What Is Google PageSpeed Insights? How to Improve Your Score

How do you measure and improve website speed accurately, to keep users and raise SEO rankings?

Google has many tools for optimizing websites, but PageSpeed Insights is one of the most widely used. Still, not everyone understands what Google PageSpeed Insights is and how it works. In this article, let's MONA Media look at this tool in detail and how to use it to optimize website performance.

What is the Google PageSpeed Insights tool?

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free SEO tools from Google that helps you measure the performance and load speed of a website on both computers and phones. It scores on a scale of 0 to 100 and comes with specific suggestions for improving page speed, which improves user experience and supports full-scope SEO.

PSI works from two data sources:

• Lab Data: simulates device and network conditions to test performance in a controlled environment.

• Field Data: collected from real users over 30 days, accurately reflecting their experience when they visit the page.

The analysis shows useful information such as:

• Speed Score: a speed score based on the Lighthouse tool.

• Field Data: key metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP) and First Input Delay (FID).

• Opportunities: optimization suggestions to shorten page load time.

• Diagnostics: detailed technical recommendations.

• Passed Audits: a list of what you have already done well.

With these reports, PageSpeed Insights helps administrators and developers easily spot problems, optimize page load speed, lower bounce rate, improve user experience and help improve SEO rankings.

What are the important metrics in Google PageSpeed Insights?

Google PageSpeed Insights does not only evaluate page load speed, it also measures the overall user experience. The tool provides several key metrics that show how your site is performing and where it needs to improve. The important Google PageSpeed Insights metrics include:

Performance Score

This is a combined score from 0 to 100, reflecting how well optimized the website is. The higher the score, the faster and smoother the site loads and the better the experience for users.

This score is calculated from several factors, including:

• Page load speed
• Interactivity
• Visual stability
• Server response speed
• Optimization of resources such as images, CSS and JavaScript on the website

The performance score is also based on Core Web Vitals, the three metrics Google defines as web SEO ranking factors. So improving the score not only makes users happier but also raises search rankings.

The Core Web Vitals metrics

Google uses three main metrics to evaluate the quality of user experience, specifically:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time for the largest piece of content (such as a large image or the main headline) to appear on screen.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures the delay between the user's interaction and the browser starting to respond.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how stable the layout is, avoiding content that suddenly "shifts" while the page is loading.

When a website scores well on all three, users feel the page loads fast and responds smoothly and steadily, which lowers bounce rate, increases time on site and improves SEO strategy.

Other supporting metrics on PageSpeed Insights

Besides Core Web Vitals, PSI offers many other detailed metrics that give you a deeper view of page performance, such as:

• First Contentful Paint (FCP): The time for the first content (text, small images) to appear on screen.

• Time to Interactive (TTI): The time until the page is fully ready and users can interact without interruption.

• Speed Index: Measures how quickly content is displayed visually on the page (compared with full load time).

• Field Data (real-world data): Figures collected from real users over the past 30 days, giving an honest view of page load experience in the real world.

• Opportunities: A list of improvement opportunities, such as compressing images and deferring scripts, that reduce load time.

• Diagnostics: Deeper technical recommendations on structure, performance and code optimization.

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Does PageSpeed Insights affect SEO?

Your score on Google PageSpeed Insights does not directly affect SEO rankings. But the tool measures factors that matter a great deal to web SEO strategy, such as page load speed and user experience, two core criteria in Google's ranking algorithm.

PageSpeed Insights does not "directly" decide where you appear in search results. But the metrics it provides are the ranking signals Google uses to judge website quality.

A low PageSpeed Insights score shows that your site loads slowly and gives users a poor experience. This can hurt your site's ranking and reduce visibility and organic traffic.

Conversely, when you optimize performance and improve your PageSpeed Insights score, you not only make the site load faster, you also:

• Raise SEO rankings by meeting Core Web Vitals and user performance criteria.
• Keep users longer and lower bounce rate.
• Increase the chance of conversion

Google always favors sites that are fast, smooth and user-friendly. So improving your PageSpeed Insights score is an important item when carrying out a structured full-scope.

If you focus only on on-page content and ignore technical factors, user experience suffers and so does SEO performance: rankings drop out of the top of the SERP, organic traffic fall, and in the end the business's sales are seriously affected.

With more than 10 years experience, having carried out more than 2,000+ SEO projects across many fields, the MONA team is ready to work with you on SEO AI Onpage and Offpage optimization through to technical SEO to win the top of Google.

• Technical SEO optimization: keeps the website running smoothly and steadily, improves user experience and opens access to millions of potential customers, which raises conversion value.

• Onpage optimization: Improve content quality and optimize titles, meta tags, URL structure, internal links, images and schema to be friendlier to Google and keep users longer.

• Offpage optimization: Build a quality backlink system, run press and guest posts, and use social media and referral channels to raise the website's credibility and ranking.

• Analyze and build an SEO strategy tailored to the project's situation and closely tied to business goals to set up KPI SEO for each stage.

• Transparent reporting at regular intervals, so the business can closely follow progress and the return on its investment.

• Close coordination with the business throughout the process so the SEO strategy stays flexible and delivers the best results.

Contact with MONA Media for strategy advice and to receive SEO services quote detailed for you.

How to optimize website performance with Google PageSpeed Insights

In the final part, this article guides you through some adjustments to make after receiving a PageSpeed Insights report. There are 6 ways to optimize your PageSpeed Insights score:

Reduce server response time (TTFB)

Reducing server response time (TTFB) is one of the most effective ways to improve website performance when using Google PageSpeed Insights. Time To First Byte is the time from when the browser sends a request to the server until it receives the first byte of the response. The lower the TTFB, the faster the page loads and the better the user experience.

The main ways to reduce server response time are:

• Choose a high-quality hosting providerwith fast, reliable servers to ensure quick responses.

• Use caching such as browser cache and server cache to reduce the load of reprocessing pages and resources.

• Optimize the web server configuration such as Apache, Nginx, or use a high-performance web server like LiteSpeed to speed up responses.

• Optimize source code and database such as reducing the number of queries, merging CSS/JS files, avoiding redundant code, and keeping code clear and concise.

• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver content from the server closest to the user and reduce network latency.

• Optimize CSS and JS files and split stylesheets by area so they load faster and cut response time.

Optimize above-the-fold content

Optimizing above-the-fold content is one way to improve website performance. "Above-the-fold" is the content shown as soon as the page loads, before the user scrolls down. Optimizing this part makes the page load faster and improves user experience.

Ways to optimize above-the-fold to improve Google PageSpeed Insights:

• Load the main content first: Arrange the HTML so the most important content loads and displays first, even if it sits on the right or in the middle of the layout. Put user experience ahead of source-code layout.

• Reduce initial resources: Limit unnecessary HTML, CSS, images and JavaScript in the first visible section so the page responds faster.

• Inline CSS for above-the-fold: Embed the critical CSS directly in the <style> tag in the HTML so the browser does not wait for an external CSS file, shortening the time to display content.

• Defer or lazy load the rest: Elements lower on the page (such as images, scripts and widgets) should load later or when the user scrolls down, so they do not slow down the top of the page.

Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript

JavaScript plays an important role in interactive features on a website, but if it is not optimized it can slow page load significantly. Google PageSpeed Insights often points to JavaScript issues as a main cause of low performance scores.

Here are effective ways to optimize JavaScript, so the site loads faster, user experience improves and your PageSpeed Insights score goes up:

• Reduce JavaScript file size by minifying and removing whitespace and unnecessary comments to cut download size.
• Remove JavaScript code that is unused or unnecessary, reducing the code to load and process so it does not slow the page.
• Bundle and split code sensibly (code splitting) to reduce the number of HTTP requests and load each part when needed.
• Use caching effectively to avoid reloading code when users revisit the page.

Enable caching to optimize Google PageSpeed Insights

Enabling caching is one way to improve your Google PageSpeed Insights score. With caching, the browser stores static resources such as images, CSS and JavaScript on the user's device. On the next visit the page loads faster because it does not need to download all the data from the server again.

How to enable caching on your website:

• Use a plugin (for WordPress sites): Plugins such as WP Rocket and LiteSpeed Cache make it easy to turn on caching. You can set up caching for the homepage, subpages, comments, 404 errors… and adjust the cache lifetime (TTL) as needed.

• Configure on the server: Set HTTP headers such as Cache-Control and ETag in the configuration file (for example .htaccess or the nginx server config) to tell the browser how long to cache and when to refresh.

• Optimize for every device: Make sure caching works well on both desktop and mobile. Avoid running several caching plugins at once, since they can conflict and hurt performance.

Reduce third-party requests to improve website performance

How to reduce and optimize third-party requests:

• Remove unnecessary code: Remove external scripts, pixels or plugins that are unimportant or no longer used.

• Check regularly: Use the PageSpeed Insights report to find and remove third-party requests that slow your pages down.

• Defer or load asynchronously (defer/async): Apply defer or async to third-party scripts so they don't delay the main content from rendering.

• Use preconnect or preload for key resources: This lets the browser connect to third-party domains early, shortening load time when they're needed.

• Limit external widgets and plugins: Every plugin you add means one or more requests. Keep only the tools you truly need.

Optimize images on your website 

Reducing image size is one of the most effective ways to improve website performance in Google PageSpeed Insights. It cuts file size without hurting image quality, which shortens load time and improves your PageSpeed Insights score.

Here are simple but effective ways to optimize image size, raise your PageSpeed Insights score and improve the user experience:

• Use modern image formats such as WebP or AVIF, which reduce file size while keeping quality high.
• Compress images with tools such as TinyPNG, ShortPixel or similar plugins to reduce file size before uploading to your site.
• Specify exact dimensions for images in the HTML so the browser knows how much space to reserve, which reduces layout shift (CLS).
• Use progressive images (especially for large JPEGs) so images appear first blurry and then sharpen, making the page feel faster.
• Use lazy loading to load images only when users scroll to them, lowering the initial load of the page.

A few notes when using Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights is a useful tool for evaluating website performance, but you need to use it the right way to get the most from it.

Here are the things to keep in mind:

• Treat the score as a guide, not an absolute standard: The scores and suggestions from PageSpeed Insights are for reference only. Don't fixate on reaching “100”; focus on improving real speed and the user experience.

• Combine with other tools: Also use tools like GTmetrix and Pingdom for a fuller picture of performance, since each tool measures and weights things differently.

• Read carefully and apply sensible recommendations: Suggestions such as minifying CSS, deferring JavaScript or optimizing images are very useful, but they don't always fit. Understand each recommendation before applying it so you don't break any site functionality.

• Focus on user experience: The end goal is a page that loads fast, responds smoothly and stays stable, not just a high score. Improving metrics such as LCP, FID and CLS is what Google really cares about.

• Test regularly and track progress: Website performance can change over time. Check periodically to track improvements and adjust in time.

• Test on multiple devices and browsers: Make sure the website works well on desktop, mobile and the popular browsers.

Frequently asked questions: what is Google PageSpeed Insights?

1. Why does the PageSpeed Insights performance score change from one run to the next?

The performance score on Google PageSpeed Insights can change between runs even if you haven't touched the page, because of variation in the network, the server, the test location and other technical factors that PageSpeed Insights uses for its assessment.

So treat the score as a general indicator and focus on acting on the tool's optimization suggestions rather than worrying about fluctuations between tests.

2. What is a good Google PageSpeed Insights score?

The Google PageSpeed Insights score runs on a scale of 0 to 100, where:

• 90-100: A very good score. The site loads exceptionally fast and delivers a great user experience.

• 50-89: This range means the page loads reasonably well but still has room to improve.

• Below 50: This range means the site loads slowly. Prioritize performance fixes right away to improve the user experience and your SEO score.

That covers everything you need to know about Google's PageSpeed tool. It is a valuable tool for website administrators, but you need to know a few standards to run your site more effectively. The article from MONA Media also covers the essentials along with a usage guide. We hope it helped you understand the tool better. If you want to optimize your website and improve traffic, contact us for advice on solutions and to receive SEO price list with full details.