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I’ve said it before and will keep saying it again and again.
Site speed is critical to growing your search traffic.
Slow websites…
- Rank lower in Google
- Have lower conversion rates
- Have lower average order values
- Deliver lower return on ad spend
- Generate less revenue with higher expenses
Having a slow website is like carrying a huge weight on your back up a mountain and growing a business is hard enough without that additional weight.
On top of that, website speed has been a confirmed Google ranking factor for over a decade with the Core Web Vitals algorithm update which hit in 2021.
So keep reading because I’m going to show you how to get a perfect 100/100 Google PageSpeed score on mobile and desktop…
…which will lead to instant gains in conversion rates, average order values and revenue.
What Will I Learn?
Achieveing The Perfect Google PageSpeed Score
Before I show you precisely how to get perfect Google PageSpeed scores, I wanted to show you what we were able to do on this site:
(bulk Google PageSpeed testing done with BatchSpeed.com)
You can’t really get much better than that!
All my pages have been optimized to:
- Provide a better user experience to my visitors
- Give Google precisely what it wants
And it wasn’t even that hard to do!
But before we start I recommend you use the Google PageSpeed Insights or BatchSpeed tools to see where you stand.
And if you’re wondering what is a good Google page speed score to aim for, you want to be hitting mobile scores of 60+ and desktop scores of 90+ at the very least.
You can check the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console to see if you have problems-
If you see a lot of poor URL’s…
I can assure you that fixing site speed should be a business-critical task.
How To Get A Perfect Google PageSpeed Score
I’ve spent the last few years optimizing our sites for speed.
That includes everything from rewriting code all the way through to migrating themes and/or hosting to try and get control of things across a range of sites.
Up until recently, after a ton of testing – my go to site speed stack was:
- WP Rocket (caching + WP optimisation)
- Pefmatters (control JS and CSS)
- ShortPixel (image optimisation)
- KeyCDN (serving images/static assets)
- Cloudflare Pro (security + misc speed features)
This wasn’t all that cheap to run, nor that straightforward to set up.
But it did allow me to post some pretty good desktop-based GooglePage speed scores, although I could never get close to 100/100 for mobile.
That was until I put a new stack together which is cheaper and takes 5 minutes to setup-
| AVERAGE SCORES | WPRocket + PerfMatters + ShortPixel + Cloudflare + KeyCDN | NitroPack + CloudFlare + PerfMatters |
|---|---|---|
| Fully Load Time | 7.50s | 2.02s |
| Requests | 100 | 29 |
| Bytes (KB) | 2,554 | 442 |
| Desktop | 79/100 | 98/100 |
| Mobile | 41/100 | 90/100 |
As you can see the improvements are huge! Especially when you consider the previous speed stack was already heavily optimized.
So if you want to get perfect 100/100 Google Pagespeed scores, you will need 3 things-
#1 – NitroPack
NitroPack is the best way to speed up your website period.
It does so many things to optimize your site speed it’s almost hard to list them-
- Complete CSS Optimization – Including an awesome feature that extracts and loads the CSS needed above the fold first
- Complete JS Optimization – That doesn’t break everything! If you’ve ever tried to optimise JS you’ll know what I mean
- Complete Image Optimisation – Including compression, adaptive image sizing, lazy loading and webp where supported
- Robust CDN – Gzip, Brotli and HTTP/2 enabled CDN
- Other Awesome Features – Like Google Font optimization and automatic optimization of commonly used scripts and ad networks
If you go to the NitroPack homepage you can enter your URL to see what it can do for you:
And best of all…
…it takes 5 minutes to get set up AND they even have a free account.
Read my full NitroPack Review to learn more about it.
#2 – CloudFlare Advanced Platform Optimization (optional)
If after integrating NitroPack the perfect 100/100 mobile PageSpeed scores elude you…
Don’t worry!
All we need to do is take advantage of CloudFlares new Advanced Platform Optimziation (APO) feature:
It’s available on the free plan for a $5/month fee and takes less than 60 seconds to set up…
…you literally just have to press “on” and it’s done.
#3 – Perfmatters (optional)
If you embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia on your site – you will also need the help of PerfMatters to get that perfect PageSpeed score.
Specifically, you will need to enable the options to lazy load iframes/videos and replace preview thumbnails-
Once enabled, you’ll be able to achieve 100/100 Google Pagespeed scores on any pages that are embedding videos.
It doesn’t get much easier than that!
PRO TIPS: To improve your SEO performance, make sure to use all the Google tools available. Don’t know anything about these tools? Take a look at my list of Google tools.
Wrapping It Up
Let me make it simple:
A 1 second delay in load time leads to Amazon losing $1.6 billion in sales.
That is because site speed is a ranking factor for humans AND search engines…
A Google Ranking Factor Since 2010
Google don’t confirm many ranking factors, but we do know that site speed has been part of the ranking algorithm since 2010:
Site speed is one of the first things we fix for clients at SearchLogistics because it almost always delviers an increase in search traffic.
New Core Web Vitals Update – May 2021
If you use Google Search Console, you might have seen the new Core Web Vitals report show up in the last year-
If your report is showing a lot of poor URL’s – not only are you leaving a lot of search traffic on the table…
…but you are about to lose more traffic as Google deploys the new Google Page Experience update.
It’s not often that Google gives us a heads-up on algorithm changes so make sure you take action now or you’re going to regret it.
Click here to see how to improve Core Web Vitals.
72 Responses
Thanks for sharing these tips to improve page loading speed.
No problem. Glad it was helpful.
Thanks for the article. Is it difficult to move a site over to Kinsta?
No, it’s not. Just check out my Kinsta review to learn more about their migration policy- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/reviews/kinsta/
I am playing with various individual plugins at the moment. I did look at Nitro but the one thing that put me off straight was :-
INCOMPATIBLE PLUGINS
WordPress is designed to have only a single active page cache solution at a time, otherwise conflicts can arise. We do not recommend using NitroPack together with another caching plugin, like:
WP Rocket
Autoptimize
Swift Performance
WP Fastest Cache
WP Fastest Cache Premium
Powerpack (WPTouchPro)
W3 Total Cache
Breeze
PhastPress
WP Super Cache
Litespeed Cache
Swift Performance
PageSpeed Ninja
Comet Cache by WP Sharks
Hummingbird
SG Optimizer
WP-Optimize – only the page caching must be disabled, not the entire plugin
Smush – only the lazy load option must be disabled, not the entire plugin
JetPack – only the lazy load option must be disabled, not the entire plugin
ShortPixel – only the WebP conversion option must be disabled, not the entire plugin
Hi Mike. I understand your concern but this is because NitroPack replace all of these plugins.
Hi Mike- I understand your concern, but this is because NitroPack replaces all these plugins.
Is there any program that will increase site speed for a shopify account? My domain is through godaddy.
Unfortunately, all the plugins I use to speed up my sites don’t work with Shopify.
Shopify has its own plugins, but to be honest, they are not as good as others…
If you’re really struggling with your speed, I would suggest you hire a Shopify SEO expert to help you fix it- https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/shopify-seo-expert/
If I use only Nitropack, it will increase site speed ?
Well, it depends… It might not be enough.
What host are you using? And what kind of content do you have on your pages? Text or media?
So did this last night, signed up for the NitroPack non branded option, already had cloudflare and just got a email from ubbersuggest regarding my sites primary keyword, moved from pos4 -> pos1 overnight.
Have been reading your blog for years, saw something that relates to what I like doing, did it and got results.
Cheers brother.
Pos1 on mobile BTW, desktop moved up 1 spot
Well done, Charl!
Is NitroPack + Cloudflare without PerfMatters, enough to get 90+ scores?
It should be, but it depends. If you embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia on your site then, you will need it.
Does this work with Shopify?
If not, what would you suggest?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with Shopify.
To be honest, there isn’t any magic plugin like this one for Shopify…
I tested the free version of Nitropack on 1 of my sites last week and got and almost perfect score.
However this week someone notified me to a post on WP Johnny and also Webwhim that Nitropack is cheating the page speed scores, which may be blackhat.
Now I’m wondering if I should switch to another plugin.
And for which plugin would like to switch to?
By the way, this is what I think about white hat/black hat SEO labels:
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/white-hat-seo-vs-black-hat-seo/
Developer here, It absolutely is cheating the test. While you get 100s you are hurting user experience. NitroPack will break things and it’s unpredictable. Even if something isn’t broken now, a plugin could update and all of a sudden you are seeing issues.
Amazing, thanks! Tried so many plugins and combinations, with little success. Nitro pack took my mobile score from 20 to 98 and desktop from 68 to 100! Unbelievable.
Great scores, Mark!
Thanks for sharing with us :)
Great content Matthew!!
I had the typical, wp rocket+smush+perfmatters… and I decided to give a try to Nitro, following your suggestion. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but for now it looks like its working. It’s still optimizing pages, but I got 100/100, so I just wanted to thank you for the tip.
I used your link, of course, as a thank you as well.
Great job!
Glad you followed my advice! Cheers Marc :)
Thanks for the reminder on page speed. As for your nitro pack recommendation, I’m not too sure on how it handles the coding. It does look good on the score though.
So far, I haven’t had any issue!
Hi Matthew,
A useful post, as always.
The Nitropack test fails because I’m using AMP on my site.
Any thoughts on whether Nitropack without AMP would get better results than AMP without Nitropack?
Thanks
I’m pretty sure that NitroPack would get better results than your current AMP!
I use Wpx hosting and am rebuilding my site with Thrive theme builder. I can see for sure I can hit 100 on both Desktop and Mobile. You are the reason I use Wpx anyway.
Happy to hear that- Thank you Bill and good luck with your site!
I tried this when you first mentioned Nitropack in one of your videos but it breaks all my sites. One shop was so destroyed that we had problems restoring the backup.
Have you actually tried this on Woocommerce stores? Because from my experience it was a never-ending nightmare.
Hey Felix,
Sorry to hear about your experience!
We tried it on WordPress, and it worked perfectly.
We haven’t had any issue so far.
Hi Matthew, Im a WA member. I have run the nitro pack on my website, I will install it as it will improve things but I am a long way from 100% and not sure what I need to do to improve this.
Hey Helen
Sorry, I’m not sure to understand how can I help you…
Are you going to install NitroPack or have you already installed the plugin?
Lol there’s your problem. You’re with WA. Hahaha.
Do fill us in on the Joke Nick? I host some of my sitesd with WA and my scores are 90’s on mobile and 100 desktop. So not following your ha ha?
Really nice article. Before this, I blindly trust wp-rocket bt now its the time to switch.
Thanks Matthew
WP Rocket is good but NitroPack is even better! :)
Dear Mathew…
I achieved the same results without Nitro and CF Pro…
What I did is…
1 – A Cloud Server
2 – Litespeed Webserver
3 – Litespeed Cache Plugin
4 – Quic Cloud CDN by Litespeed with HTTP 3 + QUIC Protocol
5 – Simple Tweaks in Cache Plugin…
Booom…
Now, My News Website can Handle 6000 concurrent visitors and Half a Million Pageviews Daily…
with a 40$ per month Hosting Plan.
Seriously, No extra cost…
Impressive- Well done Sibi Paul!
interesting setup. you have more details on which services you bought and costs?
Great stuff, Matthew! Thanks for helping me serve my clients better.
No worries, Ava!
Another great article Matthew. Don’t expect anything less!
How does LiteSpeed compare with NitroPack, as I have heard some not so good reviews about NitroPack.
Also, what about website hosting? Does this not have an effect on website speed?
That’s a good question- I haven’t test LiteSpeed yet so I couldn’t tell.
Yes, website hosting does have an effect on site speed.
This is why I ran these tests:
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/fastest-wordpress-hosting/
Thanks for the article. I’m running WP Rocket at the moment and was wondering about switching to Nitropack. The only downside I can see is reading another article elsewhere it states – If you use Google AdSense to monetize your blog, NitroPack may even minify ad scripts, which will disable Google AdSense for your blog and affect your revenue.
All my income is from Adsense at the moment, but might be worth a try to increase speed.
Perhaps, you should run a test with the free version and see what happens!
That is crazy.. I have been trying to speed up a client’s site and looked at Hummingbird which was tricky to set up and caused some problems. I just installed Nitro as above and my mobile speed went from 25 to 99 and desktop when from 72 to 100!
Thanks, Matthew.
Glad to hear that- Thank you, Roger, for sharing your experience with us!
There are other plugins Matt re optimising – Autoptimze is one I used. before that I used individual plugins that did specific jobs re lazyload, minify etc. The WP cloudflare plugin does quite a bit as well. A word or warniing to everyone though – test test and test again. I found Autoptimzse was great at improving site speed BUT it seemed to conflict with my contact form 7 plugin.
Great advice, Peter!
I used autoptimize – and all worked great – great speed results etc. All seemed fine – then I changed nearly all of my sites. Then I had the problem – autoptimize affected my contact form 7 pages – no customer contact etc – not good. Disabled all plugins and re introduced one by one. autopimize was the culprit – I dont have hours and hours to figure out why. I just switched off autoptimize and went back to some oyther individual plugins re cache / minify etc
All good but one request, pls could you suggest a “second best” in place of horrible cloudflare, which I never want to use again after the problems I had with it?
Check this out: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/reviews/wp-rocket/
I heard that the best way to test the speed of the site is not using Google Page Speed but web.dev, if you do the test using both tools you will notice that there is a huge difference between them
There are plenty of tools to test speed.
I personally use:
– GTMetrix
– WebPageTest
– Google Page Speed
I understand why people say not to use Page Speed, the thing is Google uses this tool to check out your website and determine your score…
So my advice will be to check your site speed with more than one tool.
Always good stuff! – Never come across Batch Speed before. Cheers!! – Nigel
Thanks- Cheers, Nigel!
Great article. Didn’t know about the Nitro Pack. Thanks for sharing.
No problem, Martin!
Muchas gracias Matthew Woodward, lo cierto es que no conocía la plataforma de nitropack, así que creo es momento de ver que tal van mis webs con tus consejos.
Se agradece mucho este tipo de consejos, que al fin y al cabo, son consejos que te pueden hacer ganar más dinero con las webs.
Great recommendation. Nitropack just jumped my google page speed score from 46 to 100! Its a shame they don’t have any middle ground offer Going from 0 to 50,000 a month – I am in the lower end so $15 a month is steep when you just scrape into the paid part.
Well done! Keep it up!
I agree… It can be a bit pricy but it worth it.
Hello Matt,
You told us on the 27th March 2021 here https://youtu.be/q8XjPTbO5Tk to use WP Rocket + Imagify and today you tell us to use NitroPack.
I already got a licence for WP Rocket. Shall I cancel and get NitroPack ?
Many thanks
Best
Hey Thomas! WP Rocket is still a great plugin. I used it for many years and never had any issue.
So, if you are getting the results & speed scores you want, then keep it.
Don’t fix things that are not broken ;)
Great Stuff Matt. In your opinion, will PerfMatters alone help?
Hmm I don’t think it will be enough to get a score of 100/100…
Thank you, Matthew!
You’re welcome!
Thanks for sharing, Now I am updating NitroPack plugin and wordpress site really improved page speed. Just custom php website can’t integrate via this service.
Thanks for sharing the info with us!