When we talk about WPO(web performance optimization), we often forget that a website has several pages (usually), and not only the home page, which is the one we always measure by default.
But the reality is that we must optimize all the pages of our website, because each one will have different content, images, scripts, etc., and all of them are important to offer a fast and good experience to our users.
Which pages of my website should I start optimizing?
I always recommend that, when deciding which pages to optimize first, that you start with the ones that have the most traffic, the ones that are our essential content.
And that’s right, you should always start optimizing the pages that receive the most visits, because there the impact will be greater.
And, note that not always the home page of our website is the one that should receive more attention, because it is not always the one that receives more traffic.
But where to continue after correctly optimizing the main pages of our essential content?
Which pages should I optimize next?
One strategy could be to move down the list of top landing pages, optimizing the next 10 and so on.
But I suggest that, before continuing with this list, and always after having optimized your most viewed pages to perfection, you should consider optimizing your slower, less optimized pages.
Why do I tell you this, because just as our best content speaks well of us, our less optimized pages will not say anything good about us and our website as a whole.
Imagine that a visitor comes to your website through the search engine and just happens to find that his landing page is one that takes more than 10 seconds to load. It is clear that their user experience, their perception of the quality of your website will be very low.
It doesn’t matter if the rest of the website is perfectly optimized, for this user, and any other user who arrives at an unoptimized page, the feeling will be that your ENTIRE website offers a bad browsing experience.
How do I know which pages are the least optimized and slowest?
Well, to avoid changing tools, nothing easier than Google Analytics itself.
Just go to the Behavior → Site Speed → Speed Suggestions section.
Once there click on the Average Page Load Time column or the PageSpeed Score column, depending on the performance improvement technique you want to apply, and order them from worst to best.
Among these columns you will see that there is one called Page Speed Suggestions, which indicates a total number of suggestions, with a link that, when clicked, opens PageSpeed Insights with the analysis of each page in the list.
Of course, you don’t need to use the links to PageSpeed Insights, use your favorite analysis methods, but I think the usefulness of this Google Analytics report is beyond question, as it’s a great place to find out where to start optimizing your pages that need it most.
