For weeks now I have been following all the advice and trying to do everything I can to improve the page performance for my Salient site hosted on WPengine, but cannot get it low enough to be acceptable to Google.
Even with a completely empty page, just text header and text footer, no sidebar, the FCP first contentful paint and LCP largest contentful paint are over 3 seconds on mobile.
I can send screenshots of comparative mobile and desktop performance for an empty page – desktop is 0.8s for FCP and 1.0s for LCP so is good, but mobile is 3.3s for FCP and 3.8s for LCP which is bad.
Google is prioritising LCP on mobile as a core web vital performance metric, and marks all my pages as Needs Improvement in Search console.
All the other test and feedback tools show the same and blame the salient css for render blocking for 2-3 seconds on mobile. I have tried minifying and aggregating and delaying all header css using your recommended cache plugins and others (while clearing & rebuilding caches etc) - no joy for weeks. I have followed all other advice – CDN, latest version of Salient, etc. Nothing moves the dial on this to a point where it’s good enough for Google on mobile, just for basic Salient page with only a header and a small footer widget.
It is not related to images - there are none on the empty page, and on other pages I have optimised all images and lazy loaded them, and there is no difference in FCP and LCP between a page with no text or images in it and a very long page with many images.
I’m surprised to not have found anybody else talking about this or offering solutions. I love salient, but SEO is so important to us that I’m worried I’m going to have to change themes if I can’t fix the LCP. But you can see from the screenshots that the LCP is only just a bit longer than the FCP, so that’s what’s causing the delay.
It seems to me the most likely solution is going to have to be slimming down the salient CSS to only what’s used - as that’s a big file even minified/optimised.
i’ve hit a dead end with this and is nothing more I can do without editing core theme files which I really don’t want to do.
Is this something you see on other salient installs and is there anything you can do to help me?
I will post public to see if anyone else has this, and can provide URLs in a private message to follow.
Hey rkhow, since the newer mobile page speed test uses throttled connection speeds, small amounts of KB which would normally be unnoticeable on standard mobiles connections in regards to loading heavily effect the scoring. We've been working towards building a CSS/JS system to allow for "A" ratings on the mobile page speed score test out of the box. But it's a complex & large task, so we have been releasing it in stages with each major/minor release - v14 just slimmed down the CSS loaded by 40%.
That being said, it's still possible to achieve 80+ on the mobile test by utilizing the existing options built into Salient + a free performance plugin such as autoptimize, which you have already.
Ensure that you have enabled the options within the Salient options panel > general settings > performance tab. I would recommend having them all on, but at least ensure you have the "Move jQuery to Footer" active.
In the Autoptimize > settings > extra tab, change the Google fonts option to "Combine and link deferred in head.
General advice - ensure you're using the latest PHP (8.0) and HTTP2 for the protocol (which you already seem to be).
If you're looking to score in the mid to high 90's for the mobile test, you could also get a premium plugin such as the critical CSS addon for Autoptimize or WP rocket.
Thank you for this thoughtful and detailed reply, and for taking the time to look at what’s happening on my site.
Yes, it is frustrating that they use throttled speeds that bear little relationship to most people’s mobile experience in western countries. I hope they do not penalise pages too much on this basis. But good to know that you are continuing to work on building the to take this into account.
I will work through your suggestions and let you know how I get on.
For weeks now I have been following all the advice and trying to do everything I can to improve the page performance for my Salient site hosted on WPengine, but cannot get it low enough to be acceptable to Google.
Even with a completely empty page, just text header and text footer, no sidebar, the FCP first contentful paint and LCP largest contentful paint are over 3 seconds on mobile.
I can send screenshots of comparative mobile and desktop performance for an empty page – desktop is 0.8s for FCP and 1.0s for LCP so is good, but mobile is 3.3s for FCP and 3.8s for LCP which is bad.
Google is prioritising LCP on mobile as a core web vital performance metric, and marks all my pages as Needs Improvement in Search console.
All the other test and feedback tools show the same and blame the salient css for render blocking for 2-3 seconds on mobile. I have tried minifying and aggregating and delaying all header css using your recommended cache plugins and others (while clearing & rebuilding caches etc) - no joy for weeks. I have followed all other advice – CDN, latest version of Salient, etc. Nothing moves the dial on this to a point where it’s good enough for Google on mobile, just for basic Salient page with only a header and a small footer widget.
It is not related to images - there are none on the empty page, and on other pages I have optimised all images and lazy loaded them, and there is no difference in FCP and LCP between a page with no text or images in it and a very long page with many images.
I’m surprised to not have found anybody else talking about this or offering solutions. I love salient, but SEO is so important to us that I’m worried I’m going to have to change themes if I can’t fix the LCP. But you can see from the screenshots that the LCP is only just a bit longer than the FCP, so that’s what’s causing the delay.
It seems to me the most likely solution is going to have to be slimming down the salient CSS to only what’s used - as that’s a big file even minified/optimised.
i’ve hit a dead end with this and is nothing more I can do without editing core theme files which I really don’t want to do.
Is this something you see on other salient installs and is there anything you can do to help me?
I will post public to see if anyone else has this, and can provide URLs in a private message to follow.
Thanks,
Hey Again, Hope you had a Positive Weekend,
Escalating this to the developer for further response.
Best
ThemeNectar Support Team
Hey rkhow, since the newer mobile page speed test uses throttled connection speeds, small amounts of KB which would normally be unnoticeable on standard mobiles connections in regards to loading heavily effect the scoring. We've been working towards building a CSS/JS system to allow for "A" ratings on the mobile page speed score test out of the box. But it's a complex & large task, so we have been releasing it in stages with each major/minor release - v14 just slimmed down the CSS loaded by 40%.
That being said, it's still possible to achieve 80+ on the mobile test by utilizing the existing options built into Salient + a free performance plugin such as autoptimize, which you have already.
If you're looking to score in the mid to high 90's for the mobile test, you could also get a premium plugin such as the critical CSS addon for Autoptimize or WP rocket.
Kind regards,
Thank you for this thoughtful and detailed reply, and for taking the time to look at what’s happening on my site.
Yes, it is frustrating that they use throttled speeds that bear little relationship to most people’s mobile experience in western countries. I hope they do not penalise pages too much on this basis. But good to know that you are continuing to work on building the to take this into account.
I will work through your suggestions and let you know how I get on.
Thanks!
@rkhow: your totally right and I have the same problem here. Cant find a solution for mobile and its loading time is bad.