This presentation shows you how we brought https://smyln.com/ to a constant 90+% on all major speed tools. It shows you the CDNs and tricks we used, how to read the Google Webmaster Console and dives into the plugins installed for a fast Wordpress and a solidly optimized setup in the light of speed requirements.

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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