
- 1. What is Page Speed?
- 2. What is Page Speed Analysis?
- 3. Why Should We Care About Page Speed Analysis?
- 4. What are The Things To Consider When Doing Page Speed Analysis?
- 5. What are The Effects of Page Speed Analysis on SEO?
- 6. What Tools Can Be Used For Page Speed Analysis?
- 7. How To Improve Your Page Speed Analysis Results?
- 8. How Can Markethinkers Help You With Your Page Speed Analysis?
What is Page Speed?
When browsing through pages on a search engine results page, you may click on a page that seems to be lagging, loading so slowly that you give up on it and return to the results page to look for other web pages. Why was this page so slow and how do I avoid this happening to my own webpage? It could have been slowed down due to a number of different things that would be found out within a page speed analysis as this type of metric measures to see that all elements that affect page speed are all in working order.
Page speed refers to the time that it takes for a browser’s request to be processed and a page to be displayed. This time frame is different for all web pages and it is entirely dependent on the steps that you have taken to optimise all page speed elements on your webpage. Page speed is a very important SEO element and search engines take into account the time that it takes for a page to load. If you have a low page speed rate, you are far more likely to rank lower than pages that have a higher speed, so completing a page speed analysis is an extremely important part of any SEO plan.
What is Page Speed Analysis?
In order to ensure that all elements of your webpage are properly optimised to have a high page speed, it is important to include a page speed analysis within your SEO strategy. Google has confirmed that page speed is an element that is measured within its algorithm and therefore it will influence where you rank on search engine results pages. Having a low page speed negatively impacts the user experience. I am sure we have all experienced some irritation when a page you want to visit takes a while to load, and often users simply leave the page and try a new one. User experience (UX) is extremely important to consider as it is becoming one of the leading factors that search engines consider when ranking web pages. A web page speed analysis ensures that your page speed is not negatively affecting your ranking on search engine results pages and it ensures that your page speed will be fast! This offers the best possible experience for users who visit your webpage. There are numerous ways of how to do page speed analysis and different elements that need to be examined and optimised to ensure that you have the fastest speed possible.
Why Should We Care About Page Speed Analysis?
Page speed analysis helps to improve how quickly your web page loads when it is clicked on. The speed and time that it takes a user to go from a search engine result page to your webpage will determine a lot, and it can impact the bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to the amount of time that users spend on a web page and page speed is just one of the elements that may impact it. The bounce rate is important because it informs a search engine of how well your site has been optimised to meet the expectations of the user, if they are on the page over an extended period of time, a search engine will assume that the information, data and website is reliable. When a website takes a long time to load, more often than not, users will choose to leave the webpage and find another webpage to search, one that is quicker to load and therefore seen as more reliable. This quickened bounce rate will lead search engines to associate your webpage as one that is not optimised with good features. A speed page analysis is one check that you can do that will ensure that the bounce rate is lowered and that users spend more time on your webpage!
What are The Advantages Of Doing Page Speed Analysis?
There are many reasons why completing a page speed analysis is extremely important, and the need for monitoring this metric has only risen in the last few years. The following are just a few of the most important advantages to consider when looking to complete page speed analysis on your website.
- User experience: When the page speed of a webpage is increased, a user is far more likely to have a good experience on your website. Sitting and waiting for content, images and videos to load ensures that users will get irritated with your webpage and will more than likely leave your page without properly looking at what you have to offer. The user experience is something that has become of great importance to search engines, and its relevance is only growing within the industry. In order to ensure that users have a good experience while browsing through your webpage, be sure to include a page speed analysis when optimising your webpage.
- Ranking on search engine results pages: When it comes to improving your ranking on search engine results pages, page speed is a factor that can determine whether you rank high or low. Search engine crawlers will index your page according to a number of different metrics that are measured and evaluated, and then a score is used to rank the most reliable websites higher than those pages that have a few issues. Through completing a page speed analysis and improving the speed at which your page and content load, you can ensure that this will not cause search engine crawlers to consider your page to be unreliable and of low authority.
- Marketing performance: when it comes to selling products or services on an online platform, it is imperative that users and potential customers get moved through the marketing funnel as quickly as possible. Slow page speed will cause customers to doubt both your reliability and the product or service that you offer, and it is more than likely that you will lose a few sales due to page speed issues. In order to have the best possible chance at completing sales and increasing marketing performance, it is imperative that you complete a page speed analysis!
What are The Things To Consider When Doing Page Speed Analysis?
When it comes to measuring the user experience, these metrics are presented through looking at what is known as core web vitals. These metrics measure the speed of a page and the ability to respond to certain instructions, which overall influence how a user is able to interact with a web page. The following are the core web vitals that are measured across a webpage and aspects that should be considered when completing a page speed analysis.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
The LCP (largest contentful paint) is the time, in seconds, that is measured between when a page begins to load to when the largest image or bit of text appears on the webpage. This metric is used to measure how long it takes for the main body of information or the main content, as in an image or a video, to be displayed on the page and able to be seen by users. This metric is extremely important when it comes to determining how good the user experience will be due to the fact that it perceives how long it takes for the data to become available to the user.
FID (First Input Delay)
The second core web vital to look at is FID (first input delay), and this metric is used to measure the reaction time of a webpage when a user clicks on a link or taps a button and how long it takes for this reaction to be processed and completed. This is also incredibly important because it measures a user’s interaction with your actual page and the content that you have provided. Analysing the FID will offer important information on how long it takes for a user’s interaction to be received and for a reaction to occur, and it is, therefore, an extremely important metric to understand and measure.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
The CLS (cumulative layout shift) is a score that is given to a webpage based on the layout shifts that occur unexpectedly over the entire life cycle of a webpage. This score measures the stability of the visual displays on a webpage and it is important that webpages monitor and note these unexpected layout shifts. When it comes to the score you receive, a low score is what you are aiming for as this means that there have been fewer shifts and therefore your display layout is not considered to be volatile.
What are The Effects of Page Speed Analysis on SEO?
Page speed has a profound impact on SEO and therefore it is crucial to complete a page speed analysis if you are looking at the best ways to optimise your webpage. SEO is all about measuring how well a search engine associates your page, leading to increased rankings and more organic traffic that is streamed to your site. Page speed is one of the factors that are monitored and ranked by search engine crawlers, and your page speed will be noted and included in how your page is indexed. A page speed analysis is therefore extremely important when it comes to SEO and compiling different metrics that can monitor how fast your page speed is will ensure that you are kept up to date with any possible changes or issues that arise when it comes to your page speed. Any good SEO strategy will include a page speed analysis!
Why is Page Speed Analysis Important for SEO?
Page speed optimization analysis is incredibly important for SEO and it can hugely impact how you rank on your search engines. the optimisation that you do and how your page load speed is influenced by these changes will greatly impact your SEO. Page speed analysis is becoming one of the top ways to ensure that your page ranks highly as it affects the experience that a user has and how they interact with your page and the information on it. Page load speed is measured by looking at your bounce rate, which measures how long a user stays on your page and the reasons why they have left it if they leave it very quickly. If things are taking too long to load, a user is more than likely going to return to the search engine results page and look for another website to use.
What Tools Can Be Used For Page Speed Analysis?
There are many different kinds of page speed analysis tools that can help you to decrease the time that it takes for a page to load. These kinds of tools offer solutions that equip you with the knowledge about the things that may be impacting your page load time! The following are just a few of the best page speed analysis tools to help you to better optimise your page and help decrease page speed time!
Test My Site
Tests My Site is a page speed analysis tool that can help you to better optimise your web page so that it loads faster. If you are using WordPress, this tool is a great help and can help increase your speed by up to a few seconds. Test My Site is easy to use, and the interface offers an easy navigation system, ensuring that issues and solutions are easily provided to users. Once you are on the platform, all you have to do is enter the URL of your webpage and let the tool do the rest!
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed insights provides information to users about the health and page speed of both desktop and mobile websites, ensuring that you are kept up to date with any changes that may occur when checking page speed. This page guarantees that it can help you to speed up your webpage and also increase rankings.
Lighthouse
Lighthouse is a great tool that creates reports about your webpage speed by using the PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool is able to help you better understand the elements of page speed and the different things that you can do to improve this element and increase rankings on search engine results pages.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix is a suite of tools that allow users to test the efficacy of their website. This tool will analyse and report back on a number of different features and issues that may be leading to slow page speed.
Google Analytics
A Google page speed analysis can be completed on Google analytics, and this tool is one of the best if you are looking to optimise your page specifically for Google. This tool runs an analytical assistant that can help you to determine any issues that may impact your page speed, offering ways that these different things can be rectified and solved!
How To Improve Your Page Speed Analysis Results?
Visual Optimization
Reducing the size of your images is a great way to improve your page speed, and many page speed analysis tools will inform you that this is one of the first steps to take when looking to improve page speed. Visual optimization does not involve removing images entirely, and having pictures on your webpage can greatly increase how well a user interacts with your site, particularly if you are an e-commerce platform. Users want to see what they are buying and be provided with visual information before they make a purchase, so getting rid of or reducing the number of images should not be an option. What you can do to help your page speed is reduce the size of each of the images, compressing them so that they do not take as long to load. There are many ways that you can reduce the size, but the easiest and most obvious thing to do first is to crop any unnecessary objects from an image. The image displayed should only show the product, so reducing the length and width so that this is the only thing that is shown could help improve the speed of your site.
Enable Text Compression
Saving the amount of bandwidth used on a webpage will help to increase the rate at which a page loads. through minifying files and compressing text, the amount of bandwidth is reduced. Enabling text compression ensures that a web page is loading the data that you are looking at quickly, without having to compromise the quality of the page.
Optimise Your Site for Mobile
Optimising your webpage so that it is suitable for mobile devices is becoming a ranking factor that is extremely important. With more and more people moving from desktop to mobile devices, optimising to suit the different requirements that mobile devices need is important. Accelerated mobile pages (also known as AMP) is a part of HTML code that allows for search engines to control the caching and configuring of certain loading processes, helping to increase the speed of your webpage.
Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript Files
It takes up tons of time when a website needs to approve a lot of different requests from a bunch of different files. Think about working with physical files, if you have tons of different information spread across many different files, where some of the content is even duplicated, it would take a lot more time to find information compared to if the content was streamlined and placed in one easy to navigate file or folder. In the digital sphere, we call this relocation and streamlining of data minification and it helps to reduce the number of requests a website has to approve and monitor all of the different actions that a user requests. Combining these different files will improve your website’s page speed!
Use Content Distribution Networks
A content delivery network, also referred to as a CDN, works by transferring data through a network of different servers located all throughout the world. The main goal of a CDN is to deliver the data that it hosts as quickly and as safely as possible. So I am sure you are wondering how this system works and how using a CDN will improve your page load speed. A CDN server sits at points of exchange, where information can be exchanged and sent to users quickly. These points are better suited to receive and send information as the distance that it has to travel is greatly reduced. CDNs are able to help improve page speed and reduce the time it takes for data to be sent and received. This network helps to speed up web pages and offers a faster way for data to be sent and transferred across a network.
How Can Markethinkers Help You With Your Page Speed Analysis?
When it comes to SEO, our dedicated team here at Markethinkers has all the tools that you need to help improve elements on your page that may be impacting your ranking on search engine results pages. Thanks to our professional SEO consulting and SEO copywriting team, we have a number of technical and content related ways that we can help you to solve any issues that you may be having with regards to page speed. Our effective approach and page speed analysis tools will provide you with both information and solutions, and through this, our team is able to construct new and better ways for your website to function! If you have any concerns relating to page speed, or any other SEO specific features, look no further than our expert and professional team here at Markethinkers!