[Support request] Why my site has no URLs with a good page experience

[Kris]

Hi guys,

I’m quite puzzled why Google Search Console tells me that my site has “no URLs with a good page experience”. We get a straight A from GTmetrix and 92% from Google’s own PageSpeed Insights (for Desktop), but only 38% for Mobile. First Contentful Paint is 2.7sec on mobile whereas on desktop it is only 0.7sec. Google Search Console reports 114 poor mobile URL’s, so it seems that the Mobile side of the website is not working properly. We do have over 500 pages indexed, but none show up with “good page experience”. See our sitemap https://socialmediarevolver.com/sitemap.xml Do you have any suggestions how to fix this? It seems to be killing our traffic.

Thank you for your help, as always! Cheers, Kris

[David]

Hi there,

when i ran a Google PSI report on the site, i must say it took several attempts to get the a result on the latest single post of your site, it failed several times to generate a report… rarely ever see that, if generally means there was too much delay in completing requests or the main thread was too complex for it to complete the parsing and rendering of the page.

When i did get a report. The main issue i see is related to the advert scripts.
I would recommend you use a plugin to defer the loading of the advert scripts so they don’t clog up the initial load time.
Aside from the scripts blocking the browsers ability to parse and render the site, they add other requests, such as the Google Fonts they use, and what i haven’t seen before is some very large image files they are requesting:

https://www.screencast.com/t/LtFN0ZN71IEd

I would prioritise fixing the adverts first, before looking at other improvements that could be made.

[Kris]

Thank you for your quick reply, David! I’m running Easy Google AdSense plugin for the ads. https://noorsplugin.com/easy-google-adsense-plugin-wordpress/ Which plugin would you recommend to defer the loading of the advert scripts? I am not very familiar with this area at all, mate.

Also, I just noticed that most of the widgets in the right sidebar area are not loaging up in the admin. I was going to delete some of them, but can’t now. They do show up on the website though. See image https://socialmediarevolver.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/sidebar.jpg This is odd, eh? Has something gone broken here? The site is hosted by Hostgator so it should be fine speedwise.

Cheers, Kris

[David]

Lets see if we can fix the Widget issue – looks like the new Block Widgets don’t like some of the widgets in there.
Try disabling the Block Widgets ( return to classic ) by adding the PHP snippet provided here:

https://docs.generatepress.com/article/disable-the-block-editor-in-widgets/

Adverts:
If that Plugin is working for you then you can keep it, its just inserting the codes.
There are other plugins that will defer the loading of the 3rd party scripts. Lots of optimization plugins can do this but if you’re not using one that does – the the Flying Scripts plugin will work:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/flying-scripts/

[Kris]

OK, the Widgets are back in action with the Code Snippets plugin. Thanks!

I am using WP Optimize https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ but since I don’t know if it does what you are after I installed the Flying Scripts as well. Or does the Minify function on WP Optimise perform the same task as Flying Scripts? I have this feature currently not active.
Anyways, I don’t know what to write in the settings, so I just left the boxes empty and Timeout at 5 sec.

I ran Google PSI on the latest article and I got 44 mobile/91 desktop. Desktop score seems good now, but Mobile is still quite bad. Anything else we could try, mate?

[David]

What flying scripts does is different to what Minify does.
In the Flying scripts settings theres an Include Keywords field.
This is where you add the scripts you want to defer the loading of.
The standard google ad script you want to add there is:

adsbygoogle.js

[Kris]

OK, we’re getting somewhere now! Our latest post scored 77 mob 95 desktop. That is a nice improvement!
Reduce initial server response time and Reduce unused CSS still get a red flag. Is there anything we can do there, David?

I’m thinking of running Imagify image optimisation plugin on all my images. https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagify/
There is a setting “You’re using GeneratePress. Would you like to optimize your theme?” What is your view onb this? OK to run it?

[Elvin]

Hi Kris,

Reduce initial server response, also known as TTFB (time to first byte) is pretty tricky to address because it has two sides to it.

One side is optimization of WordPress assets using optimization plugins like WP rocket, Autoptimize, Litespeed Cache or similar plugin of your choice.

But any effort on this side can be invalidated if the hosting service provider for the site itself is slow or of bad quality.

As for “reduce unused CSS”, optimization plugin has that option as well.

Example #1: (WP Rocket)
https://docs.wp-rocket.me/article/1529-remove-unused-css

[Kris]

Hi Elvin,

I am using WP Optimize https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ at the moment. Would you recommend using WP Rocket instead?

Also, I’m thinking of running Imagify image optimisation plugin on all my images. https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagify/
There is a setting “You’re using GeneratePress. Would you like to optimize your theme?” What is your view onb this? OK to run it?

Another one I’m considering is Smush https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/ Any view on that Plug In?

[Elvin]

I am using WP Optimize https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ at the moment. Would you recommend using WP Rocket instead?

That’s fine but it would be great if you could do an A/B test for different plugins and see what gives the best yield.

But again, if the server itself is of low quality, no amount of effort on optimization plugin will help. 🙂

These “low” quality servers are usually servers with multiple sites hosted on it or simply a server w/ low specs.

Ideally, if you get a host for the site, it’s best to have a dedicated server for it but that can be pricey.

Also, I’m thinking of running Imagify image optimisation plugin on all my images. https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagify/
There is a setting “You’re using GeneratePress. Would you like to optimize your theme?” What is your view onb this? OK to run it?

It should be fine but to be sure, check your blog page if some image breaks as there are some occurrence where SVGs(if you’re using one) break when a plugin tries to convert SVG images to webp.

[Kris]

Hi Elvin,

Is there a way to measure the performance of the server? My site is hosted at Hostgator, and it is shared.

Re. Reduce Unused CSS is there a separate, and possibly free plugin that could be used? I’m using WP Optimize and it does not seem to have it.

Also, re. WP Optimize when I turn on Minify it messes up the layout. See image: https://socialmediarevolver.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/minify.jpg

Any idea why it does that? …and can this be fixed?

Cheers,
Kris

[Elvin]

Is there a way to measure the performance of the server? My site is hosted at Hostgator, and it is shared.

You can use the usual testing sites but test it w/ a fresh WordPress installation w/o anything in it first so you have a baseline of how fast your server is. (Note: if a fresh WordPress installation already has high TTFB then that’s a sign of a slow server)

You then compare the performance of your server on a fresh WordPress installation and when it already has some plugins active.

Re. Reduce Unused CSS is there a separate, and possibly free plugin that could be used? I’m using WP Optimize and it does not seem to have it.

I believe WP Rocket and Litespeed cache have this feature but WP Rocket isn’t free and I’m unsure if Litespeed Cache’s free version has it.

Also, re. WP Optimize when I turn on Minify it messes up the layout. See image: https://socialmediarevolver.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/minify.jpg

It’s best to ask it’s support/developer about this as they know more about it than we do.

But to help you out: Do you have CSS combine/merge/aggregation enabled? That can break things. (especially of there’s a syntax issue on some custom CSS)

[Kris]

OK, I tested https://sandbox.digpublish.com with google PSI and I got 100 mobile and 99 desktop! This new WP installation is on the same shared server so it means that the problem is not at Hostgator. This is good news, but where else could we now look for improvements?

Re. “Do you have CSS combine/merge/aggregation enabled?” I do not see where that setting might be.

Cheers,
Kris

[Elvin]

OK, I tested https://sandbox.digpublish.com with google PSI and I got 100 mobile and 99 desktop! This new WP installation is on the same shared server so it means that the problem is not at Hostgator. This is good news, but where else could we now look for improvements?

That’s good.

AS for further improvements, we base on what Google PageSpeed insight and other testing sites tell us.

The usual things people do are:

Enable cache.
Minify CSS and JS. (Through optimization plugin)
Aggregate/Combine/Merge CSS and JS. (Through optimization plugin)
Upload reasonable sized image (if high resolution images aren’t needed, don’t upload them.)
Compress images (may cause image quality loss)
Serve images through a CDN (through image optimization plugin)
Lazy load images.
Use Critical CSS (This is very technical, may even make performance worse if configured incorrectly)
Remove Unused CSS (usually through Asset Cleanup plugin or Optimization plugins)
Async JS.

Re. “Do you have CSS combine/merge/aggregation enabled?” I do not see where that setting might be.

On the plugin’s CSS tab, you’ll likely see a checkbox “Enable merging of CSS files”.

[Kris]

Hi Elvin,

There is no CSS tab, mate. Odd?

Anyways, our latest post https://socialmediarevolver.com/7-best-ways-for-a-new-site-to-drive-real-traffic/ scored 86 mobile, 96 desktop which is a huge approvement since we started working on this. Big thanks to you and David!

The goal eventually would be to break that 90 points barrier. I can still see 3 red flags:

1. Reduce initial server response time.
As we saw with our sandbox site the server can give us 100, so what could we do here?
2. Ensure text remains visible during webfont load.
I have no idea what this even means 🙂
3. Largest Contentful Paint image was not lazily loaded.
This is odd, as I do have a good Lazy Load plugin installed https://wordpress.org/plugins/rocket-lazy-load/

Additionally to these we have a problem with WP-Optimize’s Minify which brakes down the theme layout.
If we could find a way to use it that would be great.

Thank you for your continous support!

Cheers,
Kris

[Author]

Posts