site should load faster. A fast website helps people stay and helps you rank better on Google.

PageSpeed vs GTmetrix

The two most widely used tools for measuring website speed are more alike than they seem. Google PageSpeed Insights is free, requires no account and analyzes pages with Lighthouse, Google’s analysis tool. It returns a score from 0 to 100 for mobile and another for desktop, lab metrics and, when a site gets enough traffic, real data from Chrome users, which is what Google uses for ranking. GTmetrix also analyzes with Lighthouse, so the scores are comparable, and adds what PageSpeed doesn’t offer: the request waterfall, showing each file with its size and timing, a video of the page loading, and the option to choose which city and connection the test runs from.

A clarification, since the opposite claim is going around: GTmetrix has a free plan, with an account, that lets you analyze pages and view the waterfall. Paid plans add more test locations, scheduled tests and alerts. Our recommended way to use them: PageSpeed to see how Google sees your site and what to fix, and GTmetrix when you need to find out which specific file is slowing the page down. With both, always measure the same URL, under the same conditions and several times, because a single test can fluctuate.

Is your site slow or does nobody look after it?

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