Perhaps a general question: I like the Google mobile-friendly test, but how valid is Google Developers PageSpeeds Insight Test.

The pages I have created using RSD seem to be loading quickly, even on the smallest of devices, reasonably so. Google points out much about above-the-fold, but it takes more to attract an audience above-the-fold. Technically and in regard to my anticipated audience for this customer, I wish to stick with content and natural flow of content. Being a marketer, I get the rest, but I believe the above-the-fold issue as far as rendering may be a moot point if the page loads quickly, in a manner most sane people can perceive.

It just seems that you get to a point where fast, is fast enough - people's perception doesn't change that much.

I am wondering if you have any insight to the validity of this test.

There seems to be a give and take aspect to this.

Hi Juno,

If you are aware of the Google page speed tests, treat them with the highest respect.
Imagine that you are building a site to compete in Google Search Rankings and the other sites are already ranking higher than you...
If you get a higher score in these tests than the competition, and assuming that your on page content is tight, then you will see your ranking improve within a few hours, or sooner!

That is how important the tests are.

It is easy to minify graphics, HTML, JS and CSS files.
It is almost impossible to turn on compression on your server if you are on a shared hosting plan and it is difficult to do it even if you have control of your own server.

If you see "None of the above-the-fold content on your page could be rendered without waiting for the following resources to load. Try to defer or asynchronously load blocking resources, or inline the critical portions of those resources directly in the HTML." then fixing this is worth the effort.

It would be ideal if RSD had a feature to organise the CSS for above the fold content to be automatically inline and then for all content below the fold to be in CSS files.

Until then, you have to do it manually and this includes using JavaScript in your page body to defer calling CSS files until above the fold has been displayed.

You may not think it is worth the effort to do this. But I say if Google gives you a higher ranking for attending to this, it is worth the effort! Especially so if the site ranking No 1 has not done it yet!