There’s an old saying:
“Time is money.”
But for SEO it’s probably better to say:
“Load time is money.”
Why?
Because every extra second it takes for your site to load you’re losing customers.
Website speed is not just a ranking factor for your customers, it’s also a confirmed Google ranking factor and Google don’t confirm many ranking factors.
So today we’re going to use GTmetrix to check your website’s measuring up to the performance expectations of humans and Google.
This will show us if your load times are costing you:
- Traffic
- Rankings
- Money
Let’s go…
What Is GTmetrix?
GTMetrix is a free performance measurement tool. They analyze your website’s speed to give you the exact time it takes to load.
They also crawl your website to look for specific areas that might be contributing to your slow website.
Ideally, you want a page load speed of 3x seconds or less from your target country.
Here’s how to use it…
How To Get GTmetrix Performance Data
Go to the GTmetrix website.
Enter your homepage URL:
Hit “Analyze”.
Depending on the size of your site, you may see this screen for a while:
Once complete you’ll be given a final score:
You’ll want to add the:
- Fully Loaded Time
- Total Page Size
To your Google Sheet.
Then:
Repeat this process for the other 5x URLs in your sheet.
Final Thoughts…
This audit is really kicking my arse.
It looks like all of my load times need work but that’s what happens if you don’t do an audit for a year.
Especially my homepage which needs to load significantly faster.
I hope you’re doing better than I am so far!
Either way, there’s some investigating left to do…