While this tool doesn’t give a 360° high-level view of overall SEO performance, it does give you a clear idea of the technical state of your website in two straightforward numbers.

The first number is your mobile optimization score. It shows how well your site loads and performs on mobile devices; smartphones and tablets. This is the more important score of the two because Google now shows desktop search engine results based on the mobile scores.

For my agency’s website, here is our Page Speed mobile score:

At 99/100, we have passed the test with flying colors. Even though there are still optimization suggestions provided by the tool here, they aren’t valid in this case. The suggestions are just attempts to make computational recommendations- exceptions apply.

The second number is your desktop score. In our case, 95/100:

While we enjoy such high scores, they really aren’t necessary. Google doesn’t privilege you for an exceptional PageSpeed score. Instead, it demerits you for poor scores.

LOW MOBILE PAGESPEED SCORES LEAD TO LOWER SEARCH POSITIONS.
LOWER SEARCH POSITIONS LEAD TO LESS TRAFFIC, LEADS, AND REVENUES.

Test your site now: PageSpeed Insights

If you scored 80+ for mobile and desktop, great job! You can rest at ease that the technical performance of site isn’t holding you back. Now you can put energy into aesthetics, user-experience, and content.

If your scores are in the 70s, this is probably safe enough, however, you’ll want to keep your eyes on this test as Google’s next algorithm changes could make your 70s score slip down into the 60s. Also, with the slower loading pages of the 70s score, you are more likely to have visitors leave your site due to slow loading on mobile devices- especially when they are in areas with weak signals- and those quickly departing visitors (what the industry calls “bounces”) can hurt your SEO position.

If you are in the 60s or below, it is absolutely necessary to either get yourself a shiny new website or to get PageSpeed optimization. It can usually be done in 10 hours or less of work.

Read more about the PageSpeed optimization process and how we do it here.

Sometimes a slow server will derail a site’s performance. In those cases, we simply move the site over to our server and the scores instantly jump up. (We’ll even test it before the move to confirm our theory that it is a server issue).

And, sometimes a cleanup isn’t enough and you’ll need a new website- especially if your web designer hacked a site together using slow-loading plugins as opposed to custom code.

If you see your low PageSpeed score as a wake-up call that you need a new website, keep in mind that most all-in-one web designers know very little about PageSpeed performance. They are not masters of the many specialities involved and thus they often deliver incomplete marketing solutions.

Web development companies, like ours, have all of the specialists in place so that everything is done right from the beginning. Read how it takes 10 specialists in our agency to create a website. It’ll help you understand why no all-in-one provider has a chance of providing the same scope of services, just as one handyman can’t replace a team of architect, structural engineer, interior designers, and tradesmen.

If you have questions, feel free to ask here.

I’d love to hear how your website performed in the PageSpeed Insights test—so leave your comments below.

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