From 2021 to 2022, we increased our number of unique visitors from 0 to 300 per day through SEO optimization. This result is the product of several factors, one of which is the technical performance of our site. It is essential to conduct regular audits and tests on your site performance for three reasons:
- To attempt to understand Google's expectations
- To gain technical insights
- To verify performance
This article is divided into two parts. The first part covers the tools provided for free by the search engine Google, and the second part covers other tools.
1. What tools are freely available from Google to test a website's performance?
What I appreciate about Google is that not only does it offer fantastic tools, but they are all free. As a search engine, Google recognizes the importance of providing access to valuable resources and technical recommendations for its content creators.
Here are the three most widely used Google tools for analyzing your website.
1.1 Google Page Speed Insights
Easy to use, with customized optimizations just a click away.
- Go to Google Page Speed Insights
- Paste the URL you want to test into the search bar
- Click on Analyze
- Discover the results (score out of 100) and personalized recommendations for the mobile and desktop versions of your page
1.2 Google Lighthouse
A 360-degree audit of a page on your website from a Chrome extension or the DevTools inspection console (cmd + option + I on Mac).
⚠️ If you have other Chrome extensions, they may negatively impact the audit. It’s preferable to open a page in incognito mode to measure the actual performance of your site.
Discover the Google Lighthouse tool
1.3 Test My Site
Less known than the previous two tools, Test My Site focuses on measuring the loading time on mobile for your website. After your test, you will receive a detailed report containing practical and actionable advice on how to improve your score.
Test your site on Test My Site
Bonus: Google Search Console
The Google Search Console also provides a performance report on the speed of your website. This report is based on your users and the loading time when they are on your website.
The data is therefore extracted from a real panel, which is its strength, but also its weakness. To obtain these "real-time" data, you need (1) to have enough visitors on your pages for Google to analyze, and also, the results may be slightly skewed because (2) the speed of your users' connections can affect this assessment.
URL speed result on Google Search Console
2. Other website analysis tools?
There are many other tools available for auditing your website's performance. Since there is a direct correlation between your website's performance (speed) and your SEO results, most SEO tools include a technical performance audit of your website. This audit typically includes 4 KPIs
- Loading speed
- Technical accessibility to your content (robots.txt/sitemap)
- SEO structure
- Readability of your content (web accessibility)
This list is not exhaustive, but here are some of the most popular tools!
Conclusion
You now have at your disposal this diagnostic toolkit of nearly 10 tools to test the performance of your website's pages. These tests are essential for identifying opportunities to create a faster, more user-friendly site, which will consequently rank better on search engines.
If you use Webflow as your CMS and wish to improve your website's loading speed, here is a checklist for a fast Webflow site.
