The Laziest & Free Way To Get An Almost Perfect Score In All Website Speed Test Tools
If you’re like me, trying to do all the good things in Google instead of finding that magic ranking ‘loophole’ to game the system, you will know that page speed is one of the key ranking factors. Not only a ranking factor, but it will also help your visitor to stay, reduce bounce rate and eventually increase your conversion rate.
I’ve tried different plugins and tools that are supposed to help you improve your website speed and Time to First Byte (TTFB). Even after installing and optimising all of these different plugins and tools, none of them really came close to giving me a high score on the major website speed test sites.
Here are some types of plugins/tools that a lot of us will install/use to improve our website speed:
- CDN
- Image Optimization/Compression
- Lazy Load
- Cache
In this case study, we are going to see if there is one plugin that can replace everything above and in fact, do a better job with minimal effort.
Introducing Nitropack
One day I saw this plugin being recommended in a Facebook group as the “Holy grail of pagespeed” plugin. One plugin that does all of the above combined. I decided to investigate and see if it can be incorporated into my website.
It was called “Nitropack”.
Most reviews out there will tell you how the process works and explain to you all the technical jargon. But as an end user, what we want to do is simple: install the plugin and see if it delivers the results as promised. If it works it works, if it doesn’t we’ll keep finding the next best solution.
Isn’t that the point of using a plugin? We all want something that we can just set, activate and forget.
For this case study, I will install the plugin on this current website so that everyone can enter the URL into the website speed test sites to see the result for themselves.
I will do a before and after comparison on these 3 major website speed test sites:
- Pingdom (https://tools.pingdom.com/)
- Gtmetrix (https://gtmetrix.com/)
- Google Page Speed (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/)
On each of them I will run the test 3x and get the average. This is to ensure that my test is of the highest accuracy and not affected by any bugs on those sites.
Before I run the test, here are the existing plugins that we’re using:
- Litespeed Cache
- Shortpixel Image Optimizer
- Lazy Load – Optimize Images
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that those 3 plugins are bad and should be replaced. In fact, they are quite popular and with the proper settings, they could help you improve your page speed / load time.
But even with these, it requires quite a decent amount of technical knowledge to score really high in the 3 major website speed test sites. And what we are looking for is a set-and-forget solution without fumbling through the settings and watching tonnes of YouTube videos to find the perfect ones for our website.
Speed Test Result (Before)
As mentioned earlier, we ran through all of them 3x with the average scores on the far-right.
Pingdom
| Pingdom | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance Grade | D (68) | D (68) | D (70) | 68.6 (D) |
| Page Size | 1.2MB | 1.2MB | 1.2MB | 1.2MB |
| Load Time | 1.28s | 866ms | 863ms | 1.003s |
| Request | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
Gtmetrix
| Gtmetrix | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pagespeed Score | B (82%) | B (82%) | B (82%) | B (82%) |
| YSlow Score | C (77%) | C (77%) | C (77%) | C (77%) |
| Fully Load Time | 4.5s | 2.7s | 3.6s | 3.6s |
| Total Page Size | 1.07MB | 1.07MB | 1.07MB | 1.07MB |
| Request | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
Google PageSpeed (Desktop)
| Google PageSpeed | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 1.2s | 1.3s | 1.2s | 1.23s |
| Speed Index | 2.4s | 4.0s | 2.3s | 2.9s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 2.8s | 2.7s | 2.0s | 2.5s |
| Time To Interactive | 2.6s | 2.8s | 2.8s | 2.73s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0ms | 40ms | 20ms | 20ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.035 | 0.035 | 0.035 | 0 |
| Score | 70 | 65 | 77 | 70.66 |
Google PageSpeed (Mobile)
| Google PageSpeed | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 4.3s | 4.3s | 4.2s | 4.27s |
| Speed Index | 7.7s | 11.2s | 6.9s | 8.6s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 4.4s | 4.4s | 4.2s | 4.33s |
| Time To Interactive | 10.6s | 9.7s | 10.5s | 9.6s |
| Total Blocking Time | 260ms | 390ms | 340ms | 330ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.072 | 0 | 0.072 | 0.048 |
| Score | 52 | 46 | 53 | 50.33 |
Installing Nitropack
Once I had gotten the results from all the major website speed testers, I placed an order with Nitropack that has both paid and free plans.
In this example, I’m just going to use the free plan as I’m optimising this Archseo website, which is not going to rank for any keywords and also because we have very few pages.
At the same time, I don’t want this case study to be a biased review if you have to pay just to get the benefits of these tools.
A free plan means that everyone can optimise their website for free. The free plan comes with a 200-page optimization limit and you will need to give them sitewide footer links.
You can scroll to the bottom to take a look and experience it yourself.
The paid plan can be quite expensive when compared to other similar tools. If you’re on a budget, or your site is not making as much money for you to invest in this plugin, a free plan will work just fine. It’s just one outbound link in the footer, so it’s not going to affect your website much. You can always switch to a paid plan once you start making more money from your site.
All you have to do is to install the Nitropack plugin, and connect using the API found in your new account.
Once this is done, I will set the setting to ‘Ludicrous’ for the best optimization. However, please ensure that you backup your site, so that in the event anything goes wrong, you will still be able to restore it.
Sit back and let it do its job – it will take a few days up till a week, depending on how large your website is.
Speed Test Result (After)
After about 2 weeks, I checked back on the results. Here you go:
Pingdom
| Pingdom | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance Grade | A (98%) | A (98%) | A (98%) | A (98%) |
| Page Size | 1.9MB | 1.9MB | 1.9MB | 1.9MB |
| Load Time | 852ms | 450ms | 473ms | 591.67ms |
| Request | 77 | 77 | 77 | 77 |
Gtmetrix
| Gtmetrix | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pagespeed Score | A (99%) | A (99%) | A (99%) | A (99%) |
| YSlow Score | A (99%) | A (99%) | A (99%) | A (99%) |
| Fully Load Time | 2.9s | 1.8s | 2.7s | 2.46s |
| Total Page Size | 215KB | 215KB | 215KB | 215KB |
| Request | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
Google PageSpeed (Desktop)
| Google PageSpeed | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 0.3s | 0.4s | 0.3s | 0.33s |
| Speed Index | 0.9s | 1.0s | 0.9s | 0.93s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 0.7s | 0.7s | 0.3s | 0.57s |
| Time To Interactive | 0.3s | 0.4s | 0.3s | 0.33s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0ms | 0ms | 0ms | 0ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Score | 100 | 99 | 100 | 99.67 |
Google PageSpeed (Mobile)
| Google PageSpeed | Result #1 | Result #2 | Result #3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 1.2s | 1.2s | 1.1s | 1.17s |
| Speed Index | 2.6s | 2.5s | 2.2s | 2.43s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 1.2s | 1.2s | 1.1s | 1.17s |
| Time To Interactive | 3.7s | 3.7s | 3.7s | 3.7s |
| Total Blocking Time | 140ms | 210ms | 110ms | 153.33ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Score | 98 | 98 | 99 | 98.3 |
Conclusion
I take the average of both before and after from each speed testing website. And put into table below for easy reference.
Pingdom
| Pingdom | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Performance Grade | D (68%) | A (98%) |
| Page Size | 1.2MB | 1.9MB |
| Load Time | 1.28s | 591.67ms |
| Request | 64 | 77 |
Gtmetrix
| Gtmetrix | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Pagespeed Score | B (82%) | A (99%) |
| YSlow Score | C (77%) | A (99%) |
| Fully Load Time | 4.5s | 2.46s |
| Total Page Size | 1.07MB | 215KB |
| Request | 64 | 12 |
Google PageSpeed (Desktop)
| Google PageSpeed | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 1.23s | 0.33s |
| Speed Index | 2.9s | 0.93s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 2.5s | 0.57s |
| Time To Interactive | 2.73s | 0.33s |
| Total Blocking Time | 20ms | 0ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 |
| Score | 70.66 | 99.67 |
Google PageSpeed (Mobile)
| Google PageSpeed | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 4.27s | 1.17s |
| Speed Index | 8.6s | 2.43s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 4.33s | 1.17s |
| Time To Interactive | 9.6s | 3.7s |
| Total Blocking Time | 330ms | 153.33ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 10.6 | 0 |
| Score | 50.33 | 98.3 |
As you can see from the above chart, we saw drastic improvements in just 2 weeks. All we did was install, activate and forget about it. And best of all, it’s FREE. There is no reason why you wouldn’t do it, unless you’re really concerned about having one sitewide footer outbound link.
If this is a concern for you, chances are you’re probably getting a decent amount of traffic from your website, so you could possibly choose the cheapest plan at $19/month to see if it performs well for you.
While doing this test, I asked Nitropack if they had any discount code that I could share, and they created one for me “ARCH10OFF”. Use this code to get 10% off your first purchase (you save more when you get a yearly plan) and yes, I do get an affiliate fee if you sign up using my coupon code.
In order to use this coupon code you need to click using my link.
Ultimately, the end-goal of installing this plugin and improving your page should get you:
Higher Ranking in Google:
More Conversion:
I hope you liked this case study. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at samuelh@archseo.com or leave a comment down below, and I will get back to you as soon as I can!