Check your site speed

by 15 replies
19
Most of you already know, but site speed matters. In Google's own words, "High performance web sites lead to higher visitor engagement, retention and conversions"

It is also a factor in terms of Google's algorithm.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using site speed in web search ranking

What better way to go about achieving better rankings, than by simply increasing the performance of your website?

Here's a great tool that I have begun using to analyze websites for clients and make improvements.

GTmetrix | Website Speed and Performance Optimization

What I really like about it, is that it not only tells you where your site needs work, but what you can actually do about it.

I got my site load times down to 1.22s using this tool.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #check #site #speed
  • Nice share. I had always used Website speed test which is quite similar - but they both gave different results.
  • I find WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test to provide more accurate results then pingdom.

    Just tried this one and webpagetest still provides more info on top of that the Yslow results of this site are just plain incorrect (it claims I'm not using CDN while I'm using MaxCDN).
  • Another vote for www.webpagetest.org
  • Good post. I usually forget this aspect of my business. Definitely going to go through all my sites and see where the problems are.

    Jon
  • In addition to these wonderful tools mentioned into this post, you can also use the “Site Performance” in Google Webmaster Tools and “Site Speed” in Google Analytics.
    • [1] reply
    • Site speed in Analytics is excellent.

      Go to CONTENT > Site Speed > Overview

      You can view your sites avg load times there. To be more specific, you can click on 'Page Timings' to see which pages in particular are slow.

      Be sure to use annotations to make it off where (and when) you made improvements to your site, so that you can go back later and make comparative checks.
  • My site is messed up lol

    I think I need to update to the new version of my theme.
    • [1] reply
    • What helped me Fin, was reducing the amount of "external requests".

      Eg, requests to offsite elements, plugins, etc, where my site would have to run off and load something from elsewhere before it fully loaded.

      Also, site caching made a significant difference too.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • John Romaine,

    Dude, your site is crazy fast. I clicked around on a few pages and indeed, you know what you're talking about. Thanks for sharing. Will be tackling this for my sites tomorrow!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Cheers, thanks Wayne.

    It's definitely worth doing!
  • WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test
    Website speed test
    https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights#

    => Here is my powerful package for web speed test. Besides, if you use Firefox, you can try YSlow add-on.
  • Great post, thanks John. With the recommendations that it gives, I can start improving the performance of my sites.
  • I use and trust Pingdom for speed testing.
  • It's hard to rely on these website speed testers, because every single time they give out different results.
  • Hi John:
    Thanks for the heads up. Actually, one of my web pages is S-L-O-W!

    Well, the time to optimize is now.
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    Check your site speed

    Most of you already know, but site speed matters. In Google's own words, "High performance web sites lead to higher visitor engagement, retention and conversions" It is also a factor in terms of Google's algorithm.