Site speed is one of the most common factors to monitor when it comes to ranking. It is an important metric that shouldn’t be left behind and constant work has to be done it. Site speed is an important factor not just in terms of SEO but to the visitors that appears on your site. This could lead to a loss in a potential client that could’ve generated some income for your business if it is slow. Keeping your site speed consistent is not an easy overnight task unfortunately.
What is GTmetrix?
GTmetrix is a tool used to analyze page speed and the performance of it. The tool will often generate a score for our pages and gather data in which one can base decisions from. If you are not sure on which solution(s) you will be needing in order to improve your site speed, the tool provides you with recommendations to fix them. The optimization tool is packed with great features and the functionality of it is of great use to users. One can have the option of generating reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can check the tool out via the their web based version if you do not wish to install the plug-in.
How to use GTmetrix effectively
Using GTmetrix is one thing but making use of it effectively is another. The various metrics that one needs to consider when making use of the platform should always have ones attention when analyzing data.
1. The more tests you conduct, the more accurate your pool of data will be:
In order to find out a genuine source of data in order to base a decision on, one has to conduct various tests throughout the day. An ideal time would be every hour for week or more than a week in order to find a pattern. A valid reason behind this would is that your website performs differently throughout the day due various factors such as the condition of the server, visitor traffic amount and whether maintenance or adjustments were done on it etc.
You would want to pick up on the on the amount of visitors that comes onto your site at a particular time which could indicate when to push out most of your marketing material. Your targeting pool during that period would be the widest at that specific point in time.
2. Test locations plays a vital role:
The location that you test your site from makes a big difference. You would want to pick a location that is close to you as possible. Ideally it you would want to pick a test location that is the closest to your targeted visitors. If your website targets one specific location, you would want to test that location only. All you need is results from that specific location. If your website is targeting a global audience, you would want to pick 4 or 5 key locations around the globe. It’s of best practice to spread them as far as possible.
3. Testing pages:
A lot of focus is placed too much on the homepage due to it being the landing page and your first page to appear in front of your visitors. Your homepage may be the least data intensive page due to it highlighting various parts of your website
Your entire website should be taken into consideration due to visitors looking at each and every page. If a particular visitor is only interested in a specific service provided on your website and it falls on a separate page, that page needs to perform at its best. Think of a sales person approaching you in a public setting. The sales person has to convey the product clearly and it also comes down to the way the product is conveyed.
4. Pay attention to mobile devices:
Depending on the width of your target pool, one needs to realize that there are various devices that visitors appear from. It could either be from the desktop, tablet, mobile device or any other platform that one get access to. The performance on each and every device varies and so does the layout, functionality and overall feeling one gets when your website is presented to them.
We hope that this article provided you with some insightful information on how to effectively use GTmetrix to increase loading speeds. Bear in mind, this is only a portion on how to effectively manage your pages performance.