Testing website speed is a common practice for web developers who want to improve the performance of the website on Google. Having a fast loading website is an important ranking factor.
The main reason for this is because website visitors are usually quite impatient and if a website takes too long to load the visitor is out and on to another website.
This is called a bounce, and the more bounce your website gets the worse it’s going to rank on search for engines like Google. Now website speed is not the end all be all when it comes to ranking, it is simply one ranking factor.
There are websites that have terrible loading scores but still manage to rank very high. One example of a website like this is enterprise.com. Their website ranks as an F in page load but dominates the search results for car rentals.
This has to do a lot with their brand recognition and the fact that they’ve been around since 1957. But if you’re trying to create a new website today and get it to rank in Google search, you better believe that speed is going to be a factor.
So how do we test to see if the website speed is good or not? There’s plenty of tools on the web but I found one of the most reliable is called webpagetest.org, this gives a six part test that ranks from A to F.
It ranks such things as Security Score, First Byte Time, Keep-alive Enabled, Compress Transfer, Compress Images, Cash Static Content and Effective Use of a CDN.
I’m not going to explain what all these different things do, just know that to rank relatively well you’ll want a high score on most of these. This is something that your web developer can help you with.
Have a question about how to get your website to rank on Google search? Wondering about how to speed your website up? Shoot me a message on my contact page!
Read next: How to Speed Up WordPress
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Very easy and simple but very helpful blogs. I have read multiple blogs, also have learned a lot about webdesign and the internet.
Thanks for your feedback, Matthew!!