Move PageSpeed Insights from red to green.

Google PageSpeed Insights is the most-checked performance tool in the world, and the one that causes the most anxiety. Your developer ships a new homepage. You run PageSpeed. It says 38 mobile. The colours are red. The list of issues runs three screens long. None of it makes sense and you don't know where to start. We do this every week.

The first thing to understand is that the mobile test is deliberately brutal. PageSpeed simulates a Moto G4 on slow 4G — single-core CPU, 1.6Mbps down, 750ms latency. That's a realistic stand-in for the worst third of mobile users, and it's why most WordPress sites score badly even when they feel fast on a desktop. Optimising for that profile is the work, and it's the same work that improves real-world experience for everyone.

The second thing to understand is that 90+ on mobile is the target, not 100. The gap from 95 to 100 costs vastly more than the gap from 50 to 95 and gives you nothing measurable in return. Anyone selling you a 100 score is either lying, stripping necessary functionality, or charging you for vanity work that won't move your business. We aim for Good (90+) which is what Google's own thresholds care about.

The fixes are predictable: image weight and format, render-blocking CSS and JavaScript, unused code, large hero elements without preload, slow TTFB from cheap hosting, third-party tags loading synchronously. We work through each one in priority order, measure after each change, and verify the score holds across templates not just the homepage. Result: a green badge in Search Console, faster real-world experience, and better conversion — usually paying back the optimisation cost within weeks.