5 Best Free Website Speed Test Tools for Bloggers

Having a fast loading time for your blog can help increase your blog’s organic traffic especially from Google. One of the main goals of every blogger is to rank in the top 10 of Google’s search results for the desired keyword.  In this blog post, I’m going to share with you 5 free website speed test tools for bloggers.

Note: This page contains affiliate links, which means that if you buy something using one of the links below, I may earn a commission.

Why Does Site Speed Matter

Google’s algorithm favors websites that load quickly and will rank a site higher for keywords when compare with other sites that load slowly. Site speed is one of the many factors that Google takes into consideration when determining search results positioning.

The dream of every blogger is to increase their blog’s visitors and revenue.  To do this you need to conduct website speed tests to find necessary information about your website and also improve your website speed if your score is too low.

Site Speed Affects Bounce Rate

If your blog loads slowly you can also loose visitors that come to your blog quickly. A visitor is less likely to stay on your site if they experience a long load time.  When visitors leave your blog quickly this increases your blog’s bounce rate. If you want to get traffic to your blog, you need to have a fast loading time which will help your visitor to stay on your site, reducing your bounce rate, and increasing your page views.  Visitors that stay longer are also more likely to click on related topics on your blog.

Plugins Affect Site Speed

Installing too many plugins on your WordPress blog can lead to slow loading times. For this reason, you only need to install the plugins you need and uninstall plugins that are lying fallow on your disk space.

Related Post:  WordPress Plugins You Need to Install Immediately

5 Free Website Speed Test Tools

Since you don’t automatically know the load speed of your blog or website, there are free tools that you can use to find out how your site performs in this area. I will explain 5 free tools that you can use to test your website speed for WordPress, these tools perform almost the same functions as they check load time, page size, and the number of requests and offer a free recommendation for you.

The tool you stick to depends on your preference, ease of use and choice.  

#1 – Pingdom

Pingdom is my number 1 ranked tool for testing site speed because it is the easiest. This tool makes it easy for you to analyze your entire website and different individual pages load speed. Pingdom is user-friendly to all bloggers no matter your skill level.  You can use Pingdom to measure your site’s load speed and it will suggest steps to take to make improvements.

When you enter the URL of your website or blog, Pingdom displays your website speed rating score, the highest score you can get is 100. The scores are broken down into twelve criteria that combine to give you your website score. Your total score is the addition of all your website scores in different criteria Pingdom uses to rank websites.

Pingdom also gives you suggestions to help improve your website speed. When you implement the suggestions you will notice that your website speed increases until you get to the perfect score of 100. If you think that having a perfect score of 100 is not possible, there are websites with a 100-speed score.  Achieving a perfect score can take some time to achieve, however, when you website speed has been certified okay, you will notice a reduction in the bounce rate of your blog.

Pingdom does not support HTTP/2 when you run a speed test, this means that additional performance like SSL, multiplexing, and parallelism won’t be taken into account. If you need to find this advanced data for your website you can find the website speed test tool that uses chrome 41 and support HTTP/2 and used them instead of Pingdom. Pingdom is using chrome 39 for the test while the features that support HTTP/2 use chrome 41.

#2 – Google Page Speed Insights

Google is the leading search engine in the market. If you are thinking of getting any decent organic traffic from Google, you have to follow and implement Google’s guidelines on your website.

Google has their own tool that you can use to test your website speed. Google page speed insights measure the performance of website pages on desktop computers and mobile devices.

The Page Speed score ranges from 0 to 100 like in Pingdom. If your website has a score of 85 and above you have a better chance of getting decent traffic. If you want to improve your Page Speed score, Google Page Speed Insights offers free suggestions that you can implement on your website.

#3 – WebPageTest

WebpageTest was created by a Google engineer named Patrick Mennan. This free tool allows you to run your website speed test from any location using a real browser like Mozilla, IE, or Chrome. This gives you the ability to monitor your website load speed using different locations. You can monitor how your website load speed in U.S.A compare to Africa and compare the loading speed of your website using different browsers.  

WebpageTest allows you to perform advanced tests on your website, which are not possible when using Pingdom. It uses chrome 41 which support HTTP/2  and allows you access to the true information of your website using features like SSL (which is now compulsory for all website in order to rank well on Google search engine, multiplexing, and parallelism).

#4 – YSlow

Yslow was created by Yahoo, it identifies 34 key parameters that can cause your website speed to slow down. Only 23 parameters can be tested, so they focus on these parameters and display your score from A to F.  A is perfect and F being Poor. This gives you insight into areas that you need to work on in order to improve your website speed.

In order for you to use YSlow, you need to install a plugin on your browser. It supports all major browsers and gives you a comprehensive report about your website speed. The only weakness of this tool is that it was lasted updated 2 years ago. 

#5 – GTmetrix

The Gtmetrix free tool allows you to test your website speed 20 times. It saves the data so you can compare and monitor your website improvement for free. You can upgrade to their paid plan when you are ready. Gtmetrix is the best alternative to Pingdom in the market. It is easy to use and also allows you to download the report for deep analysis.

Gtmetrix combines the works of two previously mention tools namely Yslow and Google Page Speed Insight.  It gives you a comprehensive report on your website. Gtmetrix displays a summary of your website speed report at the top of the page. It gives you the total load page of your website, page size, and the number of requests. It also gives you a recommendation on how to improve your website speed. You can download the report to your computer for analysis and follow the instructions on how to improve your website speed test results.

It uses chrome 54 which supports HTTP/2 speed testing which is added in chrome 41. Gtmetrix is the best free website speed test tool in the market.

Test Your Blog’s Speed Immediately

These are the best 5 free tools that you can use to test your website speed. Knowing and improving your website load speed is extremely important when it comes to getting organic traffic. Website speed tests give you comprehensive reports (loading time, page size, and the number of requests) and guidance on how to make improvements.

Guest Post Author

Ogunyinka Francis blogs about topics to help new and old bloggers in their blogging Journey.

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