Core Web Vitals

On 11/17/2022 at 8:52 AM, paul2009 said:

These tools are useful to the teams at Squarespace who have control over the "backend" configuration and are working to improve the performance of Squarespace websites. Great work is being done by Squarespace to make it perform even better, but this may not be obvious from reports like this because they can provide misleading information to site owners and designers. Messages like "reduce unused JavaScript" are unhelpful when this is not a factor that you can influence yourself.

Rather than worrying about the suggestions in technical reports like this, I recommend you check how your site performs in the "real world", by actually visiting it from a private/incognito browser (whilst not logged on). Most Squarespace sites are incredibly performant so, if it loads slowly, check the filesize of images you have added and check any code you added to code injection. These are usually the main culprits for poor performing websites.

In addition, you may want to look at these Squarespace support guides:

• SEO checklist
• Increasing your site’s visibility to search engines

Regarding the suggestions in the PageSpeed Insights report, you'll need to rely on the work that Squarespace are doing centrally to improve performance across all sites.

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It's nice that it performs nice in actuality, but the fact that it's not ranked well on Google is pretty unacceptable. It's like having a well built business, but it's in a remote forest instead of downtown. Doesn't matter if it's good if people can't find it.

Is there ANY way users can fix this? If not, it's financially worth it for me to jump ship to a platform that actually takes this seriously as I have a business in a competitive field that depends highly on SEO for customers (construction).

12 hours ago, HenryPurchase said:

Yes, Squarespace doesn't have good core web vitals, and a lot of work needs to be done to ensure a Squarespace website is fully SEO-friendly (both from Squarespace and Squarespace users).

This doesn't mean a Squarespace website cannot rank well on Google, rank above websites built on WordPress/Wix/Webflow etc. and generate a serious amount of organic traffic.

Core web vitals and page loading speed are just one ranking factor; there are many others that Google considers, such as backlinks, keyword optimization, internal linking, time spent on pages by users etc.

If you like the Squarespace UX and love how anyone can get started on a SS site (which can't be said for many of the other platforms!), then this is just a compromise for now - hopefully, the messages above show that Squarespace is doing something about this.

Our Squarespace SEO plugin also has a lot on our roadmap to help here - WordPress has Yoast/EWWW image optimizer/Jetpack/WP Cache, which help users at a basic level which we will expand far beyond.

Totally agree!

I have several sites that rank in the top 5 on Google within their respective market. A big part is getting all of your content, page descriptions etc SEO focused and creating a site that is a good user experience for your customers.

6 minutes ago, EscapeOutdoors said:

It's nice that it performs nice in actuality, but the fact that it's not ranked well on Google is pretty unacceptable. It's like having a well built business, but it's in a remote forest instead of downtown. Doesn't matter if it's good if people can't find it.

Is there ANY way users can fix this? If not, it's financially worth it for me to jump ship to a platform that actually takes this seriously as I have a business in a competitive field that depends highly on SEO for customers (construction).

I would make sure that every other part of your site is optimised. Do you have well written content that works for your customers. Is your site structure easy to follow and use? All of this will increase engagement, and time on site plus reduce drop offs. This is all important to Google. 

This is a great resource from Google to: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide

• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#knowyourreaders

Should you switch platforms?
You can look at other platforms but they all have their pit falls. I used to do Wordpress sites but I got sick of the headaches around security and plugins.  Plus you don't have much of a niche as everyone builds sites on Wordpress so it is hard to stand out from the crowd.

You can still get good results
https://www.google.com/search?q=accommodation+mataia
The top site is a Squarespace site for example. It is content focused and optimised for a good User Experience.

Hope this all helps 🙂

On 11/17/2022 at 8:52 AM, paul2009 said:

These tools are useful to the teams at Squarespace who have control over the "backend" configuration and are working to improve the performance of Squarespace websites.

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Thank you Paul2009. Is there any Squarespace template that is simpler from the backend config perspective that loads faster? Some templates are recommended here for fast/good loading speed https://www.mehdiaoussiad.com/blog/best-squarespace-template-for-seo. I would like to get your opinion if it's worth switching the template to one of them.

3 hours ago, paradise_dds said:

Is there any Squarespace template that is simpler from the backend config perspective that loads faster? Some templates are recommended here for fast/good loading speed

Reading that article you would be forgiven for thinking that some Squarespace 7.1 templates are better than others, but this is not correct.

This is because all Squarespace 7.1 templates are exactly the same in terms of their performance, the way they manage SEO and the features they offer, so Bergen is no better or worse than any of the other 7.1 designs. They are simply starting points to help you envision your design and you should pick the one that most closely matches how you'd like your site to look.

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Recently we have been running speed reports on our website and noticed that the below script has been slowing down the performance of the mobile version of the site. This is the site: https://lilac-sailfish-7xys.squarespace.com/ which is running on the 7.1 version.

This is the script that is slowing down the mobile version: https://assets.squarespace.com/universal/scripts-compressed/common-cc2c6334436469eb1efb1-min.en-US.js 

Can anyone please advise if changing the template or removing this script would assist in changing the speed of the mobile site?

Many thanks, Karl

Hi guys, not sure if I'm at the right place, but can you tell me if there is a way to optimize these results? Where and how can I disable JavaScript and so on... ? Perhaps other ways? https://www.nwscut.com/

Thank you! 

Recently I’ve been finding that my impressions and clicks from google have taken a massive hit due to page speed issues. Any pointers on how to solve this?

Hi All,

You can use Website Speedy tool to improve Core Web Vital and fixing render blocking issues.
This will make your squarespace website load much faster.

Thanks,
Ishan
 

Can we just add our voice to the chorus? Our Squarespace 7.0 page at www.levitate.london speed score is terminal on desktop (21/100) and terrible on mobile (38/100). If anyone wants to take a kind look, our page is and our Google pagespeed score is screen shotted below!

Our issues: We're kind of image heavy. We've got quite a bit of extra code (just in terms of Hubspot chatbot and cookies, Google analytics, Facebook pixel, mailchimp etc). We'd love to port to Squarespace 7.1 but can't afford to rebuild (we have a lot of pages).

What we've tried: Reducing image sizes. Losing background videos. Reducing number of Adobe Typekit fonts from 2 to 1. We have often dropped Squarespace a suggestion to (1) accept new image formats (2) show the file size of all images and videos on the site (this could be a column in the Asset Library, but so far no dice!!

Help: We'd really love some help!

Page speed is killing us: Our Squarespace 7.0 page at www.levitate.london speed score is terminal on desktop (21/100) and terrible on mobile (38/100). If anyone wants to take a kind look, our page is and our Google pagespeed score is screen shotted below!

Our issues: We're kind of image heavy. We've got quite a bit of extra code (just in terms of Hubspot chatbot and cookies, Google analytics, Facebook pixel, mailchimp etc). We'd love to port to Squarespace 7.1 but can't afford to rebuild (we have a lot of pages).

What we've tried:

1. Reducing image sizes.
2. Losing background videos (hosted on Vimeo).
3. Reducing number of Adobe Typekit fonts from 2 to 1.
4. We have often dropped Squarespace a suggestion to (1) accept new image formats (2) show the file size of all images and videos on the site (this could be a column in the Asset Library, but so far no dice!!

Help: We'd really love some help!

Got the exakt same problem ::(

There are loads of unused Javascript libraries that SS loads by default and which cannot be removed or optimized. This mostly affects MOBILE performance scores.

You can use things like PRELOAD and PREFETCH DNS to make optmisations.

As this is something that has been discussed for a good 2 years. My guess is that eventually SS will make the changes but they will only be available on new templates and you will therefore have to rebuild everything on those templates.

Nothing you can do about that.

Hi!

I recently checked my page speed and the performance has deteriorated in the past months. From 40, it has now reduced to 40. The analysis mentions that there is unused Javascript but since these can only be done through Squarespace backend - is there any alternate method to do it? 

It also mentions minimising main-threadwork. 

The total blocking time is also causing issue.

https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-www-lordsuni-edu-in/h173sdfwcj?form_factor=mobile

Similar. Am wondering how to speed this up (i.e. set the cache policy to say 1 year for hero images, to avoid users repeatedly waiting 2+ seconds for them to load)

Has anyone found a solution to this problem? Has it been fixed by SS? 

On 11/20/2022 at 11:10 PM, Karlosnz said:

Recently we have been running speed reports on our website and noticed that the below script has been slowing down the performance of the mobile version of the site. This is the site: https://lilac-sailfish-7xys.squarespace.com/ which is running on the 7.1 version.

This is the script that is slowing down the mobile version: https://assets.squarespace.com/universal/scripts-compressed/common-cc2c6334436469eb1efb1-min.en-US.js 

Can anyone please advise if changing the template or removing this script would assist in changing the speed of the mobile site?

Many thanks, Karl

 

Were you able to fix this or do anything with this code?

Hello, 

my website https://www.diverzo.cz/ has very bad numbers of loading speed for mobiles. I already optimised size and format of images and photos. Can you help me please? Is possible to improve numbers some how?

Hey guy, I am new to sqaurespace and have some difficulties with the site speed. On google page insights, it is showing high LCP, can you please help me out with my website and also recommands any other things i can do to increase its site rank or any other valuable insights.

my site url is https://securewebtrends.com

Hi Community, 
i have a website describe above, i have facing page size length issues on my site, and also facing core web vitals issues due to pages size please guide me with your expertise 
thanks

Hi everyone, 

I see I'm not the only one having speed page issues on my site (www.cabinetwhatif.com). 

I managed to get a score of 43 on mobile and 73 on desktop but I feel like there is still a lot of work to be done to reach a favorable score for Google. 

Can someone help me to optimize this?

Got the same problem... Maybe only Squarespace could help us....

On 7/26/2023 at 7:05 PM, WhatIf said:

Got the same problem... Maybe only Squarespace could help us....

Unfortunately, they have been unable or unwilling to help for over two years.

Fixes may go too deep into the core of the template code, so we may have to wait for SS8 and then (if history is any guide) rebuild all our work from scratch (like moving from 7.0 to 7.1).

This is MY ONLY frustration with SS, but it is a MASSIVE one. I used to run 21 sites on SS, I am back down to 1 and will be leaving soon if no fix is offered or the above switch issue happens.

Perhaps SS has concluded that the acceptance of this problem still outweighs the frustration and their bottom line is still in tact. Then it would be a business decision on their part and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

I want to add my voice to this appalling situation. After so many years and given the financial success of Squarespace, the fact they have not found a solution to the obvious flaws in their backend that cause most of these problems is unconscionable.

The most (un)helpful advice they give is to reduce image sizes, which I already do - but most of the problem, as highlighted by many more knowledgeable than myself in the comments above, has to do with issues like loading unnecessary libraries etc.

I will not be building my next site on SS. I know going to Wordpress will have its issues, but I can't stay in the same boat and continue financially rewarding a company that spends large amounts on marketing to expand its client base instead of investing in improving their system.

In the end, like it or not, the pressure we face as customers of Squarespace is that Google is marking down our sites for poor performance and it is hard to justify continuing to support a platform that devalues my efforts and sees my penalised by Google.

Anyone from Squarespace care to comment - in particular not to argue with the hundreds of comments here, but to tell us what you are doing to fix these deficiencies - or if you intend to keep doing nothing?