Page Speed: How to test it and improve your SEO

The best way to test your website for its load time and how Google views it is to use Google’s own page speed insights. Since we want it to help us rank higher in the Google website and search rankings, it is important to take into account how Google views your load time, and what they think needs to be fixed or improved.

To test your website using Google Page Insights.

1.Click here and enter your website address or URL.

2.Click Analyse

3.Read through the results and see what needs to be changed or upgraded.

Do not get scared if you find the results too technical for your understanding, send us an email at [email protected] along with your website address and we can test your websites speed and let you know what needs to be fixed and improved, what is critical and what should not be changed.

What can slow your page speed down?

• Your host or server: As the saying goes, you usually get what you paid for. In the long run, a cheap hosting account can damage your page speed. Pick the right host best fits your business size.
• Large images: Images which are very large are heavy to load and can really slow your website down. It is often due to extra data included in the comments or to a lack of compression.
• External embedded media: External media like videos are highly valuable but can seriously lower you load time. To gain some load time, host the videos on a sharing platform like youtube or vimeo.
• Unoptimized browser, plugins and app: You should test your website on all browsers since they do not all load your website in the same way. Applications like Flash can also slow your site down considerably.
• Too many ads: Besides irritating you visitors, ads can cost you page speed depending on how they are set up and how many you have.
• Your theme: Some highly designed themes containing a lot of effects and fancy functionality can penalize your load time.
• Widgets: Some social buttons or comment areas can have an impact of your page speed.
• Double-barreled code: If your HTML/CSS is not efficient or too dense, it will lower your page speed.

Alternatives for testing your load time and your websites speed are:

Pingdom or Web Page Test

It is always good to have a number of sources when trying to speed up our website.