When analyzing your website with Google’s Page Speed Insights, you'll encounter four key sections: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Each of these areas highlights crucial aspects of a website's functionality, offering a snapshot of its overall health. In this guide, we’ll break down each section and explore the common issues that websites often face.

1. Performance: Speed Matters

The Performance section measures how fast your website loads and provides insights into how efficiently users can interact with your site. Google uses several metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP), Time to Interactive (TTI), and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) to evaluate your site’s speed and responsiveness.

Common Issues:

• Large image sizes: Uncompressed images often lead to slower load times, especially on mobile devices. Ideally, images should be kept under 500KB to ensure faster loading speeds.
• Render-blocking resources: JavaScript and CSS files that prevent the page from displaying content until fully loaded can delay the first meaningful paint.
• Server response time delays: Slow servers or inefficient hosting services can drastically affect page load times.
• Too many HTTP requests: Multiple requests for various resources (e.g., images, scripts) can slow down the load time.

2. Accessibility: Inclusivity and User Experience

The Accessibility section measures how well your website caters to all users, including those with disabilities. It ensures that your site can be used by people relying on assistive technologies like screen readers or keyboard navigation. This section checks for things like color contrast, alt text for images, and the ability to navigate using only a keyboard.

Common Issues:

• Poor color contrast: Insufficient contrast between text and background colors makes it difficult for users with visual impairments to read the content.
• Missing alt attributes: Images without alt text cannot be interpreted by screen readers, creating accessibility issues for visually impaired users. Learn how to write amazing alt text.
• Keyboard traps: Some interactive elements, like forms or menus, are inaccessible via keyboard navigation, trapping users who rely on keyboards to navigate.
• Missing form labels: Forms lacking descriptive labels for inputs can make it harder for users relying on assistive technology to understand the purpose of each field.

3. Best Practices: Adherence to Web Standards

The Best Practices section assesses whether your website follows modern web development standards and security protocols. Adhering to these standards ensures a smooth, secure, and reliable experience for users while safeguarding their data.

Common Issues:

• Outdated libraries: Using older versions of JavaScript libraries can expose your site to security vulnerabilities or performance issues.
• Non-secure resources: Loading content via HTTP instead of HTTPS can lead to security warnings and mixed content issues, undermining user trust.
• Inefficient image formats: Serving images in outdated formats, like JPEG or PNG, instead of modern formats like WebP, can result in slower load times.
• No input validation: Forms that don't validate user input correctly can open your site to malicious attacks, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).

4. SEO: Optimizing for Search Engines

The SEO section focuses on how well your website is optimized for search engines. This evaluates factors that contribute to search engine visibility and rankings, ensuring your content is accessible to both users and search engine crawlers.

Common Issues:

• Missing meta descriptions: Pages lacking meta descriptions may not rank as well, and can reduce click-through rates from search results.
• Non-responsive design: Websites that are not optimized for mobile can suffer in search rankings, as Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing.
• Improper heading structure: Misusing or neglecting heading tags (H1, H2, etc.) can make it difficult for search engines to understand the hierarchy of your content, affecting crawlability.
• Missing robots.txt or sitemap: Without these essential files, search engines may not be able to properly index your site, affecting your overall visibility.