TL;DR: Measuring WordPress site performance for SEO involves using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and others to analyze speed and SEO aspects. A successful audit identifies slow-loading elements, SEO weaknesses, and recommends optimizations to enhance site speed, user experience, and search engine ranking. This process is crucial for maintaining competitive web presence and user satisfaction.
A website that loads in one second has a conversion rate 3X higher than a website that loads in five.
On top of that, the average speed of a first-page Google result is 1.65 seconds. In this context, having a slow website means leaving money on the table.
An SEO and speed audit doesn’t necessarily take much time and resources, but their benefits are pretty solid. For instance, a misconfigured plugin or a conflict between plugins considerably slows your website. Running an audit is a great way to identify culprits you can fix later on.
Fortunately, you have many solid ways to perform audits and check for site speed and SEO issues! Indeed, Google PageSpeed Insights is a crucial tool, but it’s not the only one!
We discovered a few tools to check for site speed and SEO issues that deserve your attention. Before introducing them to you, it’s a good idea to learn more about speed and SEO audits.
Speed/SEO Audits at a Glance
A speed audit is when webmasters or experts analyze all the factors that impact the site speed. The main items responsible for a website's performance are:
- host platform
- WordPress theme
- plugins installed
An SEO audit is a more complex activity and includes evaluating all the parts responsible for the site's rank in people’s search results. Loading speed is a ranking factor, so a speed audit is a key component of an SEO audit. Altogether, due to its importance, the speed audit gets a special mention.
Enterprises and small businesses should be audited to fix any inherent issues. Amazon and your small online business are in the same boat when it comes to audits!
A good plan and the proper tools are the pillars of an efficient audit.
However, the tools differ from site to site and depend on the site complexity, auditor experience, and time allocated for this task. Yet, the basic tools are the same for all websites.
Let’s take a deeper look at the following seven easy ways to check for site speed and SEO issues on your WordPress website.
There is no better tool to test how Google evaluates your site than a native tool developed by the same company.
PageSpeed Insights is an irreplaceable solution for webmasters. Initially, its focus was on measuring a website’s loading speed.
Currently, it’s also an impressive SEO tool with a large set of useful recommendations. Webmasters use it regularly to have a strategic overview of their websites.
PSI excels at showing details about the real-world experience of the users. Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure how visitors experience your website. The metrics included are:
PSI displays these metrics, and you have to do your best to improve them.
Start by typing in your website URL, and you will get a mobile and a desktop score for the following key aspects:
- Performance
- Accessibility
- Best Practices
- SEO
The grades vary from 0 to 100. Any grade below 49 is in the red area, and you should immediately do something to fix the issues. The grades between 50 and 89 are the most common and show that you have to bring some improvements to your website. Any grade above 90 certifies that you did a great job and Google likes your work.
Practically, PageSpeed Insights is an effective website auditor offering a large set of recommendations. Follow the suggestions to improve your website’s grades. Therefore, test your site and go through all the recommendations to get into the grace of Google.
Pros: a Google product, simple to use, a wide array of suggestions
Cons: no possibility to customize the testing conditions
Price: free of charge
SuperbThemes page speed checker is a simple and effective tool. It’s suitable for all users, regardless of experience. You can use it on both mobile and desktop without any registration and limits.
Don’t rely on this tool if you want laborious advanced recommendations. However, this page checker is all you need to get a correct first impression of a website. It evaluates your site and gives a glimpse of your website performance:
- Server load time
- Content load time
- Fully loaded
- On-page SEO
Based on these metrics, the checker rates a website on a scale from 0 to 100.
The main particularity of the SuperbThemes page checker is the focus on solutions rather than displaying plain recommendations. No need to spend time trying to understand the technical recommendations. Instead, apply radical but efficient solutions like installing a plugin or switching to a more performant hosting platform.
For example, one tested website has implemented a poor hosting load time. SuperbThemes page checker underlines this issue and offers better solutions—the A2 Hosting and Pressable.
It may take you just 30 minutes to substantially improve your website performance. It’s not only simple but time-saving too! Skip searching for the proper plugins and reading a bunch of listicles.
The SuperbThemes team is made up of professional WordPress enthusiasts, and their solutions are backed by their expertise. It’s like learning from the pros for free!
Pros: simple to use, laser-focused on solutions
Cons: not suitable for complex site assessment
Price: free of charge, no registration required
PageSpeed Insights is free of charge and simple to use but doesn’t provide information about the testing location.
The testing location isn’t relevant if you target a global audience, but it plays a crucial role for businesses targeting national or regional audiences. GTmetrix comes onto the scene to resolve this pain point. Additionally, GTmetrix delivers complex reports for the analyzed website.
Unregistered users can’t select the testing location, but if you sign up for a free account, you may choose from a bunch of locations and testing conditions. Paying customers have even more choices.
Regardless of your choice, GTmetrix is a great way to check for site speed. It evaluates the websites and provides the following data:
- GTmetrix grade - from A to F, a weighted average of the Performance and Structure metrics.
- Web Vitals - a set of core metrics for assessing the website loading speed.
These indicators give you a strategic overview, but GTmetrix utility stays in the complete analysis of a website's performance.
The website assessment includes the following:
- Speed visualization, from the first request to the fully loaded page;
- Main issues that slow down the website and tips to fix them;
- Total page size, broken down into JavaScript, Fonts, CSS, HTML, images, and others;
- Total number of requests;
- Complete website waterfall—a request-by-request visualization of the webpage analyzed;
- Retest and compare features that are of crucial importance to measure the progress and see how your business compares against competitors;
- PDF reports - needed by web design agencies to inform customers.
Pros: customizable testing conditions, complete site evaluation, relevant details, and suggestions
Cons: too complex for less trained users
Price: freemium model based on multiple pricing tiers; the cheapest plan is $128/year.
Advanced users should take a look at WebPageTest because it has an impressive number of advanced features to test a website. Conversely, its interface is intuitive enough for less experienced users. Only a few software manage to satisfy both experts and beginners, and WebPageTest is one of them.
WebPageTest allows testing the following:
- Site performance
- Core web vitals
- Lighthouse
- Visual comparison
- Traceroute
No matter which type of test you prefer, WebPageTest impresses with the large volume of data you get about your website.
In addition, it has multiple options to customize the testing environment. WebPageTest lets you choose from 30 locations, 30 types of browsers, numerous connection types (2G, 3G, 4G, cable, Dial-up), desktop browser dimensions, and the number of tests to run.
WebPageTest isn’t an SEO tool, but it’s a great choice if you are interested in performing a complex speed audit. It has a premium plan that comes with private and bulk testing, API access, third-party integrations, and dedicated support.
Pros: customizable testing conditions, professional site evaluation, useful suggestions
Cons: too complex for less trained users
Price: site unavailable at the moment
Pingdom is ideal for people looking for a simple but effective tool to measure site speed. Type in the website URL, select the testing location and press the “Start Test” button.
Pingdom focuses on four aspects:
- Performance grade, from A to F;
- Page size;
- Load time;
- Number of requests.
Besides this data, Pingdom also provides a few tips for website improvement, types of response code, and content size by content type. No fancy graphs or endless suggestions make Pingdom suitable for less-experienced webmasters.
Pros: simple to use, multiple testing locations
Cons: not suitable for complex site assessment
Price: free of charge
Site Checker Pro is a 360–degree tool that helps you improve both site performance and search ranking. It conducts speed and SEO audits professionally, and the results are displayed in a user-friendly format every webmaster can understand. This tool incorporates a page speed tester with advanced website analysis.
However, it also does way more. Site Checker Pro is enough to perform a complete SEO audit and craft a strategy to improve the ranking based on the audit conclusions.
Start by creating a new project for your website. Site Checker Pro audits the site and lets you know its current state. It shows critical aspects, warnings, opportunities, and notices. No need to highlight how important it is to reduce the number of critical aspects of your website. Luckily, Site Checker Pro has plenty of suggestions to fix any issues. Rank Tracker is a feature that is of great help in determining the keywords that your site ranks the best.
Sometimes, you need to go deeper and analyze your site's most important web pages. To test these pages, simply use the On-Page Checker. It takes into account all on-page SEO elements so you can improve any webpage.
Wrapping up, Site Checker Pro is a precious tool in any webmaster's arsenal. It checks for site speed and SEO issues professionally. Additionally, it tracks keywords and backlinks, monitors the uptime, and tests the site's security.
Pros: suitable for complex SEO audits, user-friendly interface
Cons: the price is too high for tight budgets
Price: multiple pricing tiers, the cheapest plan is $490/year.
Uptrends Free Tools is a premium service, and its price tag may be restrictive for webmasters on a tight budget. Uptrends Free Tools are a solid alternative to Site Checker Pro.
Without opening your wallet, you get free access to a few useful services, such as:
- Website speed test
- Mobile website speed
- Core web vitals
- Uptime check
- Ping test
- CDN performance check
- Cloud cost ROI calculator
The names of the services are self-explanatory, and using them is as simple as ABC. While they aren’t enough for a professional SEO audit, they are suitable for a basic verification of a website's performance and SEO state.
Pros: simple to use, useful data for basic SEO/speed audits
Cons: -
Price: free of charge
Which Tool Works Best for Me?
As per our subjective nature, you may fall in love and stick with any of the above tools. However, each fits a specific purpose and targets a particular audience.
PageSpeed Insights is a complex resource that best fits SEO practitioners. Hence, you can describe it as a free page speed testing tool whose improvement suggestions positively impact SEO performance.
Site Checker Pro is a dedicated SEO tool for advanced SEO practitioners. It’s ideal for performing an SEO audit. Yet, it’s too much if you only need to improve the loading speed of your site.
Are you on a budget and need an SEO audit of your website? Uptrends Free Tools is a solution, especially for small businesses. Use them for less complex projects, but they won’t cover all your needs.
SuperbThemes page speed checker is perfect for a clear first impression of your website loading speed. The focus on solutions is a pretty unique feature that saves your time and nerves. Besides, it’s simple to use, free, and restriction-free.
Pingdom offers more technical data but doesn’t offer clear solutions.
WebPageTest and GTmetrix are professional tools designed to provide users with all the data needed to make a website blazingly fast. Webmasters running medium to large projects should rely on one of these two advanced tools.
Over to You
You learned what SEO and speed audits are and how they can benefit your business.
These are a great way to identify the negative aspects that impacts a website's performance.
Luckily, plenty of tools can help you perform such an audit. Now, it’s time for action!
Do the following steps:
- Allocate time to perform an SEO/speed audit;
- Select one of the featured tools and familiarize yourself with it;
- Test your website;
- Evaluate the current state and carefully check the recommendations and solutions of your tool of choice;
- Fix the issues with any of the best WordPress plugins in our A-list toolkit and retest your website.
This article was developed by SuperbThemes.
