Your PageSpeed score is low: what to fix first

A red PageSpeed score looks alarming, but it is really a to-do list. The trick is doing it in the right order, because a few fixes usually account for most of the gain and the rest are polish.

We built Site Fighter to compare two sites side by side, which makes this much clearer than a single number. These are the things that tend to matter, roughly in the order we check them.

Know what you are aiming for

Google’s published targets for a “good” experience are a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or under, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or under, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or under. Aim for those on mobile, measured on real devices where you can.

1. Server response time

If the server takes a long time to answer, nothing else can start. Slow hosting, an overloaded plugin stack and uncached pages are the usual causes. Fixing this helps every page at once and is the first thing we look at.

2. The biggest image on the page

On most sites the Largest Contentful Paint is a hero image. Serve it in a modern format at the size it is actually displayed, do not lazy-load it, and tell the browser about it early. This one change often moves the score more than anything else.

3. Scripts you did not choose

Chat widgets, tracking pixels, social embeds and tag managers add up. List every third-party script, ask what each one earns you, and remove or delay the ones that do not pay their way.

4. Fonts

Use fewer families and weights, host them yourself, and make sure text shows while they load. Fonts are small individually but block rendering when they are handled badly.

5. Layout shift

Give images, embeds and adverts fixed dimensions so the page does not jump as it loads. A stable page feels faster even when the numbers are similar.

6. Page builders and bloat

Heavy themes and builders ship a lot of code on every page whether you use it or not. Sometimes the honest answer is that the foundation needs replacing rather than tuning, and we will say so.

Test properly

Run the test more than once, on mobile, and compare against a competitor rather than a perfect score. A score of 70 that beats everyone in your market is worth more than a lab 100 nobody sees.

Want to see how your site stacks up against a rival? Try a head-to-head on Site Fighter, or get in touch and we will review it with you.