We all love to go through sites and blogs that loads fast. We easily get irritated when a site won’t load quickly enough. But, being a blogger, how much do you care about your blog’s speed? Is it fast like a Ferrari or slow like a snail? My point is, a webmaster must be concerned about the loading speed of his/her blog/site.
Paying attention to, and improving loading speed of a blog has more than one advantage! It makes your visitors happy, promotes user engagement, reduce bounce rate etc. Above all, good speed helps your blog get into Google’s good books.
It is a well known fact that loading speed and time are factors influencing SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page). So, fellas, you have truck load of reasons to attend to slow speed (just assuming) of your blog.
Before you set out on that quest to improve loading speed, let me tell you where to start. There are ample free tools available, which will help you map your blog’s performance, loading speed and time etc. So, first of all, check out the present status of your blog/site, find out issues and rectify them.
There are lots of free tools that’ll help you get this task done. And I’m not going for a ‘big, bad’ and exhaustive list. But I’ll put up a list that you’d love and, above all, help you do a good job. Brace yourself, the list is coming.
Top 5 Free Website Speed Checker Tools:
One of the most popular, used and recommended tool to check speed and performance of sites and blogs. I just love this tool. It is easy to use, generates reports fast and the report provides useful insights to crucial issues your blog has.
GT Metrix’s post scan look
The report shows a site/blog’s loading time, number of requests it makes, its size etc. The % rating of PageSpeed and YSlow are given. GT Metrix shows how well your blog fares in various aspects like Minifying of JavaScript and CSS, Optimization of image etc. The scores are given out of 100.
Click on Low scoring factors to find issues
If your blog scores low in a certain aspect, click it. GT Metrix will show the culprits responsible for the low score. This, basically is a suggestion that you may fix it.
Location of servers to test
GT Metrix also allows users to compare two sites’ performance! Registered users even have the freedom to simulate the latency of user’s internet connection. This feature can be used to check your blog’s performance when it is accessed from different parts of the world.
Pingdom’s post scan look
Pingdom.com is your one stop shop to improve site/blog performance. Its speed test tool is very popular and full of useful features.
As you can see from the screenshot, there are three locations to test a blog/site from. The report consists of a performance grade (out of 100), number of requests made, loading time and size of page. Users can either make the test results public or keep it private.
Grade view makes finding out issues easy!
The report generated can be analyzed in different ways like ‘waterfall’ view, ‘grade’ view etc. These representations can be used to understand factors making your site/blog slow.
Other features include DNS health checkup, performing a ping etc. You may register at Pingdom and they’ll monitor your site/blog for free.
I use this free tool to keep an eye on my blog’s performance across mobile devices. This is the age of smartphones! I use Google analytics to know traffic stats of my blogs. I must admit that a good portion of visitors to some of my blogs use their smartphone to access it.
Separate analysis for mobile devices and desktop
It is high time that we keep an eye on our blog’s performance across mobile devices. Google PageSpeed Insights makes this possible.
This tool, as the screenshots suggests, analyses a site/blog and generates performance scores (out of 100). There are two reports- one for performance across desktop and the other for performance across mobile devices.
It smartly suggests what needs to be done to see improvements in the score. There are 3 types of suggestions- red (fix it and get big improvement), orange (not a big issue, but worth fixing) and green (no issues). This tool is a product of Google, so, along with it comes that ‘reliability’.
I’m not a regular user of this tool. But it is very reliable and won’t disappoint you. For using this tool, you must first fill in some details they demand. As shown in the screenshot, users may select a location to test from. The list is a big and impressive one.
Pie-Chart analysis on Gomez.com
Once you fill in the details and submit it, the performance report will be generated next. Let us talk about the performance report now. It covers aspects like- loading time, page size, first byte time etc.
What I really like about the report is the use of pie charts. Pie Charts are used to show which object has big size, which object takes much time to load etc. In my blog’s case, images are the biggest files and they take the most time for loading.
I’ve mentioned this tool last. But don’t let its position fool you! I’m not ‘ranking’ these tools. This tool, gentlemen, is the one that offers loads of unique features!
This tool offers exciting features!
Just go through the screenshot and look at the amazing features that this tool offers. Users have the luxury to choose from a large choice of test locations. They may even choose the browser out of- IE9, Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
The advanced settings allows users to select the type of connection-cable, 3G, Dial Up etc. Then there’s an option to know how your site/blog fares on mobile devices. The tool even allows you to choose the device!
Analysis and grading
Now, let us talk about the report it generates. The report is easy to follow. A performance score (out of 100) is given. Blocks are used to show the grades your blog got in various aspects like ‘first byte time’, ‘image compression’ etc.
This is followed by the waterfall representation of components’ loading time. Pie Charts also give good insights towards contents, their size and the time they take to load.
Wrapping it up
Okay guys, end of the list! Boosting your blog’s loading speed and reducing its loading time is important for SEO. I think the above mentioned free website speed tools will help you get started. They are easy to use, efficient and quite effective. I admit that there are other good tools I didn’t mentioned in this list. Okay, here is one more- Load Impact. They are worth checking out. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section.
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