ᐊ Best Website Speed Test Tools | Measure your site’s performance
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Site speed is one of the most important SEO factors that contribute to improving your visibility in search results. If you designed a great site with exclusive and interesting content, but you didn’t care about the site’s performance and download speed, then don’t wait for a reward from Google for the effort you made. Several years ago, the speed of websites and the response to phones was an ineffective factor in Google, and not a few of the website builders cared about it, but after 2018, the situation was completely different, as the speed of site loading became one of the most important factors in Google’s ranking.
The site load rate contributes greatly to its success on the Internet, because nowadays visitors feel bored if they wait for a long time to load the page they want and often leave the site and search for what they want on a faster site. Even if you do not care about improving search results (SEO) and rely entirely on advertising campaigns, you should pay more attention to page speed in order not to lose your money in vain.
So if you own a website and aspire to improve the performance of the site, you must know that you are doing the right thing that will take you to a higher level to notice a remarkable development.
The most famous terms of site speed testing tools
At the outset and before you look at the list of speed test tools, I would like you to pay attention to the meaning of the most important names in these tools:
URL (Link your location) – Before you write your site’s link to analyze its speed, you must enter the correct link for your site, which means that you must write www and HTTPS before the site because often some people write the name of the site only without the www, which adds a delay of about two seconds in the results of your site’s speed. The reason for this is that the site is in the process of converting from the incomplete link you entered to the correct link, and this causes a delay in loading the site for the tool used. But if you don’t have SSL then type HTTP
Test From (test from) – This is an important point that you should be aware of, the place called test from which means the country from which the site’s speed will be tested. So always choose the country where most of your visitors come from or the country you are targeting. If you choose a random country, there will be a difference in download speed about a second. Some tools do not provide the ability to test the speed of all countries. In this case, choose the country closest to the target country.
Load Time (Loading time) – This is certainly the most important metric to focus on, because the goal is to check the loading time of the site. Write down the results in an excel file for comparison After the speed improvements you will make, the site speed should be checked periodically to ensure that the site load rate is stable.
Page Size (Page Size) – This section indicates the total size of the tested page and it varies from page to page within the same site. Of course, the smaller the page size, the better the loading speed. The result of this section should not be 5 or 10 MB, which makes it very slow.
Requests (Orders) – The fewer requests, the better. If the request rate is more than 100, the site will be noticeably slow on mobile devices because the CPU will not be able to handle all these requests.
Best Website Loading Speed Test Tools:
- GTMetrix (Free and Paid)
- Google PageSpeed Insight (Free)
- Pingdom (Free and Paid)
- Varvy Pagespeed Optimization (Free)
- WebPage Test (Free)
1. GTmetrix
The well-known GTmetrix tool is one of the best site speed measurement tools, I use it personally on a regular basis because it is characterized by providing more details about site performance analysis than any other tool. GTmetrix determines the level of your site speed between grade A, B or C to F, and provides a report that is divided into five different parts, including the video feature, which is a video recording that shows the stages of loading your site, as for the visitors and the slowest part of the site.
The tool offers you different browsers to test your site with them. Through Google statistics, you can find out the most browser your visitors use and analyze your site from it. You can also use the Adblock plus feature to disable your site’s ads during the scan to see how long the ads will affect the site’s load time.
Through the GTmetrix tool, you can compare the performance and speed of your site with that of your competitors in order to be able to know the weaknesses, strengths, performance differences, and fix the weak aspects in order to be the best. It is better to create a free account as you will get additional options.
2. Google PageSpeed Insight
Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool is an excellent free site speed measurement tool.
Once you type the link to the site or page to be verified, Google analyzes the page within seconds and then gives you the total result, details of the page’s performance and the factors causing the slow loading.
The analysis is divided into two parts, the first is to analyze the speed of the site on the computer and the second is for mobile devices, and most importantly, the tool provides tips on how to improve the response time of the site for visitors.
The problem with Google PageSpeed Insights is that it does not provide enough suggestions or details on how to improve site sluggishness. But despite this problem, there are reasons why this tool is of great importance. Simply because it is from Google and therefore includes important points affecting the page ranking.
The PageSpeed Insights team recently launched a new site speed check tool called Think with Google This tool features beautiful reports that you can use to send to clients or to your boss at work.
Learn more about Google’s site speed test tool.
3. Pingdom
Pingdom is one of the most popular website speed testing tools. Pingdom was number one a few years ago until GTmetrix came out and featured it in more detail.
Unfortunately they have some old recommendations for speed improvement but now it’s not helpful so I guess they haven’t updated it in a while but it’s still a well known speed test tool that can be used with another tool.
The main reason for its popularity is ease of use, and since most users of the WordPress platform do not have enough experience in matters related to coding, they prefer and use it only.
The tool allows you to four main sites to test your site through them, and new sites are added from time to time:
- Japan , Tokyo
- Germany, Frankfurt
- Britain, London
- United States, Washington
- United States , San Francisco
- Australia, Sydney
- Brazil , San Paulo
Speed test results provide you with performance stats that identify items that need improvement such as PagesSpeed Insights.
4. Varvy Pagespeed Optimization
Varvy Pagespeed Optimization is a free tool that is used to improve speed just like most of the other tools.
After entering the site address, the tool scans the site and gives you a report that includes the analysis of CSS and JavaScript files as well as other elements that may affect site speed.
Varvy contains a useful set of articles to help you improve performance. The tool also has an entire section dedicated to SEO guides and mobile devices.
5. WebPage Test
Similar to the previous tools, but what is distinguished here is that you have 40 different websites (different countries) to choose from, in addition to 25 browsers. WebPageTest scores site performance from A to F. It performs tests such as checking file compression, cache memory, CDN service usage, and many other factors.
The tool has more advanced features such as video capture of the site loading process, disabling JavaScript, and ignoring SSL certificates.
Some final notes
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, the process of improving site performance can make a huge difference to users browsing your site. Site speed is one of the important things that you should not lose sight of as a site owner, especially if you are interested in improving your visibility on the Internet.
A fast site is the best during SEO, the loading period of the site significantly affects your ranking in Google search results, Google itself likes to provide faster sites because it provides the best experience for its users and thus a good experience for Google users.
The speed of the site greatly affects the conversion rate, the number of inquiries, the percentage of sales and calls that you can receive from your site.