The document emphasizes the importance of page speed optimization for improved rankings and conversion rates. It outlines a comprehensive approach, starting from server selection to application layer enhancements, and highlights tools for speed testing. The document also discusses the trade-offs between cloud and dedicated servers, as well as best practices for optimizing website performance.

1. Page speed optimization
Squeezing milliseconds for better rankings from the server level
up to the application layer
by Ralf Schwoebel (@orgaralf)
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2. Why the fixation on speed?
Google, naturally and ...
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3. Why the fixation on speed?
... ultimately money!
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Traffic
Conversion
Ads
$$$
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5. How to approach it?
Using only
Pagespeed Insights
is not enough!
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Provider: low latency, never down, never overcrowded
Server: Fast, solid Hardware – either virtualized or real, SSD
drives, there is never enough RAM!
System: Fast services (like nginx, sphinxd, stripped &
memcached Apache, optimized MariaDB, PHP7, etc.)
Application: Cookieless, static content from
cookieless fast CDNs (AWS, Cloudflare, CDN77)
HTML:
Insight, Lighthouse
AND(!) SEO structure
Optimization
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6. But why, we have broadband now...
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7. How do we test speed?
• Google Webmaster Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• tools.pingdom.com
• Lighthouse Audit
• Firefox/Chrome Dev Tools (network)
• Online Tools (for different locations) for
„traceroute“ or „ping“
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8. Provider
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9. Bottom-up approach: Provider
• If money (=amount of traffic & scalability) is not an issue:
AWS instances or Google Cloud (Compute Engine)
• If you want specific setups (dedicated machines):
Local provider with CDN combination
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10. Provider choice:
Basic check:
Google rankings & network tools to find your flavour!
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11. Why start at that level?
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13. Provider choice: the traffic snob approach
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14. Provider choice: the traffic snob approach
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https://portal.linx.net/members/list-ip-asn => looked for random entry
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15. The cloud „problem“...
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16. Summary Provider
• There is no „cloud is better than
dedicated“
• It all depends on your individual
site/offer
• The servers must respond quickly,
the rest is happening in the app layer
above
• Cloud scales better, dedicated servers
are easier to control (they are yours)
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17. Hardware (if dedicated)
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18. Picking hardware...
• There is never enough RAM
• SSD + RAM + CPU + OS => a
choice of money and task
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19. The cloud vs. dedicated servers
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20. Summary Hardware
• Choose along your „knowledge pool“ and budget + provider
choice, but it has to be a decent machine or cloud offer...
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21. System Layer
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22. System Layer
• OS (Linux or Windows – I think, but I am a Linux guy)
• Services
• Webserver (Apache)
• Reverse Proxy / Cache (nginx, varnishd, squid, memcached)
• Database (MariaDB, SphinxSearch, ElasticSearch)
• Filesystem (from NFS to Hadoop)
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23. System Layer
For example: persistent connections make a huge difference!
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24. System Layer
For example: persistent connections make a huge difference!
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25. System Layer: the lazy approach
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https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/module/
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26. System: rules of thumb
• Cache in RAM, whatever possible
• Limit requests per second to system by splitting static content
• Writing is more expensive than reading
• The Open Source community has you covered, but you need to know,
what you are doing!
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27. System: dynamic pages with JS
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28. Summary System
• If it shall scale, the choices are limited!
• Progressive web apps with 1+ Mio. daily users and a lot of
files are probably best kept in a cloud environment (coz: add
instances per task)
• Solid WP blogs (we have customers with 120k visits / day) can
be done on a single server system with a CDN
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29. Application Level
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30. Application Layer
Out of the box systems are never 100% optimized!
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totally normal
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31. Application Layer
But most of them can be tweaked right!
• add a CDN
• avoid Cookies, if possible
• Combine JS, CSS and minify
• Manage images automatically (resizing)
• Nested Loops, if(file_exists()), tables without index, etc. = evil!
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32. Application Layer
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33. Application Layer: CDN
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A CDN-URL for your assets has 2 advantages!
1. Global caching
2. More simultaneous connections per user
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34. Application Layer: CDN
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There are some and a lot are good!
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35. Application Layer: CDN
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36. Amazon Cloudfront
at its best @5Mbit/s
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37. Application Layer: CDN
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38. Summary: Application Layer
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• This is the place for 70% of your optimization work
• The other 30% (provider, system) are important to cover first
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39. HTML = the result
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40. Now let us go “green“ in the tests!
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41. Lighthouse Audit
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42. Lighthouse Audit
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43. Pagespeed Insights
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44. Pagespeed Insights: Plain Vanilla MaterializeCSS
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Free download on https://static.smyln.com/
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45. The cornerstones of „Insights“
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• Server response time
• Caching time for static content >7days
• Render blocking removed (first paint)
• Images optimized
• CSS combined and minimized
• JS combined and minimized (and async‘ed)
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46. The Javascript thing...
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48. The render blocking thing...
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49. The Wordpress thing
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51. The Smartphone thing
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52. The Google Analytics thing
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Better, if you do not need everything - https://github.com/jehna/ga-lite
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The ultimate SEO/quality checklist starts with speed
• The site responds <100ms on fa(s)t lines
• Pages are green on Insights + Lighthouse...
• ...also for mobile(!)
• Keyword is investigated
• On-Page SEO fits (ryte.com creates an extra ToDo list for you)
• Links are coming in (off-page SEO)
• Users stay (want to see more pages, do not use the back button)
• Visitors convert to customers
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54. Thank you!
Thank you for your time and attention...
Have a great time in London!
Ralf Schwoebel, CEO
orga.zone AG
rs@orga.zone
https://orga.zone/
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