If you’re searching for page speed tools for your page, you found it.
Did you know that having a great digital experience for your website’s visitors is the best way to ensure more views, retain more traffic, and be more relevant in search engines?
A vital part of a successful, engaging WordPress site is its performance: how quickly it loads, how responsive it is, and how fast it can grab the user’s attention.
In this sense, page speed tools are the perfect way to understand how to improve loading time and turn it into a competitive advantage. Let’s see why this is so important and check out the 8 best solutions for page speed.
Why assess and audit your page speed?
When a small business owner thinks about ways of getting attention and visibility online, one of the main strategies is to offer leads a great online experience.
That experience is part of a customer’s journey, from initially getting to know your brand all the way to conversion. And the path they take always means perusing your content and website.
To make this brand-customer connection deeper and attract and convert more leads, SEO focuses on several aspects such as a compelling visual identity and engaging content.
But what is the point if your audience has problems when accessing and consuming what you offer them? Pagespeed and performance are the foundations of a website that really helps you with your Digital Marketing strategy.
There are two main reasons to make your pages quicker and more responsive. First, it results in a better User Experience (UX) for visitors, making them eager for more contact with your brand.
That means more extended visits, lower bounce rates, and more page views — an increasing number of opportunities to turn them into leads and even customers.
But page speed is not only for humans. Any SEO plan considers the website’s performance. Sites that load fast — in less than a second — are ranked higher by Google and can quickly climb to first positions when performing better than the competition.
With more and longer visits, you are ranked higher for relevant keywords. With this, you can obtain even more visibility.
How do I check my website speed on Google?
It’s a good idea for every website owner and digital marketer to maintain access to various Google web page speed test tools so they can compare different results. But when you’re trying to improve your Google rankings, you always want to be in the know as far as what Google itself thinks of your speed.
Chances are, you already use Google Analytics to help you monitor and maintain your site. You can just as easily use it to perform a quick Google web page speed test whenever you have questions or concerns about your speed.
Check your current speed with the site speed overview report for various valuable insights, including how your speed may have fluctuated over time, which pages are doing well, and which need improvement. You can also use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to spot-check any specific URL for speed issues.
What is a good Google Page Speed score?
After performing a Google web page speed test with PageSpeed Insights, you’ll receive a performance score that takes a variety of critical metrics into consideration. (These include but may not be limited to total blocking time, time to interact, speed index, etc.)
How your website did regarding each of these metrics will be indicated by one of the following icons:
- A green circle indicates good performance
- A gold square indicates improvement is needed
- A red triangle indicates poor performance
You’ll also see an overall performance score that sums up your speed assessment for that particular URL. A score that’s 90 or higher is considered a good score, and that’s what you want to aim for.
If your score is below 90, but above 50, your speeds need improvement. If they’re below 50, that’s considered poor performance that needs to be addressed ASAP. However, Google will also give you suggestions on how to improve and bring your score up to where they should be.
How do you know if a website is slow?
In the past, web users simply had to sit, wait, and be patient while a website loaded, those days are over, and people’s expectations are a lot higher as a result. According to Google, the average site visitor expects web pages to load in under a second, so if yours takes any longer than that, there’s a good chance you’re losing traffic and sales down the line.
High bounce rates combined with Google PageSpeed scores that indicate a need for improvement are a solid sign that your current load speeds are just too slow. However, you can gain additional insight by using several different Google web page speed test tools and comparing the different results you get.
Does Google penalize slow sites?
Google is in the business of providing the best possible user experience for its users. Part of that means ensuring that the site on the other side of a SERP link is organized, user-friendly, mobile-accessible, and fast. That said, Google has always considered load speeds when ranking sites.
Slower sites are actually penalized in that they’re assigned lower rankings than they might otherwise have. This is the case when it comes to both the desktop and mobile versions of the site. Granted, a site generally has to be very slow to receive this type of penalty.
However, it’s essential to realize that SERP rankings are competitive in nature. If your site isn’t ranking as well due to slow load speeds, then naturally, other sites will be outranking you. Check out those sites to determine what they might be doing that you’re not.
And again, use Google web page speed test tools regularly to ensure your spot and address any speed issues before they have a chance to hurt your rankings.
8 Page Speed Tools To Improve Your Website’s Performance
Now that we saw how crucial page speed is to get your brand some authority online, it’s time to make this performance boost happen.
A speed test tool is a service that analyzes your website – looking for elements, codes, and resources that can be optimized for better performance.
Those can be scripts or plugins taking too much time to load, images that are too big, render-blocking JavaScript, or CSS.
So let’s look at 8 page speed tools that can give you the insights you need to create a truly competitive website.
1. Stage
Stage is a WordPress hosting service that offers a complete suite of solutions, from creating to optimizing a website for better content, experience, and conversions.
As part of its focus on performance and security, Stage is a dedicated tool from Stage that gives a thorough, comprehensive, and objective view of how your website is performing and what steps you can take to improve it.
Stage can check SEO elements and potential errors, detect image issues, and recommend the best practices to get you ahead of the competition.
2. Google PageSpeed Insights
If the main goal of an SEO strategy is to reach better positions on Google Search, why not ask the source about your site’s performance?
Google PageSpeed Insights is a simple and powerful tool to analyze and get suggestions for improving your website. It gives a score, or a number, based on your results.
It’s an indicator of your website’s UX and its impact on SEO.
3. GT Metrix
GT Metrix is another tool that can help you give your visitors a better user experience. It analyzes the site looking for errors and bottlenecks, measures performance according to country and browser, and gives a score based on objective statistics.
4. Pingdom Speed Test
Pingdom is a solution for user monitoring and web development that offers its own tool for analyzing a website’s performance.
It does the same kind of analysis as many of those listed here but it uses a visual system that helps you quickly identify the main problems to be addressed when optimizing code and content.
5. Web Page Test
Web Page Test isn’t the simplest solution around, but it has interesting features that are worth a look, such as an advanced analysis based on preset devices and browsers, and a visual comparison tool to do some benchmarks.
6. KeyCDN Speed Test
KeyCDN also has its own tool focused on analyzing and giving insights into a page’s performance.
Heavily inspired by Google PageSpeed Insights, it also gives you a score for speed and optimization, as well as some useful tips on how you can make your website more attractive to both Google and visitors.
7. Varvy PageSpeed Optimization
Varvy Pagespeed is more like a class than a tool. With simple and comprehensive, well-organized content, it shows you all the elements that make a page slow and what you can do to solve these issues.
All of which are categorized and explained with rich examples.
8. YSlow
Different from all other items on this list, YSlow is not a web-based tool but an open-source browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and others.
It’s a simpler solution with limited insights. But it offers an instant review of small changes made to the code when working to improve its performance.
User experience is important for digital visibility, so you might want to look into using one of these page speed tools. Try the tools that offer the best analysis and insight, coupled with more SEO-focused services.
Would you like to know more about the importance of speed to a website’s success? Then check out our exclusive infographic about how performance can impact your sales!
