Why You Need to Be Familiar with Google’s Pagespeed Insights

Let’s face it—nobody likes a slow website. Whether you’re browsing for a new pair of shoes, reading a blog, or checking out a restaurant menu, waiting for a page to load feels like an eternity. And if you’re a website owner, that frustration your visitors feel? It’s costing you. Lost visitors, lower engagement, and even fewer sales. That’s where Google PageSpeed Insights comes in. It’s like a personal trainer for your website, helping us whip it into shape so it runs faster, smoother, and keeps both users and search engines happy.

In this post, we’ll walk you through what Google PageSpeed Insights is, why it’s such a big deal, and how we use it to make your website the best it can be. Spoiler: It’s not just about SEO—it’s about creating a better experience for everyone who visits your site.

What Exactly Is Google PageSpeed Insights?

Google PageSpeed Insights (let’s call it PSI for short) is a free tool that analyzes how well your website performs. You plug in your URL, and within seconds, it spits out a score between 0 and 100 for both desktop and mobile. But it doesn’t stop there. PSI also gives you a detailed breakdown of what’s working and what’s not, along with specific suggestions for improvement.

Under the hood, PSI uses something called Lighthouse, an open-source tool developed by Google. Lighthouse runs a series of tests on your site, checking everything from load times to how quickly users can interact with your page. The result? A clear, actionable report to improve the UX of your website.

Why Should You Care About Website Speed?

Okay, let’s get real for a second. Why does website speed even matter? Isn’t it enough to just have a beautiful design and great content? Well, not really. Here’s why speed is a big deal:

Users Are Impatient

We’ve all been there. You click on a link, and the page takes forever to load. What do you do? You hit the back button and try another site. Studies show that if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, you’re likely to lose a good amount of your visitors. And if your site is an e-commerce store, those lost visitors mean lost sales and revenue from unhappy customers. Nobody wants that.

Google Cares About Speed

Google has made it clear that website speed is important not only to users, but also to your SEO (to an extent). If your site is slow, you’re not just frustrating users—you’re also hurting your chances of showing up in search results. Core Web Vitals (more on those later) measures how fast your site loads, how quickly users can interact with it, and how stable the page is while it’s loading. If you want to rank well, you should try to nail these critical UX elements.

Speed Increases Conversions

Here’s the thing: A fast website isn’t just good for SEO—it’s good for business. Faster sites have higher conversion rates. Whether you’re selling products, collecting email sign-ups, or just trying to get people to read your blog, a speedy site makes it easier for visitors to do what you want them to do.

How PageSpeed Insights Can Help You

So, how does PSI actually help you improve your website?

Let’s break it down:

It Tells You What’s Wrong

Ever feel like your website is slow but have no idea why and your hosting company provides no help whatsoever? PSI is like a detective that uncovers the culprits. Maybe your images are too big, you have tracking scripts installed in the wrong area of your pages, or your server is taking forever to respond. PSI will point out the exact issues so you know where to focus your efforts.

It Gives You Tailored Advice

Once PSI identifies the problems, it doesn’t just leave you hanging. It gives you specific recommendations to fix them. For example, it might suggest compressing your images, minifying your CSS and JavaScript, or enabling browser caching. These tweaks might sound technical depending on the website platform you’re on, but a web developer will be able to adjust them.

It Helps You Optimize for Mobile

If you’re not thinking about mobile performance, you’re making a big mistake. More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, and Google uses the mobile version of your site for ranking. PSI gives you separate scores and recommendations for mobile, so you can make sure your site looks and performs great on smaller screens.

It Lets You Track Your Progress

Website optimization isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing process anytime you add new pages, new plugins, functionality, etc. PSI makes it easy to track your progress over time. Run your site through the tool regularly, and you’ll see how your scores improve as you make changes. It’s a great way to stay on top of your site’s performance and maintain its speed.

PageSpeed Insights Matters & SEO

If you’re serious about SEO, you need to be serious about website performance and delivering a solid UX for your users. Google doesn’t push scores from PageSpeed Insights as an exact ranking factor, but there is a certain expectation that your website should offer a good experience to visitors to be able to rank in search results. Here’s how PSI can tie into a technical SEO foundation:

Core Web Vitals

In 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals as a strong element to its ranking algorithm. These metrics—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—measure different aspects of user experience. PSI gives you detailed scores for each of these, so you know exactly where you stand.

For example, if your LCP score is low, it means your page is taking a little too long to load the main content. Fixing this could involve optimizing images, upgrading your hosting, or using a content delivery network (CDN). Generally speaking, these moves improve UX and, therefore, SEO.

Mobile-First Indexing

Since 2016, Google has prioritized the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. If your mobile performance is severely lacking, you’re at a serious disadvantage. PSI’s mobile-specific insights help you ensure your site is optimized for the majority of your visitors.

Better Performance = Better Rankings

At the end of the day, Google wants to deliver the best possible results to its users. A fast, well-optimized site is more likely to rank well because it provides a better experience. By using PSI to improve your site’s performance, you’re not just helping your visitors—you’re also enhancing your SEO potential.

What Should You Focus On in PageSpeed Insights?

PSI gives you a lot of information, but here are the key areas we pay attention to:

Core Web Vitals

These are the big three: LCP, FID, and CLS. Improving these metrics is typically a priority as they can directly impact both user experience and SEO.

Mobile Performance

We don’t just look at your desktop score. Mobile performance is crucial, so we like to make sure any issues related to smaller screens are resolved as quickly as possible.

Opportunities & Diagnostics

PSI breaks its recommendations into two categories: Opportunities and Diagnostics. Opportunities are specific actions we can take to improve your score, like compressing images or eliminating render-blocking resources. Diagnostics provide additional context about your site’s performance. While not all diagnostics require immediate action, they can help us identify other opportunities for improvement.

Real-World Data

PSI also provides field data from real users through the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). This data gives a more accurate picture of how your site performs in the real world, so development can be prioritized on things that will have the biggest impact.