17 Tips To Improve Web Core Vital Score With Ezoic {Get 95+ Score Now}

In this article I will go through all the steps I implement to get a 95 score for web vitals whist using ezoic ads.  This score is on both mobile and desktop clients.

I see so many posts about people unhappy with their sites because ezoic slows them down, Yes Ezoic will slow down your site if you use the default settings.

The Proof

I will show you in the below screenshot the ezoic and google web master consoles that show what scores this site is getting.

NOTE : I have made some changes to this site since writing this article, these changes were made to improve the EPMV of this site in preparation of 3rd quarter of this year (Highest earning period) I will highlight these changes below.

FYI : Most of the changes I make here I have not seen mentioned any where else.

Ezoic Core Vital Scores

Below show the scores in my ezoic dashboard for this site. Please note if you make changes to your site it usually takes around 30 days and sometimes more to see the changes take affect.

Below is another site that I have with ezoic

Google Search : Core Web Vitals

As you can see from below on mobile and desktop I have 100% good urls.

On mobile it did drop down to need improvement because the issue “LCP issue: longer than 2.5s (mobile)” was detected and I did not realise until recently that you have to validate the fix in search console.

How To Improve Web Core Vital Score With Ezoic

Listed below are the changes that I make to improve the web core vital score.  I will start with the most important changes I make first.

1. Integrate With Ezoic Name Servers

Just do it 🙂 I tested integrating with the plugin and I found it added 4-6 seconds on every page load.

2. No Ads Above The Fold

Ads that are on the page when the webpage is loaded (Above the fold) are loaded when the page first loads which will slow down the initial page load.  This also has the biggest effect on the core vital scores.

To achieve a 95 score I did have one ad under the 1st paragraph.  So you could potentially get a better score if you have no ads.

Of course the more ads you have above the fold the more money you will make, the EPMV will be higher.

Below shows how I like to setup ads for maximum EPVM without reducing web core score by much.

I place the following ad locations using Ezoic place holder addon

1. 1 Ad just below the 1st paragraph. This ad is max 100px high.
2. 1 Ad in the sidebar.  Usually at top or the middle.  These are the only 2 ads I place above the fold.
3. 1 Ad at bottom of sidebar. Place a sticky sidebar ad at the bottom of the sidebar.  I try to make my sidebar long so it pushes this ad down below the fold
4. Body of article. Then place as many ads in the body of the page.  These ads will only load when you scroll down to them.

3. No Images Above The Fold

Same as point 2.  For all pages I not to put any above the fold, if they are above the fold they will load as the page loads.  If they are below the fold they will lazy load (If set in Ezoic) only when the visitor scrolls down.

4. Improve Ezoic Caching Settings

In ezoics caching section there are a few cache settings you need to know about

• Cache Hit = Someone visited your website and was served a cached copy of your website
• Cache Miss = Someone visited your website and the page was loaded from ezoic and your web hosting provider

Ideally we need as many cache hit requests as we can.  You can see below that a cache hit page time to first byte is 1.4 seconds while a cache miss page loads in 2.3 seconds, that almost a 1 second difference.

To view the below report for your site Click Here or

1. Log in to ezoic
2. Select a site from the site list
3. Click Analytics in the tool bar
4. Click Site Speed > Cachine

Before I made the below changes I was getting roughly 50% Cache hit and 50% Cache miss.  Now I get around 80% Cache hit and 20% Cache hit. To achieve this I made the following changes

• Select a site in ezoic dashboard
• click speed
• click caching

Change the following settings under “Cache Setting Values”

1. Default Cache Age : 559200
2. Override Cache Control Headers : On
3. Force Caching by Device Type : On
4. Ignore Cache-Control: no-cache : On

Above are the settings that I have changed, You can view more information about this on the Ezoic website here

5. Disable Anchor Ads

Anchor ads are ads that appear at the bottom of the page and stick to the bottom as you scroll down.  These ads will add to the pages load time because they load a soon as you visit a page.

If you disable these ads you can expect to lose about 5% – 10% of your revenue.  You can also enable and disable this separately on desktop / mobile / tablet.

NOTE : I have enabled anchor ads on this site again after publishing this article.

To disable anchor ads do the following in the ezoic dashboard

1. Select site
2. Click monetization
3. Click Anchor Ads Settings under Ad Tester
4. Turn the ads on or off for desktop / tablet / mobile

6. Disable Video Ads

Same as disable anchor ads, video ads will load slightly after the page load.  By disabling these ads it will help improve your page load time.

Personally I do not enable video ads, I don’t like them when I visit other sites so I don’t want them on my site.  In my experience video ads will earn you about 5% more revenue.

To disable video ads do the following in the ezoic dashboard

1. Select site
2. Click monetization
3. Click General Settings under Ad Tester
4. Un check “Floating Video Ad Unit”

7. Move To Ezoic Approved Hosting

For me this is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your site speed.  If you use Ezoic on your website it will run slow on some webhosting providers because they need to whitelist ezoic ips and configure some settings for bots, more info about this here

I moved all my websites from a high spec VPS to an ezoic certified web hosting company (View List Here) I saw a huge speed increase, this is because my old hosting provider had an issue with there firewall handling the ezoic traffic as it was marking it as bot traffic and blocking the traffic.

I moved my site to shared hosting on “A2 Hosting” I use the turbo boost hosting service.

8. White List Ezoic IPs

It is important to white list Ezoic Ips on your webhosting because if you don’t you might get a lot of traffic being blocked or at least being scanned which slows down your site. More info about this here

9. Disable AI Placeholders

Personally I like to control exactly where the ads show on my website, If you enable AI placeholders they can place a very large ad at the top of the page which can slow down your site.

The screenshot above shows where an Ad was placed on my site.  I disable AI placeholders on all of my sites.

10. Check SSL Settings

A few months back I spoke with Ezoic and there support recommended these SSL settings to help speed up your website.

There are two places you need to check the SSL settings, In ezoic dashboard and in cloudflare.  Both locations should be set to FULL.

Cloudflare

To check the SSL settings in cloudflare do the following

1. Log on to cloudflare.com
2. Select your site
3. Click SSL/TLS
4. Click Overview
5. Make a note of what is currently set in case we need to roll back the setting
6. Click Full

Ezoic

We now need to do the same for ezoic, do do this follow these steps

1. Log in to ezoic.com
2. Select your site
3. Click settings in the toolbar
4. Under SSL click “Edit SSL Settings”
5. Note down what the SSL is set to incase we need to roll this change back
6. For SSL Type Select Full
7. Click save

11. Leap Settings

Make sure you are using Ezoic leap.  To access Leap click on Speed from the main toolbar, then click Optimization Settings.

Make sure the following settings are applied

• CSS > Make sure all settings are enabled
• Minify > Make sure all settings are enabled
• Images > Make sure all settings are enabled apart from “Set Explicit Width and Height”
• Script Execution > Make sure all settings are enabled
• Static Asset Cache Policy > Make sure all settings are enabled
• Content > Make sure all settings are enabled apart from “Remove Scripts or Styles”
• Pre-Connect > Make sure all settings are enabled

12. Theme

If you are using wordpress then most themes will be lightweight and will load pages quickly.

There are some themes that I have personally used that I recommend because they are some of the fastest themes that you can get for wordpress, these themes are

• Astra
• GeneratePress

Out of the two I prefer Astra and I will be moving all of my sites to this theme early next year

13. Fonts

It is best practice to use System Fonts and not google fonts.

System Fonts are fonts that are available locally on your website, the font loads quick as it is loaded from internal resources.

Google Fonts are fonts that are located on the internet and need to be fetched, downloaded and applied in order to display, this process is usually quick but it does add an extra thing for your page load process.

In wordpress you can change fonts by login in to your admin section and click on Appearance > Customize.  Below shows you where the system fonts are for the GeneratePress theme.

Not all themes support changing fonts this way and you have to edit the code styles.css to change the font.

14. Install Ezoic Plugin

Ezoic have a plugin for wordpress, the plugin is located here.

The plugin can be used to disable certain things from loading on your website which should help to speed up pages loads.

Install the plugin and then go to wp-admin > Settings > Ezoic > Speed Settings, Make sure all boxes are ticked apart from “Set scheme-less urls”

15. Install EWWW Image Optimizer + Configure Images

Ezoic recommend not to install any image compressors / lazy load plugins but if you install and configure them correctly they can help with site speed.

Ezoic leap will lazy load images and compress them, but if we compress them on the website then ezoic leap needs to do less work when loading your page.

Also if a visitor is not served a cached page then the below settings will help page load times for that visitor.

I personally use EWWW Image Optimizer but you can use other plugins.

First thing we need to do is change the image sizes that can be uploaded to the site.  To do this follow these steps

1. Go to wp-admin
2. Click on settings
3. Click Media
4. Edit the image size for large images

I usually put 700 max width and 1024 height.

Next we need to configure the EWWW Image Optimizer settings to do this follow these steps

1. Go to wp-admin
2. Click Settings
3. Click EWWW Image Optimizer
4. Make sure the below settings are set

• Remove Metadata : Ticked
• Resize Images : Set to the same as what you set in wordpress large images (Step Above)
• Lazy Load : Unticked (Important)
• WebP Conversion : Unticked

Now if you upload a picture that is larger than these dimensions wordpress will then automatically resize the image. EWWW Image Optimizer will also compress the image so the image size will be as small as possible.

16. Install Simple YouTube Responsive Plugin

The Simple YouTube Responsive will lazy load any youtube videos you have on that page.  If you have a youtube video on your page it can add around 1mb to that page which the visitor needs to download when they visit your site.

By adding this plugin the youtube code will be replaced with a thumbnail image of the video (Which is lazy loaded)

17. Check Conflicting WordPress Plugins

By using the Ezoic wordpress plugin we can see if any other plugins are conflicting with Ezoic.

To check this do the following

1. Log in to wp-admin
2. Click Settings
3. Click Ezoic
4. Check Compatibility Warnings

Below you can see it recommends to remove EWWW Image Optimizer.  Review any plugins that are listed here and remove if not needed.