How To Improve Mobile SEO to be a Core Web Vitals (CWV) Green Score?

Discussion 3: How To Improve Mobile SEO to be a Core Web Vitals (CWV) Green Score?
Charlotte
Struggling to get my mobile SEO in the green it's really annoying me! I am 91 for desktop.
I have WP rocket, have tried to thin out plugins as much as possible do you think any of these will be affecting the score?
Ad inserter, akismet anti spam, better search replace, Google analytics by monster, jet pack (majority is disabled), kk star ratings, WP user avatar, pixel your site, meks smart author widget
Thanks for any help you can provide
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how to improve mobile seo to be a core web vitals cwv green score
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Tisha
Perhaps try Asset Manager plugin, shut off everything that's unnecessary. Br sure to test thoroughly to make sure everything still works before going live with it.
Better search replace could be disabled or even deleted until it's needed again

Roman
true! disabling plugins it´s enough for speed purposes, you don´t have to necessarily delete them 🙂

Roman
Your cumulative layout shift is the way worst figure of all the Google standards, I would focus on it with high priority at your place 🙂 usually, you can easily solve it by giving a min-height css property to all the shifting elements. you can find the latter by delving into the very same Google speed score report 🙂. The very important thing is that you pass the Google web vitals test in its entirity, the actual speed does not matter that much, at least not for SEO.
Martinez 🎓
Core Web Vitals (CWV) is not going to be that important to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the near future. This thing has been blown way out of proportion by bloggers who made mountains out of a mole-hill.
Don't panic if you don't get the SLIGHT boost in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) that CWV promises. It doesn't mean you're going to lose all your rankings and traffic.

Hofman » Martinez
feel the same way, but let's see the data after the first weeks after the 1.5. to not base this assumption on gut feeling
Reece » Martinez
Really? That's not the impression that Google is giving.
A 'slight boost' – which also implies a 'slight decrease' – can be potentially significant.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-all…/394358/
Google: All Core Web Vitals May Need to Be Met For Ranking Boost
Martinez 🎓
"Slight boost" does not imply "slight decrease". It's a 1-way signal according to Google. And they have not anywhere in any way indicated that CWV will be a game-changer. https://developers.google.com/…/timing-for-page-experience
Timing for bringing page experience to Google Search
Reece » Martinez
From that article:
"Visual indicators on the results are another way to do the same [provide information about the quality of a web page's experience] and we are working on one that identifies pages that have met all of the page experience criteria."
Would it not be reasonable to expect that a lower CWV score (or however Google chooses to display the info) would negatively affect CTR, and therefore rankings?
Martinez 🎓 » Reece
That passage is talking about a badge that Google wants to display next to listings (individual URLs) that meet the minimum criteria in CWV (everything green). It's not about a ranking signal.
They've used SERP annotations in the past. Few of them last for long, in my experience. And right now mobile SERPs display favicons so I expect people will try to use deceptive favicons.
Reece
I get what the badge is about. (and yes also I doubt whether it'll last long).
What I'm saying is – if that badge is displaying info right there on the SERPs about whether the URL passes web vitals or not – wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that either having a low score on the badge, or not having the badge at all would have a negative impact on click through rate? And because we know that a low ctr will by extension translate into a negative impact on rankings… Doesn't that negate your 'CWV is not going to be that important to SEO' statement…?
The way I read it, Google's badge will basically be saying to searchers "this page kinda sucks in some way… Don't click it" 🤷‍♂️
Martinez 🎓 » Reece
As far as the CTR, it should be an either/or thing. If you have the badge, maybe it will induce people to click through more often.
The badge is meant to reassure searchers that they will have a good experience on the site.
HOWEVER, since I don't know what the badges will look like (maybe they will include a score), I reserve the right to say "never mind" in the future.
Reece
OK. I get that it's all speculation at this point and that you think it's being over-hyped. And, as someone who has had websites seriously affected by previous core updates, I think it's a little irresponsible to say that it's going to have little to no impact.
Martinez 🎓 » Reece
"Core Web Vitals" or "Page Experience" <> "core algorithm update".
Those are two entirely different things. The CWV/Page Experience update will be much more subdued, along the lines of the over-hyped Mobile-friendly update.

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Ammon Johns 🎓
When speed is important I generally advise that you should try to get total plugins down to 5. Consider every plugin more than 5 to be taking points off your SEO until you reach 10. If you have more than 10 total plugins you are probably only wanting SEO because you want all of the things (thus so many plugins). Make a hard, statistically based business case for every single plugin if you are ever above 8 total, and anything that isn't directly helping you, in real business terms, remove. What is the point of slowing your whole site for fancy sharing plugins when the only ones ever sharing your site are you and your team, who'd do it anyway without the plugins?
However, these sorts of guidelines are just that. It is generally true that faster loading is always better, and that for every full second it takes your site to open there's a percentage of potential visitors (and customers) that won't wait and try another site. Always consider that when designing pages, especially ones with big images that you love, but not one customer ever has written to you to say they wouldn't have used your site if the image was 10% smaller. 😃

Charlotte ✍️ » Ammon Johns
really good point I will review them all!

Casas
If you have time to learn how To implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), it will make things easier, pay a Content Delivery Network (CDN), pay an image compression plugin, tweak WP-Rocket properly. Get a fast hosting plan from a reliable hosting service.
Charlotte ✍️
Thanks for your advice everyone!

Martinez 🎓 » Charlotte
Google AMP would not be a good investment of your time. Many people have run into problems implementing AMP because it is so limiting.
Charlotte ✍️ » Martinez
thanks, I think the plug-in advice is a good one. some of them have been on since day one when I knew absolutely nothing and was just following a guide so I need to research what value they are adding.
I know I will need to switch hosting when my traffic picks up, I'm only at 1000 p/vs atm so think I should get more before I switch up.
But I did try Nitro pack that's helped massively!

Martinez 🎓
There are many plugins that promise to speed up Websites. They're all mixed bags of ideas. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
In general, minifying CSS and Javascript files doesn't do much. It's better if a plugin combines them all into a single CSS or Javascript file.
Even better are the plugins that include all the external stuff in the source page.
That eliminates extra fetch requests. And if your plugins minify things, it's better to minify everything in a single page.
Lazy loading images is a good idea. Many plugins now offer to do that for you. But the fewer images you embed on a page the better, because each image triggers a separate fetch request. Some plugins may still offer to manage your images via sprites, which combine all images into a single file. However, sprites have fallen out of favor because they can become very large – and it takes mobile users longer to download them.
If you want to embed videos, it's better to use a thumbnail or screen capture from the videos and link to them.

Charlotte ✍️ » Martinez
great thanks so much
It's catch 22 with images and videos because you need to create good articles that are interesting and add lots of value and of course good images and useful videos do that. But I do compress and use lazy load and that has helped for sure
Longer term better hosting is probably the answer I am on the dreaded basic blue host at the minute 😂
I need to get some proper pages ranking before I switch I want to be sure I can do this!
Loving it so far my knowledge has come a long way in last 8 months but so much still to learn!
Martinez 🎓 » Charlotte
Cheap hosting has its limitations, to be sure, but most sites can benefit from managing bot traffic. That's not a simple task, but scaling up to more powerful hosting doesn't always help as much as promised.
When botnets crawl a site all day long, they tie up the TCP connections people (and search engines) use to get to the site. They also use up memory and CPU time, and the site runs slowly.
Your hosting account should have some kind of bandwidth usage report you can check. You may see that your account is approaching its limits. When that happens a lot, you can get back some of the bandwidth by blocking the bots. If not, then you'll know it's time to start looking at more expensive plans.
Sometimes all you need to do is talk to your hosting company support team. Of course, they'll probably try to upsell you to a more expensive plan, but sometimes they can provide helpful tips for managing the bots.
You might find a firewall plugin that fights them for you. There is a cost/benefit ratio to consider. The best firewalls are independent devices that sit between the server and the Internet. Your host may already be using one. But if you think your site is being hammered by bots, then a firewall plugin should be able to help limit their activity.
Bots account for as much as 50%-75% of activity on most Websites, according to various sources. I've documented similar levels of bot activity on my own sites (prior to implementing firewalls).
Charlotte ✍️ » Martinez
thank you for all of your help!

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This may satisfy you: CWV: Performance: 98 | Accessibility: 100 | Best Practices: 100 | SEO: 100 | Do this Strategy!
Discussion 2: How to get the mobile speed score below 2.5 sec on Google Page Speed?
Yadav
Hi Wonderful People What can I do to get the mobile speed score on Google's test my site tool below 2.5 sec?
My current score is 5sec to 6 secs on testmysite tool and on GT Matrix 35% speed score.

how to get the mobile speed score below 2 5 sec on google page speed
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Edmonds
Post the link here.

Yadav
thecarguy dot com dot au and carbusiness dot com au
Edmonds
Here is the results from the paid version of gtmetrix from Hong Kong as your site is hosted in Singapore.
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.thecarguy.com.au/hOEdxbXF
The TTFB is very high. Its 1.6 seconds. This should be under 500ms. This could be server issue, or could be theme issue. You can run a test by adding a plain hello world file on your hosting and then running ttfb test on that.
You are serving scaled images and a few images over 1mb. Even a 1920px wide image can be optimised down to 100kb.
See if you can get your host to enable GZIP. Your site is on cpanel it comes as default within cpanel under "optimisation". This can usually cut 1-2 seconds off.
You have alot of requests, 147, this is alot. Try to reduce them by either eliminating plugins or combining files or minifying. You need to choose between speed and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if you want fast site, same a s a race car, you need to strip things down.
If you are using WordPress, perhaps try wp super cache to see if that speeds things up.
WordPress adds quite a few unnecessary code, for example generation of emojis, rss feeds etc, there are functions you can add to remove them and optimise them.
Edmonds
Here is some performance and security enhancers for the .htaccess file for WordPress, I drop this in on all new WordPress sites.
###########################
# Enable Keep-Alive
# https://varvy.com/pagespeed/keep-alive.html
###########################
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Connection keep-alive
</ifModule>
###########################
# Turn off etags
# http://davidwalsh.name/yslow-htaccess
###########################
Header unset ETag
FileETag None
###########################
# expires headers to your images and other resources.
###########################
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>
###########################
# Protects the htaccess files
###########################
<Files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</Files>
###########################
# Disable directory browsing
###########################
Options All -Indexes
######################################
# protect the wp-config.php file
######################################
<files wp-config.php>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</files>
######################################
# Prevent some sql injections
######################################
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]
Yadav » Edmonds
Thanks Craig I will try that

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Bergen
Everything is guess work until you post the actual factors showing in that report. We need all the details…

Yadav » Bergen
These are two URLs thecarguy dot com dot au and carbusiness dot com au
Bergen
Ok thanks! So "Thecarguy" has a good score, but you need to benchmark the HTTPS version of the URL not the HTTP version. I would recommend looking into redirecting all instances of HTTP to HTTPS as this protocol is benchmarking faster. It's scoring like the screenshot.
You'll want to implement a browser caching plugin for WordPress. Our agency uses WProcket, but there's also free ones out there.
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how to get the mobile speed score below 2 5 sec on google page speed
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Yadav
Thanks mate it's really good to see these figures I will try that for carbusiness as well
Yadav
Thanks mate it's really good to see these figures I will try that for carbusiness as well. Car business is bit bad with https 🙁
how to get the mobile speed score below 2 5 sec on google page speed
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Bergen
For "CarBusiness" there are some factors you want to fix. A lot of this will be handled with a good caching plugin like WProcket, but there's free options.
This one also needs some manual image sizing.
Your biggest gains are going to be from applying caching, Gzip, and implementing minifying javascript optimizations. There's lots firing on load.
how to get the mobile speed score below 2 5 sec on google page speed
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Yadav
mine is still the same from Canada server😟 for The Car guy. Its a Site Gate hosting so client has SG cache plugin on both sites.
how to get the mobile speed score below 2 5 sec on google page speed
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Bergen
Yadav What I like to do in these situations is test other caching and performance plugins against the existing solution.
You may propose looking at other caching plugins and other solutions and the reason being that certain WordPress themes will behave slightly differently, depending on the configuration.
I've found that certain plugins don't always deliver the best results depending on the theme you use. So take some time to question the status quo and split test other plguin solutions and report on the findings!
– Show the current results for the solutions implemented.
– Test other caching, image compression, & java minifaction plugins and cross compare the results.
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Heng » Bergen
I started running ShortPixel CDN, and we ran into WP rocket conflict issue that breaks the layout.
The layout issue fixed once disabled WProcket?
Have you run into this similar problem before? And if so, how did you fix it?
Image lazy load already turned off on WProcket.
Bergen
Heng Are you using a specific WordPress theme or a custom one? – I can't tell from my analysis tools
Heng » Bergen
I'm running standard Thrive Themes, Rise.
The strange thing was when I first converted all images to run on ShortPixel image CDN, everything worked fine.
But, once my Thrive Architect (page builder) updated, the WProcket seems to have conflict with ShortPixel only after the update.
So, it's definitely not a custom theme.
Bergen
Ok thanks for the input! I'd recommend a CDN for sure… but it's always a bit of a discovery depending on your theme configuration. thanks for the feedback!
So quick follow up here Heng…
WProcket sometimes requires to exclude certain elements from the theme for everything to work properly… but I couldn't find any details on Thrive + WProcket.
You could give some of the other free caching plugins a shot. I like to test out a few and benchmark them because they can behave a little differently depending on the theme and features of the site (especially javascript).
Check out some of the other ones besides WProcket. I've used several on this list to cross-test and see what works best.
Javascript minifaction and optimizations should be a big win for you!
https://kinsta.com/blog/WordPress-caching-plugins/
– If anything on the site breaks. Exclude your javascript URLs that are showing in that GTmetrix report and see if it fixes the issue. Chances are some of the breaking items are from optimizing java or css (Just to troubleshoot and confirm what components are breaking the site when compressed or cached)

Discussion 1: How to Increase Page Speed Score for Mobile?
Ferdinand
Huge speed difference between desktop and mobile view. Why?
Hi guys and gal, I had just a page completely remade by a web designer using Elementor.
The desktop view gets top grades by GTmetrix and Lighthouse, but the mobile view's rating is a very unpleasant surprise.
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how to increase page speed score for mobile
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MaAnna
Completely different load order and elements on mobile than on desktop. And if your caching doesn't take that into consideration then that's contributing to the problem.
Plus, Elementor needs the kitchen sink of optimization thrown at it to be as fast as the same page built with just Gutenberg would have been at the get go.

Ferdinand
Yeah, I was about to buy an Elementor license for some side projects, but this experience taught me to try Gutenberg and a fast theme like Astra next time.
MaAnna
Be sure you create a child theme when you do Astra, or you'll be sorry!!
I have a case study comparing an Elementor template on one site vs recreating same in Gute. Both on Astra. That's how I know what I said is not an exaggeration.
Ferdinand » MaAnna
Yeah, the previous designer of my client's site made many mistakes – which forced me to kick it in the trash can -, including not using a child theme.

Chris
Page Speed Insights is not just about speed, but rather about the loading experience for the user.
Your mobile score is low because:
1. Mobile devices use much slower connections and the test stimulates a slower connection.
2. Your loading experience on mobile requires much more attention to detail and optimization steps.
In general, follow these recommendations:
– Lazy load images
– Lazy load backgrounds (different technique than regular images)
– Defer loading scripts
– Defer loading CSS
– Use Critical Path CSS
– Use a high speed server/host
The above will generally be responsive for 80% of your optimization.
Here's an article I wrote on lazy loading backgrounds, including a script you can download and use for free:
https://www.pdms.ca/how-to-maximize-website-speed-by-lazy-loading-backgrounds/
How to Maximize Website Speed by Lazy Loading Backgrounds – Propel Digital Media Solutions

Ferdinand
Thanks, I will definitely try to implement your advice!

Alex
You might also want to consider optimizing your images. Using the .webp format instead of .jpg can result in a 50% decrease in the file size of your images, and you probably won't even notice any difference in the quality between the two different types.

Ferdinand
Since it's a fashion photographer's site high res images are really important. I optimized all images with ShortPixel and set up the inclusion of WebP images just yesterday. Anyway, Lighthouse et al don't complain about the image size.
Alex
Yes, you'll certainly need very high quality images for that type of website.

Ferdinand
Sorry guys, I forgot the site's URL: www.cathleennaundorf.com
Cathleen Naundorf Fine Art Photographer

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Fahim
The website is not Optimized properly, only a few things have been applied. The major things are still left to be Optimized. Here is a list of things you should consider to improve your site speed for mobile(Desktop will also improve):
* For mobile, the hero image is the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) image. Your mobile version has 73 HTTP requests, and the LCP image loads at 57th! And the dimension of it is 1025px width, which is much larger than mobile screen. You can save file size a bit more here. But prioritizing the HTTP request will help you the most.
* Too many JS and CSS files are loading at the beginning of page load, making it render blocking. Only the required CSS files need to be loaded first. You should defer and delay all the JS files depending on how you want to load them and whether some breaks your site.
* I can see some unnecessary file requests without even inspecting. These requests must be blocked from loading. For example, wp-embed, jQuery migrate, wp block library, etc
* You've done a great job by serving the fonts locally, although you can reduce one file here, the 700 weight. Because if you just apply bold style to a text, user's browser will automatically apply bold.
* Your homepage using 4 icons, but loading 3 different icon sets! Which equals to 238.8KB! You can reduce ~238KB of file size here.
* You'll need to preload the fonts and the hero image. Be careful not to preload the same hero image on every page.
These are the major changes you should apply to improve the performance on mobile

Ferdinand
Many thanks! That's a lot of stuff to work on.
Chaihup » Fahim
Hi, I have a site using WP Rocket + Nginx + varnish cache. The site has unloaded wp block, jquery migrate. Article Posts have no feature images. Page load score is about 90+ but does not pass the Core Web Vitals (CWV) because Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is 2.8s, and First contentful paint (FCP) is 2.8s. Could you help me find out what I could do to improve it?
Fahim » Chaihup
Kindly share the URL

Fabio
You mentioned the reason why already: Elementor

Ferdinand
Yeah, the current web designer I am working with uses it. Next time it will be Gutenberg…
Szabo » Ferdinand
I leave this here – https://WordPress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/
Fabio » Szabo
I collaborate with WP development, particularly Gutenberg. And I do that because we specialize in custom WP development and made lots of money from it.
So when Gutenberg came out, I have to admit I was less than disappointed with the results. But instead of crying and pointing fingers, I decided to help and devote part of my time and company resources.
So, with this being said: please note how you're linking to the Gutenberg PLUGIN. This is intended only for old versions that for some reason aren't updated yet the user wants to use the plugin. For any other user case, Gutenberg is the default editor, so you wouldn't need any plugin.
My point here is that most of the comments (which, by the way, are quite positive, unlike the beginning of Gutenberg, when they all were negative) are made by people that:
a) uses an old version and is facing issues with other things that are also affected by Gutenberg;
or b) is computer illiterate or just don't like change (most of the bad comments are temper tantrums about "I used to do things like A and now it's B".
You'll see most of the bad comments won't even say what's wrong in order to help, they're just venting.
Now, as I said, Gutenberg is NOT to be used as a plugin. It's the DEFAULT EDITOR. Moreover, from 5.8 it will have FSE (full site edition) capabilities. Basically, what builders do now, only that way faster and less bloated.
There are hundreds of developers, designers, User Experience (UX) researchers, QA people and what not working in this project. Probably thousands. That intellectual power could be reached by companies like Google or Facebook. Maybe. But you have to understand that, like Ferdinand said, it's getting better and better, and you can't compare something made by 2, 3 o 30 people with something built by thousands and tested by hundreds of millions every single day.
And all this is very easy to prove: adoption of WP and Gutenberg without classic editor is growing at rates never seen before. Of course, if you provide a link to something else, it may look bad, but for those who actually know WP, I think they can see the difference.

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