Site Speed Performance Testing: Online & Offline Tool Set

Suppose you’re new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In that case, you might not be familiar with site speed performance testing. Site speed performance is a crucial aspect of SEO, which impacts your website’s ranking on search engines. This article will explore various tools to help you conduct site speed performance testing effectively.

Site Speed Performance Testing Tips ∞

After speed performance testing, each tool will show you a score, explain how it calculates it, and give improvement tips. In our Complete SEO Guide, we already implement most of the tips for WordPress site speed performance best practices, but there always can be more.

Note: you can check the [Waterfall] section on each tool to see how each HTTP file request performed and how long it took to load.

Proper Use of Canonical Domain in Site Speed Performance Testing ∞

When conducting site speed performance testing, it’s crucial to use your final canonical domain, including ‘HTTPS’ and ‘www’ (if you set your domain to use ‘www,’ if not, then you can skip the ‘www’ part), like: https://www.yourdomain.com. If you use http://www.yourdomain.com, you’ll be redirected to https://www.yourdomain.com. The above is a standard redirection process when your primary site enforces HTTPS (SSL / TLS enabled), and you’ve chosen to use ‘www.’ with your domain.

If you speed test for ‘yourdomain.com,’ by default, it means that you used http://yourdomain.com, and you’ll be redirected twice: once to https://yourdomain.com and second to https://www.yourdomain.com. Each such redirection will lower your score in site speed performance testing. However, in real-life scenarios, when a user navigates to ‘yourdomain.com,’ these redirects happen only the first time they enter your site and only if the user navigates to your ‘naked domain.’ All subsequent traffic on the site will already include https://www.yourdomain.com/<pages> in its URLs.

The above is what truly matters. Google indexes your webpage with the default specifications, meaning that it will include the ‘HTTPS’ and ‘www’ in the URL, and the user will navigate to the entire URL from SERPs. The default canonical domain URL matters to Google, not the first-time redirect. Therefore, it’s essential to test your site’s speed in default canonical domain URL usage and not just during one-time redirection.

Use the HTTPS Status code tool to find your default canonical domain URL.

Popular Site Speed Performance Testing Tools ∞

Here is the list of popular synthetic site speed performance testing tools.

GTmetrix: A Comprehensive Tool for Site Speed Performance Testing

Probably the most popular tool for site speed testing, the GTmetrix is an excellent tool that scrutinizes your website’s speed performance. It provides insights into why your site might be lagging and offers strategies for optimization. GTmetrix allows you to test your website’s performance across different countries, browsers, and connection speeds. It also lets you track your site’s performance over time and sends alerts when your page is slow.

By registering a free account on GTmetrix, you can get more features, like custom browser settings and extended geolocations. After registration, you must enter your account settings and validate your email on the “Your Plan” page, or you will not get additional On-Demand tests.

After that, in [Analysis Options], you can enable “Adblock Plus,” which is known for blocking specific JavaScript files. After that, check the [Waterfall] to see what files were skipped, if at all.

WebPageTest: Detailed Performance Analysis

WebPageTest is another valuable tool for site speed performance testing. It provides an in-depth analysis of your web page’s performance, offering insights into load times, rendering, and other crucial metrics. You can choose different locations and browsers for the tests, ensuring a comprehensive analysis.

Pingdom: Speed Analysis and Bottleneck Identification

Pingdom is a tool designed to help you understand your website’s load speed. It identifies elements of a webpage that are fast, slow, too big, and so on. By pinpointing potential bottlenecks and areas for improvement, Pingdom aids in enhancing your site’s speed.

Google PageSpeed Insights: Speed Optimization for All Devices

Google PageSpeed Insights – helps you optimize your web pages for all devices. The tool analyzes web page’ content and generates suggestions. These suggestions help to make that page faster, contributing to effective site speed performance testing.

Less Popular Site Speed Performance Testing Tools ∞

Here is the list of less popular tools.

ByteCheck: Measuring Time To First Byte

ByteCheck is a unique tool that measures your website’s TTFB. The significant indicator, TTFB (Time To First Byte), is the responsiveness of your web server and network resources, making it a crucial aspect of site speed performance testing.

Ideally, the TFTB measure should be under 500ms, but the lower, the better.

REDbot: HTTP Resource Checker

REDbot is a tool that checks HTTP resources, testing protocol correctness, cacheability, content negotiation, and more. It’s like a lint tool for HTTP resources, contributing to the overall site speed performance testing.

GIDNetwork: Compression Testing

GIDNetwork offers a simple online tool for testing web page compression, deflate, and gzip. It helps you compress your web pages, contributing to improved site speed performance testing.

Website Optimization: Performance and Speed Analysis

Website Optimization provides a free tool for website performance and speed analysis. It calculates page size, composition, and download time, offering advice on improving page load time. This tool incorporates the latest best practices, guidelines, and trends into its recommendations. It is a valuable resource for site speed performance testing.

Browser Speed Testing ∞

All the above tests are “synthetic tests,” meaning they’re executed in controlled environments. You can conduct real-world testing with your browser. If you use Firefox or any Chromium-based browser, like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge Chromium, press [F12]. This key will open the Developer Tools bar. Click the [Network] tab, then reload your site or a specific page. This action will show you all the requests the browser executes to load your page fully and how long it takes for each request to receive a response.

In both Firefox and Chromium-based browsers, you can press

[CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [M]

And it will “Toggle device emulation” mode in Chromium. In Firefox, enable “Responsive Design Mode,” which is the same. In the top bar menu, you can select the device’s dimensions and device type or rotate the device horizontally.

You can buy a VPN and check your site speed through the browser using a VPN on different geolocations.

What to do if you have a Suggestion to Turn Off Lazy Image Loading for Initial Images? ∞

Check our article on How to Turn Off Lazy Image Loading on Initial Images through WordPress Child Theme functions.php.

Conclusion ∞

In conclusion, understanding and implementing site speed performance testing is crucial for SEO. Using these tools, you can optimize your website’s performance, improve user experience, and enhance your site’s ranking on search engines.

If you find any mistakes or have ideas for improvement, please follow the email on the Contact page.