Because the time that it takes for your page to load is so important to users it’s essential that you make sure your pages are loading quickly. Slow page load times affect the user experience, bounce rate, search performance, and revenue.
There are many things that you can do that will help to increase page speed loading times. If you haven’t done a web page speed test, Google has a tool called, google page speed insights, which you can use to find out how long it takes for your page to load. The page speed insights Chrome extension is free and easy to use.
Here’s how you use page speed test insights to increase the speed of your page’s loading time,
What Is Page Speed Insights?
PageSpeed Insights or PSI provides you with reports that will tell you how your pages are performing on both mobile and desktop devices. It also gives you suggestions for how you can improve the pages that aren’t loading fast enough.
How To Improve Page Load Time?
There are a few ways that you can dramatically improve the load time of the pages on your website. You’ll first need to evaluate the webpage insights to determine which areas need to be adjusted.
Here are just a few of the most common causes that affect the page loading speed:
- Configure a fast infrastructure or use a fast host
Choosing a dedicated website host that offers a high-performance server is important. In fact, it’s just as important as having a clean design with optimized code. Shared servers are just as they sound. Other websites will use the host which bogs down the server, making it slower.
- Compress your files
Compressing the data on your website such as HTML, stylesheets, and JavaScript files will reduce the loading time. These files can get big. GZip is a type of server-side data compressor that you can use to make these files smaller.
- Optimize images for faster page load time
Most images are large, and the larger the image files the slower your pages will load. The goal is to dramatically reduce the size of the image without affecting its quality. There are tons of tools that can help you to achieve this.
How Do You Measure Page Speed?
Measuring the page speed is simple with the right tools, such as the Google PageSpeed insights tool. By adding the page speed insights API key to your website you’ll be able to know everything necessary to determine how long it takes for your page to load.
There are several complex processes a web page goes through when loading. And the Goggle insights SEO tool will essentially show how long the page took to load, and help you to better optimize these processes through useful tips.
Page Speed Insights Tool
It’s easy to use a page speed insight tool. And Google PageSpeed Insights is one of the easiest to use, especially if you have a WordPress website. When you use Page Speed Insight WordPress you just have to install a plugin. The page speed insight plugin allows you easily put the page URL that you want to examine and get a report that tells you everything that you want to know about the page loading speed, including a page speed insights score. You’ll discover how fast the webpage loads if there are any errors that occur during loading, and other google analytics website speed information that will help improve your SEO efforts.
So does PageSpeed Insights affect SEO?
The simple answer is yes!
If your page isn’t loading in two seconds you’re losing potential users who will not wait for the page to finish loading. One of the ways that your website gets listed higher is based on how long the users stay on your website.
There are two different Google tools that you can use when it comes to analyzing the page loading speed – Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse. But both of them are not created equal.
Page Speed Insights vs Lighthouse
PageSpeed Insight tool analyzes the performance of a page. It will analyze desktop and mobile devices while providing suggestions that will help to improve your page.
Lighthouse is an open-source tool that helps you to improve your page just like Page Speed insights, but this automated tool can only analyze one device.
Page Speed Insights Extension
You can check your PageSpeed Insights score with a single click using the page speed insights extension. The developers’ google page speed insights help you to increase your web development speed by providing you with a speed score and helping you to dive deep into the page loading stats for accurate information to increase the speed of your website.
Does Page Speed Insights Affect SEO?
Yes, page speed directly affects this ranking factor. It’s one of the important factors that search engines look for when indexing your website. It shows the value of your website because the longer a user stays the more valuable your website is.
Is Page Speed Insights Reliable?
When it comes to measuring the full users’ experience, Google PageSpeed Insights is reliable and accurate. It’s full of different metrics that work together to provide you with an accurate overview of what a user does on your website. It’s these website insights that allow you to make necessary improvements that will increase the speed and aid in getting you higher rankings with the search engines.
Page Speed Test Insights
There are two main things that Page Speed Insights SEO does that aid in improving your page speed for your website – it analyzes the loading time of your page, and tells you how many resource plugins and code scripts are communicating with the server slowing it down.
When building your website it’s essential that you are taking the size of your pages into consideration. At Abstrax Web, we build clean websites with SEO and marketing in mind. Give us a call today to discuss building a new faster website, or improving your current website.