What does Google page speed test recommend for ensuring that text is always visible on a website?

Published on
September 22, 2023

Google PageSpeed Insights recommends the following practices to ensure that text is always visible on a website:

  1. Use a legible font size: It is crucial to choose a font size that is large enough to be easily readable on various devices and screen sizes. The recommended font size is at least 16 pixels (or 1em) for body text.

  2. Optimize web fonts: If you are using web fonts on your website, make sure to optimize them to minimize their impact on page loading speed. You can achieve this by subseting the fonts to include only the characters you need, compressing the font file size, and leveraging browser caching.

  3. Prioritize visible content: Rendering above-the-fold content first ensures that visitors can immediately see meaningful text on your page while other resources (such as images and scripts) continue to load. It is essential to avoid render-blocking resources like CSS and JavaScript that can delay the display of text.

  4. Minimize render-blocking CSS: Inline critical CSS or load it in the head of your HTML document to minimize the time it takes for the browser to render the text and avoid delays caused by external CSS files. This helps eliminate the "flash of unstyled content" (FOUC) issue.

  5. Enable text compression: Compressing text-based resources, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, reduces their file size and accelerates the loading speed. This can be achieved through compression techniques like gzip or Brotli.

  6. Optimize server response time: A fast server response time is essential to deliver text content quickly to visitors' browsers. Ensure that your hosting environment is well-configured and utilizes caching mechanisms to reduce server response time.

  7. Leverage browser caching: Setting an appropriate caching policy allows the browser to store static resources (such as CSS, JavaScript, and images) locally, reducing the need for repeated downloading and improving overall page speed.

  8. Minimize redirects: Excessive redirects can slow down page loading speed and negatively impact text visibility. Minimize the use of unnecessary redirects and ensure that any necessary redirects are efficiently handled.

By following these recommendations, you can optimize your website to ensure that text is always visible and accessible, providing a better user experience while also improving your website's performance in search engine rankings.

Additional Questions:

  1. How can I optimize web fonts for better page speed?
  2. What is critical CSS, and how does it improve rendering performance?
  3. What are the best practices for minimizing server response time?