The loading time of a mobile site is one of the most important SEO criteria. Too long, in fact, and users will not hesitate to turn to the competition. For Google, a site that is too long is not necessarily the most relevant result for its users.
In addition to those offered by the search giant, Gtmetrix is one of the most effective tools for testing and optimizing site speed.
GTmetrix: testing and optimizing site speed
Extremely useful for webmasters and SEO professionals, GTmetrix is available in both free and paid versions.
How does Gtmetrix work?
Developed by a Canadian company, GTmetrix uses several tools to generate a performance report, Google’s PageSpeed and Yahoo! Yslow. These tools offer different but complementary analyses of the same page.
By cross-referencing the data and recommendations of each of them, Gtmetrix assigns a score between 0 and 100 to all the criteria that can influence loading speed.
How can you speed up your site with Gtmetrix?
For each URL tested, GTmetrix provides a detailed report with five key data points:
- A performance score ;
- Loading time ;
- Page weight ;
- The number of requests required to load the page;
- The percentage of sites that your page outperforms in terms of speed. This last information is only based on all the sites analyzed via GTmetrix.
This SEO tool enables you to understand how the various elements making up the URL under test load, in this case the HTML, images, JavaScript requests, CSS, etc. The performance report generated highlights the various elements that weigh down a page and slow down its complete loading (style sheet, script, non-compression of images, etc).
The various Gtmetrix recommendations (activation of Gzip compression, style sheet, presence of 404 headers, size of images, minimization of resources, etc.) help to speed up the site, particularly on Android smartphones.
Our e-business consultants can help you read and understand the GTMetrix data so that you can make the best possible use of the recommendations and incorporate them into your site to improve its SEO performance and enhance the user experience on your site.
