Wondering why your website is loading slowly?
Worried that your website speed may impact SEO?
Hoping to boost your current SERP rankings?
If you’re here, there’s a good chance you’re hoping to learn how to speed up your website.
And we have good news: Making your website load faster not only benefits your users but can also help you get more organic traffic from Google.
You can help boost your website’s visibility in search by:
- Using a website speed test tool that monitors your website speed in real time.
- Making high-impact changes.
So, let’s take a look at how you can check if your website performance is good enough to impress Google, plus what you can do to make it faster.
Why Does Site Speed Matter For SEO?
In 2021, Google rolled out the page experience update, which confirmed a key piece of SEO information – website speed is a ranking factor.
That means Google’s search engine prefers websites that load quickly and smoothly for your visitors.
There’s a larger chance that Google will display faster websites before slower websites on search engine results pages (SERPs).
What Factors Does Google Look At For Website Speed?
There are so many factors that affect website speed, but Google has made it easy for you to uncover.
Prior to the page experience algorithm update, Google created a set of three metrics called Core Web Vitals, and it uses those metrics to determine your website’s speed and usability.
These three key metrics can help you navigate what pages and parts of your website are affecting site speed and user experience – this makes it easy to pinpoint what is causing your website to rank lower.
Google’s Core Web Vitals
In order to make sure your website ranks well, you’ll need to make sure you’re paying attention to:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly does content render?
- First Input Delay (FID): How quickly does the page respond to user interaction?
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Is the page layout stable or does content shift around after load?
When you input your website into Google Search Console or a Core Web Vitals monitoring tool, you will get a score and pages affected, along with a green, yellow, or red notation.
If your website has any red or yellow markers, it’s time to use a website speed test tool to uncover what you should fix on your site.
What Tools Can You Use To Test Site Speed?
Dedicated site speed testing tools can provide a lot of high-quality data and recommendations on how to improve your site speed.
These types of tools are created specifically for speed tests and can provide you with every piece of information you need to increase the load times of your site.
Try these dedicated website speed test tools:
- DebugBear Website Speed Test.
- WebPageTest.
- GTmetrix.
We’ll use the free DebugBear testing tool in this article, but you can also use an alternative like WebPageTest or GTmetrix.
In addition to the tools above, there are also insight tools that can help you understand local site speed and lab test site speed.
Testing Site Speed Locally On Your Computer
Chrome DevTools can provide a lot of in-depth data on how your website loads.
However, testing on your own computer makes the test result depend heavily on your local environment. It can also be difficult to manually clear all relevant caches to match the experience of a first-time user.
Google’s Site Speed Tool
PageSpeed Insights is great to get a quick overview of your site speed.
You get both real user data and suggestions on how to speed up your website based on a lab test. However, because it uses simulated throttling, the lab data isn’t always accurate.
How To Test A Website With DebugBear
Testing your site speed with DebugBear only takes seconds.
To run a web performance test:
- Visit: Go to debugbear.com/test.
- Test: Enter the URL of your website.
Review: View your results; see metrics and in-depth debug data that you can use to understand the metrics and make changes.
Let’s dive into some of the metrics and learn how to speed up your site.
Aim For A Score Of 75%+ To Get Max SERP Rankings
One key metric that DebugBear’s Website Speed Test gives you is the “Real User Score”.
This percentage helps you understand how well your website is performing in the real world – with real users.
Based on data Google collects from real Chrome users, this number shows what percentage of users had a good experience on your website – this data is what’s used as a ranking signal.
Aim for a score of at least 75% to get the maximum ranking boost.
Content Source: searchenginejournal.com
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