Pagespeed or loading time is a tremendous factor for Google Discover.
By speed, I do not mean a 90+ score on the Pagespeed insights tool. I mean SPEED, insanely fast websites. Page experience is a slightly different topic and will be discussed in another article.
Go to your Discover feed and open any article. They will open within 2 seconds. That is one of the big reasons News websites get so much preferential treatment on Discover. They have the money and technical team for insane page speed.
Some of them still get away by using AMP, which, by all means, is a dying technology. It has caused Google significant trouble regarding privacy regulations and will probably be retired within the next two years.
But that doesn’t mean a small publisher cannot reap the fruits of Google Discover, and they don’t need to use Google AMP, too.
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How do you improve page loading time to optimize for Google Discover?
Alright, straight to the details. Yes, I, too, occasionally will give some affiliate links. We are working online to make some money, right? These products are all by means used by me on my websites.
Use a Good Hosting
Yeah, do not settle for less. What people do is use some crap web hosting service, never get the results they deserve, and quit blogging. I did that, too. But instead of quitting altogether, I was persistent, probably because I had another job, so money was not an issue. But, I had to change Hosting every year, and trust me, it is not fun, especially since I have ten websites. What I realized is that premium services come at a price. So, please understand and go for a good Hosting provider, even if you are a beginner.
I have always used only Litespeed hosting servers. When I started in 2020, I first used Domainracer (because I was naive), then Hostinger (all YouTubers promote it; it must be good). After a decent but occasionally bad experience with Hostinger, I migrated to Fastcomet in 2022 and will probably stay with them for a long time.
I use Fastcomet ‘Fast Cloud Extra’ on my websites. Check the speed!
This is the best affordable hosting for Google Discover optimization.
Here is a deal!
If you think my website is fast enough, consider buying Fastcomet from my affiliate link below. I will earn a small commission from it at no extra cost to you.
I will give you GP Premium and WP Rocket for Free in return!
Just send me the invoice generated after purchasing Fastcomet hosting, and I will send you GP Premium and WP Rocket over email for FREE!
The subject should be ‘Fastcomet invoice’, and send the invoice to [email protected]
Use a CDN
Especially if your website gets traffic from around the world, get on a CDN. Cloudflare is great for beginners, but its free plan isn’t enough for high-traffic websites. Cloudflare only serves static content (CSS and JS) from the edge. The main content, i.e., the HTML, still gets served from your hosting, thus slowing down the loading time.
Either use Cloudflare APO ($5 per month), Cloudflare Paid plans (Pro or Business), or you can use the WP Cloudflare Super Page Cache plugin to cache your whole webpage and serve them from the nearest Cloudflare POPs.
Pro Tip: Use Rocket.net as your web hosting and get great hosting and Cloudflare Enterprise CDN together.
Caching plugin
Very important. Without a properly configured caching plugin, your website is a slow grandpa.
As discussed, I prefer the Litespeed cache plugin since I have used only Litespeed hosting servers. This is free and great to use.
Install the Litespeed cache plugin, go to Presets, and then choose Advanced (Recommended). This alone will make your website fly with a 98+ Pagespeed score, even with Adsense ads.
If you are not a fan of the whole Litespeed thing, you can use Apache or Nginx hosts. In that case, you will need WP Rocket.
WordPress Theme
I use the Generetapress theme with GP Premium on all my websites (check the source code). I have tried and used many, many themes but always have come back to GP. From my experience, most niche websites that rank on Google Discover use Generatepress.
That’s all. These are enough to make your website load in under 3 seconds on Mobile, and that will help you with Google Discover optimization.
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