Get The Best PageSpeed Score
For Your WordPress Website
All in One Optimization Plugin
No Coding Knowledge Required
Modified on: Oct 1, 2022
Boosting Your WordPress Website Performance With Critical CSS
Critical CSS plays a crucial role in mitigating the most common Google PageSpeed Insights warnings “Eliminate render-blocking resources” and “reduce unused CSS” and it also boosts your website’s page speed for a better user experience.
Identifying critical CSS (also known as critical CSS rendering path or critical path CSS) can be very challenging, especially for those without a technical background.
To make life a little easier for you, we will explain critical CSS, its impact on the website’s page speed, and how to identify your critical CSS.
We will also explore how RabbitLoader can help you optimize your page speed by generating critical CSS for your website.
What Is Critical CSS?
Critical CSS refers to the optimization technique of extracting the style rules or stylesheets applied to the above-the-fold elements to render the page quickly.
You can add your CSS style sheets in two ways: External CSS (which is located in a separate file) and Inline CSS (located in the <head> tag in the HTML file). This external CSS file is considered the render-blocking CSS. Let’s understand why.
Get The Best PageSpeed Score
First, the browser needs to load and parse the entire external CSS files to render your web page. This makes your external CSS file a render-blocking resource and reduces the web page loading speed.
By generating critical CSS for the above-the-fold contents and inlining it in the <head> tag of the HTML file, you can extract critical CSS needed to render the content in the visible area or viewport. This reduces the size of the CSS file, increasing your website’s page speed.
The Impact Of Critical CSS on Your Website’s PageSpeed
As discussed, the CSS critical path improves your page loading time by inlining the necessary CSS styles (for rendering above-the-fold content) into the HTML file. Critical CSS rules have several benefits:
Enhance your user experience.
Reduce the render-blocking resources.
Improve the LCP performance.
Decrease HTTP requests.
Improve the overall page speed score
Enhance Your User Experience
According to Hubspot, a website that takes less than 1 second to load converts 2.5x more users than a site that loads in 5 seconds. Therefore, a website with a good PageSpeed performance can enhance the user experience, increasing the conversion rate.
Critical path CSS can improve your website’s loading time, which can positively impact your user experience and conversion rate.
Reduce The Render-Blocking Resources
By adding only critical CSS inline, the browser can render only the above-the-fold content without parsing the entire CSS file. Therefore, eliminating these render-blocking resources improves the Time to First Byte (TTFB), enhancing the user experience.
Improve The FCP Performance
First Contentful Paint (FCP) is a user-centric metric that measures how fast your website’s content is rendered on the user’s browser. Critical path CSS ensures that the first content is rendered as quickly as possible, leading to a better FCP performance.
Decrease HTTP Requests
By generating critical path CSS, you can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to render the initial page loading time. Fewer HTTP requests indicate faster loading time, increasing the average on-page time of your website.
Improve the Overall PageSpeed Score
Google PageSpeed Insight scores depend on the core web vital metrics. By generating the critical CSS file, you can improve the performance of your core web vitals, especially First Contentful Paint (FCP), and Time to First Byte (TTFB). Therefore, the overall PageSpeed score would be improved.
How To Identify Your Critical CSS?
Determining the proper inline CSS for a web page can be very difficult due to different screen sizes, such as mobile, tablet, and desktop. Here, the ultimate goal is to divide the entire CSS file into critical CSS and non-critical CSS.
To extract critical CSS manually, you need to follow the below steps:
- Open every web page in the browser such as Google Chrome.
- Right-click on the page and select Inspect or press F12.
- Click on the three dots and select Coverage from the more tools. Then reload the page.
- In the usage visualization section, you can see the non-critical CSS (red) and critical CSS (grey).
- You need to create a separate file and extract critical CSS rules.
- After identifying critical path CSS, inline CSS style by adding this in the <head> tag in the HTML document. Load the non-critical CSS asynchronously (deferred loading).
To extract critical CSS, you need to continue the above steps for each web page. This process consumes a lot of time and effort, so you must use an online critical CSS plugin like RabbitLoader.
FAQ: How to add inline CSS?
Inline CSS is used in the <Style> tag in the HTML file.
Syntax:
<h1 style="color:blue;">example of inline CSS</h1>Generating Critical Rendering Path With RabbitLoader
Let’s explore how RabbitLoader optimizes your website speed as a critical CSS extractor and critical CSS generator. When you are using RabbitLoader for site speed optimization, you don’t need to put in any extra effort.
RabbitLoader identifies your website’s critical CSS and generates a separate file. As you can see in the images below, the original CSS file is 2.3 MB. However, RabbitLoader reduced the CSS file size to only 40.7 KB by generating critical path CSS and improved the file size by 98%.
You can also see the page rendering time before and after generating critical CSS. Here, it is just 294.1 ms, down from 11340.1 ms.
The advantage of RabbitLoader over other optimization tools is its all-in-one optimization features. In other words, when you use RabbitLoader, you don’t need to use any other optimization tools to implement lazy loading, link preload, fetch priority, and other optimization techniques.
Additionally, RabbitLoader has a free version, which gives it an advantage over the other optimization tools.
Conclusion
At this point, it’s clear that generating inline CSS is one crucial optimization technique for improving your website’s load time. However, manually generating this critical CSS can be daunting, especially when your website is large.
Thankfully, RabbitLoader is there to help. As we discussed, it optimizes your CSS file by 98% and speeds up web page rendering time by 90%-95%.
So, if you also notice “Eliminate render-blocking resources” or “reduce unused CSS” warnings during your page speed audit in Google PageSpeed Insights, it’s high time to install RabbitLoader and boost your PSI scores.
Get The Best PageSpeed Score
For Your WordPress Website
All in One Optimization Plugin
No Coding Knowledge Required
Modified on: Oct 1, 2022
Google Pagespeed Insights: The Ultimate Guide To Boost Your Pagespeed With The 7 Most Powerful Strategies
Are you struggling with a low pagespeed insights score? A low pagespeed score often leads to poor user experience which in turn results in a low conversion rate & lower SEO rankings.
Don’t worry! You are not alone. A lot of website owners are struggling to improve their pagespeed insights score. Let’s discuss the pagespeed insights score and the powerful strategies to improve this.
If you are not from a coding background, that’s perfectly fine. As we will mention the solutions that can be implemented by non-coders like you and me
What is Google Pagespeed Insights?
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a tool developed by Google, that measures the pagespeed of your website. It analyzes your website’s pagespeed performance for the desktop version and the mobile version and scores on a scale of 0 to 100.
Google PageSpeed Insights also suggests how to improve the pageSpeed score. It provides both lab and field data about your website. Lab data is used for debugging issues whereas field data is useful for real-world user experience.
What are the Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics developed by Google, used to measure the user experience for loading performance, visual stability, and interactivity of your web pages.
Let’s take a look at the three pillars of core web vitals
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- First Input Delay (FID) is now replaced with Interaction to Next Paint (INP).
- Cumulative Layout shift(CLS)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is the user experience (UX) metric, which measures how long it takes to render the largest piece of content in the visible area. The largest content can be:
- Images
- Video poster images (images that are shown to the user before loading the video)
- Background images
- Block-level text
In order to pass the Core Web Vitals assessment, your website should have a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 2.5 seconds or less. Whereas if a user waits more than 4 seconds on your website to see the content, that indicates a poor user experience.
| LCP range | Remarks |
| < 2.5 seconds | Good |
| 2.5 seconds – 4.0 seconds | Improvement Needed |
| > 4.0 seconds | Poor |
- First Input Delay (FID):
First Input Delay (FID), also referred to as Input Latency, is used to measure how long it takes for your web page to react to the first interaction.
In simple words, it is the measurement of the time that occurs between when a user interacts with your website and when their browser responds.
According to Google, a score of less than 100 milliseconds is considered a good score whereas a score is more than 300 ms is a poor score.
| FID range | Remarks |
| < 100 ms | Good |
| 100 ms- 300 ms | Improvement Needed |
| > 300 ms | Poor |
Important Note: In March 2024, FID was removed as a Core Web Vital. It is replaced by a stable Core Web Vital metric INP (Interaction to Next Paint).
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP):
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a newly launched performance metric by Google that is used to measure user interface responsiveness.
In simple words, Interaction to Next Paint focuses on measuring your web page’s response according to user interaction with the website.
Similar to the other performance metrics, the INP score can be in one of the three thresholds. A good INP value should always be within 200 milliseconds.
| INP range | Remarks |
| < 200 ms | Good |
| 200 ms- 500 ms | Improvement Needed |
| > 500 ms | Poor |
- Cumulative Layout shift(CLS):
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is one of the pillars of Core Web Vital metrics that calculates the shifting of the webpage’s elements while the page is being loaded and rendered.
In simple words, Cumulative layout Shift is used to determine the visual stability of a web page from a user perspective by considering the below factors:
- Layout shift
- Impact fraction (how an unstable element impacts the visible area between two frames)
You should strive to reach your CLS score within 0.1 to provide your audience with a better user experience.
| CLS range | Remarks |
| < 0.1 | Good |
| 0.1 – 0.25 | Improvement Needed |
| > 0.25 | Poor |
Other performance metrics are present that impact your website’s pageSpeed insights performance.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP):
First Contentful Paint (FCP) is a user-centric metric that is used to measure how long it takes for a user’s browser to load DOM elements (images, videos, text, etc) of your web pages.
| FCP range | Remarks |
| 0 – 1.8 seconds | Good |
| 1.8 seconds -3.0 seconds | Improvement Needed |
| > 3.0 seconds | Poor |
- Speed Index (SI):
Speed Index (SI) is a web page load performance metric, that measures how quickly the contents of your web pages are visibly populated. SI is dependent on the size of the visible area.
| SI range | Remarks |
| 0 – 3.4 seconds | Good |
| 3.4 seconds – 5.8 seconds | Improvement Needed |
| > 5.8 seconds | Poor |
- Total Blocking Time (TBT):
Total Blocking Time (TBT) measures how long your web page responds to specific user input. Several factors can be the reason for TBT like poorly optimized code, excessive plugin use, server performance, and large file sizes.
| TBT range | Remarks |
| 0 – 200 ms | Good |
| 200 ms – 600 ms | Improvement Needed |
| > 600 ms | Poor |
- Time to First Byte (TTFB):
Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures the time between a user’s browser requesting your web page and when it receives the first byte of information from the server. Different factors that can reduce your TTFB score: slow DNS lookups, SSL connection, and so on.
| TTFB range | Remarks |
| < 800 ms | Good |
| 800 ms – 1800 ms | Improvement Needed |
| > 1800 ms | Poor |
- Time to Interactive (TTI):
Time to Interactive (TTI) measures the amount of time your website has been rendered and is ready for user input. The factors that significantly impact TTI are excessive resource requests and large resource sizes.
| TTI range | Remarks |
| 0 – 3.8 second | Good |
| 3.9 second – 7.3 second | Improvement Needed |
| > 7.3 second | Poor |
Why is Google Pagespeed Insights score important for your website?
Let’s dive into the importance of a high Google PSI score for your website.
- User Experience
A higher pagespeed Insights indicates a fast-loading website, which leads to a better user experience for your visitors. A user is more likely to engage with your website’s content and stay longer on your website. It will increase the average on-page time of your website.
- SEO Ranking
Google considers the pageSpeed as one of the important factors in its ranking algorithm. A fast-loading website tends to rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), which can boost organic traffic.
- Conversion Rate
The conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors who convert to lead. A fast-loading website can positively impact conversion rate, as users are more likely to complete the desired action.
The desired action might be completing a purchase, downloading an ebook, filling up a form, signing up for a trial, booking a demo, subscribing to a course, or something else.
How to Measure Your Website’s PageSpeed Insights Score?
PageSpeed can be measured easily in Google Pagespeed Insights (PSI). Let’s dive into the process of measuring PageSpeed in Google PSI.
Step 1: Go to Google PageSpeed Insights. Enter any web page’s URL and click on Analyze.
Step 2: After analyzing the web page’s page speed performance, It will provide a mobile score as well as a desktop score based on the overall performance of the core web vital matrix.
Step 3: you can also see the suggestion for improvement of the pagespeed performance.
What is considered a good PageSpeed Insights Score?
- If the PageSpeed insights score is greater than 90, it is considered a good score.
- A Pagespeed insights score between 50 to 89 indicates the webpage’s pageSpeed performance needs to be improved.
- A pagespeed insights score of less than 50 is categorized as a poor score. It means the web page fails the site speed test.
The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) dataset provides Real-user experience data in Google PSI. PSI reports are based on real users’ FCP, LCP, FID, CLS, SI, TBT, and TTI experience.
Let’s see the weightage of each performance metric for Google pagespeed insights.
| Performance metrics | Weightage |
| First Contentful Paint (FCP) | 10% |
| Speed Index (SI) | 10% |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 25% |
| Total Blocking Time (TBT) | 30% |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | 25% |
There are several alternative tools are also available like GTmetrix, and Lighthouse that you can use for website speed tests.
The difference between Pagespeed insights vs lighthouse
While Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Lighthouse, both tools are used for pagespeed performance, their scores differ based on certain factors. Let’s understand these performance factors and how they make the score different.
| Google PSI | Lighthouse | |
| Data Sourcing Methods | Google PSI scores are based on controlled environment data(lab data) as well as real-user data (field data). | Lighthouse uses only lab data. (real-user data). |
| Test Location | Google page speed Insights is an automated tool that runs from the Google server. | Lighthouse is a manual tool that runs from a local Chrome browser. |
| Number of pages Accessed | In PSI only one webpage can be analyzed at a time. | In Lighthouse, multiple pages can be tested at a time. |
| Network Throttling | Google Pagespeed insights runs the website without throttling a fast network connection. Then, it simulates how the web page would have loaded on the slow connection. | Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools allows a user to select between simulated and browser-level “applied” throttling. |
| CPU performance | Pagespeed Insight measures the CPU performance of a web page by evaluating the time to fully load the web page’s content (HTML, JavaScript, and media files). | Lighthouse reports include the data on the web page’s CPU performance, FCP, and DOMContentLoaded time. |
| Chrome version | Pagespeed insights uses the latest version of Google Chrome. So it can be different from the user’s Chrome version. | While Lighthouse uses the same Chrome version as the end user. |
7 ways to improve your website’s pagespeed score?
Now, you have a brief idea about Google PageSpeed Insights score. Also, you have seen the importance of a high pageSpeed insights score. Let’s dive into the strategies to improve the page speed performance by optimizing the website performance.
- Optimization of all images is the most effective way to improve your website’s pagespeed score:
Images are the most powerful form of communication. An image can convey a message very quickly. So, for any website, images are one of the essential resources.
However, large-sized images can decrease the pagespeed insights performance score by increasing the load time of the web page.
To improve the website’s pagespeed performance, you need to reduce the image size as much as possible. You can convert your large image files to WebP, AVIF format.
If your website has 10 images of 2 MB, that indicates a total of 20 MB images need to be downloaded. But when these images are converted in WebP and AVIF, it will likely reduce the total size to a maximum of 500 KB. so, automatically the page loading time will be reduced.
RabbitLoader converts your large PNG and JPEG images into modern webP and AVIF formats. It will compress the images without losing quality. You don’t need to optimize the images one by one. Bulk image optimization will be done automatically when you are using RabbitLoader.
If you have a WordPress website, you just need to install and activate this plugin. Apart from the WordPress website, RabbitLoader is also available in Woo-Commerce, Shopify, PHP, and Laravel websites.
- Minification of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files can reduce page loading time:
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the fundamental elements of any web page. HTML creates the content of a webpage whereas CSS Stylshhets make the webpage stylish. And finally, JavaScript is used to make the webpage interactive.
Usually, the file sizes become large due to unnecessary uses of spaces & comments in the code to make the code more readable. These large files increase the page load time.
Minification is the process of removing all unnecessary spaces, Comments, and characters from a file. When a file is minified, the file size will reduce, which leads to a faster loading website.
The best way to effortlessly minify these files is by using RabbitLoader if you don’t have any coding knowledge. RabbitLoader will manage this minification of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
- By enabling lazy loading you can improve your pagespeed insights score:
RabbitLoader will also help you to speed up your website by enabling lazy loading. Lazy loading (also known as on-demand loading) is an optimization strategy to improve the website’s performance if your website has a lot of images.
Instead of loading the entire webpage, Lazy loading only renders the images that are visible above the fold.
Lazy loading also is applied to other media files such as videos, and the webpage’s content like text as well as comments.
- Using browser cache to speed up your website:
Browser caching is the most common optimization technique. Browser caches temporarily store the static resources of a web page such as HTML files, CSS Stylesheets, images, and scripts. So, the browser doesn’t need to load from the first to render a web page.
Let’s understand with an example.
You are visiting RabbitLoader.com for the first time.
Your browser downloads the static contents(images, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript) into the cache.
The next time you revisit RabbitLoader.com, these static contents are loaded from the browser cache.
Thus, significantly decreasing this loading time.
Implementing a browser cache manually requires a lot of time as well as effort. There are several cache plugins available like RabbitLoader, W3 total cache, and many more.
However, when you are using RabbitLoader for other optimization techniques, then why do you invest extra money in other cache plugins? RabbitLoader will also take care of this browser caching.
- By Generating Critical CSS you can improve your website’s performance:
Eliminate render-blocking resources, the most popular warning in Google Pagespeed Insight can be fixed by generating critical CSS.
When a browser encounters a CSS stylesheet in HTML files, it typically blocks the rendering process. Not all CSS stylesheets are needed in the viewport. That’s why it’s crucial to generate critical CSS for your web page to boost PageSpeed.
But, how to create Cricial CSS to speed up your website?
Don’t worry! RabbitLoader automatically grabs the required CSS to visualize the view-port content and inlines it. By creating critical CSS files for every web page, RabbitLoader optimizes the CSS stylesheet size with a 98% improvement.
As a result, you can achieve a good Google PageSpeed Insights score. Without generating critical CSS, you can’t achieve a 90+ pageSpeed score.
In the above picture, you can see that RabbitLoader optimizes an original CSS file (2.35 MB) into just 35.03 KB by generating critical CSS, indicating it reduces the CSS File’s size by 98 %.
- Deferring JavaScript can improve the performance metrics:
Though JavaScript plays a crucial role on a website, it is not the critical piece in the first place, especially when we are talking about page loading speed.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src = "myscript.js" defer>
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<h1> RabbitLoader.com </h1>
<h3> This is an example of defer attribute. </h3>
</div>
</body>
</html> RabbitLoader uses the defer attribute to indicate your script will only execute after rendering the Web page. Deferring JavaScript can improve FID, TBT, and TTI metrics.
So, your website’s pagespeed will automatically improve.
Check Also: PageSpeed Optimization Services
- Use Content Delivery Network (CDN) to Reduce Network Latency:
A physical distance between a user and the origin server can be the reason for latency. RabbitLoader’s integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN) reduces this distance by distributing static content across the edge servers worldwide. So, the page loading time will automatically decrease.
Without CDN
With CDN
FAQ:
1. What are Render-Blocking Resources?
Render-blocking resources are stylesheets, scripts, and HTML files that block the browser from rendering the web pages’s content above the fold. These resources affect the report of core web vitals assessment.
Conclusion
If your website’s Google PageSpeed Insights score is poor, you need to improve this score by speeding up the website for a better user experience as well as SEO rankings. Here, we have suggested the most powerful strategies to reduce the loading time.
If you are not from a coding background, you must use some page speed optimization plugins to achieve a good PSI score. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that using too many plugins can reduce the page load time.
The solution is here. When you are using RabbitLoader, no other optimization tools are required to boost the pagespeed insights data.
Modified on: Oct 1, 2022
Understanding Time to First Byte (TTFB): Key Metrics for Website Success
The TTFB (Time to First Byte) is a website’s performance indicator that substantially impacts a website’s pagespeed performance, user experience as well as SEO rankings.
While performing a website pagespeed test, you have come across the term TTFB (Total to First Byte). But what is TTFB, and why is it important?
Today we are going to dive into what TTFB is in detail and how it affects your website’s pagespeed. Also, we will discuss the most powerful strategies to reduce it.
What is TTFB?
Time to First byte ( known as TTFB) is a foundational metric for determining the responsiveness of a web server. In simple words, TTFB is used to measure the time it takes for a user’s browser to receive the first byte of the response from a web server after requesting a webpage.
Check More: Time to Interactive
Time to First to First Byte (TTFB) is impacted by three actions :
Sending an HTTP Request to the Server
When a user visits a website the browser sends an HTTP request to the server. In this stage, several factors can affect the site speed:
- Physical distance between the server and a user
- Slow DNS lookup
- User’s internet speed.
Processing and Generating the HTTP Response
After reaching the request to the backend or server, the server must take some time to process it and generate a response. Due to the following reason this process takes time.
- Lack of caching layers
- Slow database
- Excessive scripts
Sending the HTTP Response to the User
After this process, the server needs to send back the response to the user. It also depends on some metrics like:
- Slow dns lookup
- Physical distance between the server and a user
Why is TTFB Important?
Now you have a brief idea about TTFB (Time to First Byte). Here you will discuss its importance. Here, I am maintaining the most important reasons.
User Experience
A faster-loading website can provide user experience. Users will more engage with the content of the web page and stay longer on the website if it takes less time to load.
A faster TTFB (Time to First Byte) leads to a faster website that can enhance the user experience.
Conversion Rates
A conversion rate provides records of the percentage of users who have completed the desired action of the website.
If you have a fast-loading website then the average on-page time will increase. It leads to a higher conversion rate as well.
Mobile Experience
A mobile user has limited resources compared to a desktop user. A desktop has a better internet speed than a mobile. A desktop has a better processor and it can be connected to the Internet with the help of cables.
Whereas a mobile user uses a data network and wireless connection. If TTFB increases then mobile users will face more issues.
SEO Impact
Among the many metrics, pagespeed is one of the crucial metrics that Google uses to determine Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings.
Although there are a lot of factors that affect the pagespeed, TTFB is one of them.
3 Ways to Measure TTFB
There are several tools available such as Chrome DevTools, Google PageSpeed Insights, GT Metrix, Google Lighthouse, and many more that you can use to measure Time to First Byte (TTFB). However, you can see slightly different scores on different websites due to some factors such as testing location, testing methodology, and so on.
Here, we are mentioning 3 easy methods to test TTFB.
Chrome DevTools
Using Chrome DevTools is the most common way to measure TTFB. Here we are mentioning the steps that you can follow.
- Step 1: Right-click on the web page in Google Chrome and click on Inspect.
- Step 2: Go to the Network tab and refresh the web page or press F5.
- Step 3: Click on the website name.
- Step 4: Click on the Timing tab.
- Step 5: Go to the Request / Response section.
Here you can see the TTFB of the tested website (RabbitLoader.com) is just 58.87 ms.
Google pageSpeed Insights
Google pagespeed Insights provides a report based on the user experience of a webpage for both mobile and desktop versions. It also provides you the suggestions on how that web page can be improved.
It also shows you the core web vital metrics performance such as FCP (First Contentful Paint), LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), TBT(Total Blocking Time), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Time to First Byte (TTFB).
To check the Time to First Byte (TTFB) in page speed insights you just need to put the URL of the website and click on Analyze.
WebPageTest
An online website speed test tool, WebPageTest can be used to test the performance of web vitals like TTFB, LCP, CLS, and so on.
Here, you need to enter the website URL to test the website’s performance.
After putting the URL you need to click on Start Test.
What is considered a good TTFB?
According to Google, a good Time to First Byte speed should be less than 800 ms. This time varies depending on the content type of the webpage
- If the content of the webpage is static, TTFB should be less than 200 ms.
- If the content of the webpage is dynamic, TTFB should be between 200ms-800 ms.
Whereas the 800 ms to 1800 ms range is considered an average score and it can be improved by optimizing the website.
If TTFB exceeds 800 milliseconds, users will likely leave from the web page. It will affect Google’s ranking as well. This high TTFB indicates an issue on the server side.
7 strategies to reduce TTFB for your WordPress website
You already know what is Time to First byte and how to measure it. Now let’s dive into some powerful strategies for improving TTFB for a better user experience and SEO ranking.
Compress and optimize the website’s images
Image is the most powerful form of communication. An image can easily convey messages. Without any image, the website looks dull.
However, these images are the most common reason for a slow website as well as a low TTFB score. According to Google, images consume 50 % of all bytes of a webpage.
To improve the time to First Byte performance, you need to compress the image size as much as possible. It can be possible by converting a large-sized image to a WebP format or AVIF format.
For lossless compression, you can use online image optimization plugins like Imagify, RabbitLoder, Smush, and so on.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery Network is a group of proxy servers that are geographically distributed around the world. It will help to reduce the real-world distance between the user and the server.
Let us understand with an example. The original server is located in Chicago, USA, and the user visits from India. Due to this physical distance, network latency will increase.
By using CDN you can temporarily store static content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Media files) as well as some dynamic content ( which are not changed frequently) in a proxy server to reduce server response time. It will help you to reduce latency and improve website speed performance.
Popular CDNs such as Cloudflare, CDN77, Stackpath, and CloudFront take care of all content delivery for you and improve Time to First Byte performance. Also, you can use the all-in-one performance optimization plugin RabbitLoader, which has an integrated CDN serving with over 300+ PoPs.
Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the fundamental resources of any web page. HTML creates the webpage content whereas CSS creates the webpage more stylish and finally, JavaScript makes to webpage interactive.
Developers use unnecessary comments, space, and a large variable name for better understanding. It will increase the Time to First Byte.
By deleting these unnecessary comments, space, and a large variable name, you can reduce the size of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. This will help you to reduce the Total Blocking Time (TBT) as well as provide a better web vital performance.
There are several online tools available that help you to minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
- To minify HTML you can use an HTML minifier, HTML Compressor, etc.
- For minifying CSS, CSS Minifier, and YUI Compressor can be used.
- You can use online JavaScript optimization tools Closure Compiler, JSCompressor, and so on to minify JavaScript.
Use Cache plugin
Caching is a common way to improve TTFB as well as website performance. Every time a user visits the website, the browser needs to download all data from the backend. This will increase the load time of a webpage.
But when you use a cache plugin, the browser will save a copy of the static content of the website, so that the next time they visit the website, the webpage will load quickly.
For example, when a user visits our Website RabbitLoader.com, the browser downloads static content like the RabbitLoader logo into the cache. Next time the static contents are loaded from the cache. It will improve the Time to First Byte.
For your wordPress website, you can use popular cache plugins like WP Rocket, RabbitLoader, W3 total cache, etc.
Pick a fast-loading WordPress Theme
A good theme should not only look good, but it needs to perform well as well. If your webpage is too complicated then automatically it will take time to load the web page.
So if you want to improve the performance metrics performance then, you need to choose a lightweight fastloading WordPress theme.
Reduce third-party script
Another reason to increase the Time to First Byte is using too many third-party scripts. This script also has some inside code. So, when a webpage is loading, these codes need to be executed. It will affect the core web vitals metrics.
Avoid using too many plugins
WordPress is a highly flexible Content Management System (CMS). The main advantage is you can use multiple plugins to improve the web performance. But sometimes, using too many plugins can be the reason for a slow TTFB.
Each and every plugin has its own features and code. When you are loading a webpage every code needs to be executed properly. So, it will increase the Time to First Byte.
To increase the website performance it is advised to use fewer plugins. you need to choose only the necessary plugins.
This can be solved by using RabbitLoader alone. This is an all-in-one performance optimization plugin. That means when you are using RabbitLoader, you don’t need to use other plugins for image optimization, lazy loading, optimization of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, and many more.
Not only wordpress, but RabbitLoader is also available for Shopify, Woo-Commerce, PHP, and Laravel websites.
Conclusion
Here, you have learned about the Time to First Byte (TTFB) and the method to measure it. Also, you came to know the powerful technique to reduce TTFB.
Now it’s your turn. If your website has a high TTFB then you need to apply those mentioned strategies to improve your website’s performance for a better user experience as well as the conversion rate.