Google Pagespeed insights

  • Unknown's avatar
    bikerjima · Member ·

    My blog gets a pretty poor rating from Google Pagespeed Insights for mobile, just around a 51. It’s much better for desktop and scores in the 80s or 90s. How can I improve this? Is it a matter of my theme not being that good for mobile? Are there better ones?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    There are a couple of factors at play here that I think are relevant in showing that score:

    – Your homepage contains a blog posts grid. Any page that has to load dynamic content (such as recent posts from the blog) will require a bit more processing time than a page that is serving static content, such as your about page.
    – I see that you are participating in our WordAds program, and one thing to be aware of is that any time you run ads they can tend to slow down the performance of any site. They just require more load time than if there were no ads at all.

    But, if I can add a bit of perspective, performance tests such as these should be taken with a big grain of salt. Google’s tool is one that is intended for site developers who are creating websites from scratch, and trying to optimize to the greatest degree possible.

    As good as it is however, the tool Google has created is not intended for testing WordPress.com sites, or sites that are created using a “website builder” or app to create a site vs. coding it by hand. As a result they tend to make performance recommendations that can’t actually be acted upon unless you are hand-coding your site.

    Another reason to take that result with a grain of salt is that it is not an indicator of how Google will rank your site in search. If that were the case, how can a site like bikemag.com can be so busy and popular (and highly ranked) when it’s mobile score is somewhere in the low 30’s? The answer is that performance is only one factor in ranking your site in search. The quality of your content, it’s popularity with readers, and your own efforts to promote yourself and drive traffic on social media and other channels are all factors that get considered here.

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

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