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Our List of Can’t Miss Tools to Test Site Speed

Author: Tom Cottrill | Date Posted: Jun 11, 2019

On multiple occasions Google has said that site speed (and in turn, page speed) is one of the most important ranking factors for your website. And if that’s not enough to convince you of its importance, a slow loading site could also lead to fewer of your pages being crawled by search engines, preventing your site from being fully indexed. And that’s not to mention how it affects the overall usability of your site.

So what’s the lesson to be learned here? Your client’s site can be beautiful, user-friendly and easy to navigate, but if it’s not fast, it’s probably not going to rank. Before you freak out and start taking drastic measures, it’s best to test your client’s site speed and verify that it is the source of some ranking issues.

The Top 5 Site Speed Tools According to Ignitro Studios

There are TONS of tools out there to test site speed, and some are better than others. As a company that spends a lot of time focusing on site speed analyses and improvements for our clients, we’ve had time to test almost all of them. So, you can trust us when we say these are by far our favorites.

1. GTMetrix – Bottom line, this is our favorite tool for measuring site speed. Looking to get client buy-in on a site speed analysis and improvement project? This tool is your new best friend. And while it might be a little tech heavy for the average user, the insight and recommendations it provides makes it a valuable asset for any smart marketer.
2. ShortPixel – Our clients don’t realize how much images can slow down a website. Images are easily the biggest indicator in how fast a site will be. If your client’s site is slow, this is the tool you want to start with. ShortPixel is solely dedicated to checking image optimization so you can quickly compress and optimize image sizes as needed.
3. Byte Check – If you’ve optimized your client’s images and their site is still slow, it could be something bigger. This tool helps measure exactly how long it is taking a site to first send data. This information is a clear indicator of overall server quality – and a great way to get clients to sign off on a site speed improvement project.
4. IP-Neighbors – Are your clients sharing an IP network? It’s important to know exactly who they are sharing a server with. If one of them happens to experience a spike, it could slow your client’s site down and cause a dip in rankings.
5. Varvy – Not sure where to focus your efforts? This tool can help. Varvy breaks down site speed issues by problem area. This is great if your clients are on a fixed budget and you want to prioritize a site speed project by order of importance.

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, a website is one of your clients’ most important marketing and sales tools. Site speed plays a major role in how a website will perform in Google and on other search engines. If your clients are struggling to commit to improving site speed, it’s time to bring in reinforcements. Use these tools to make your case.