10 Free Tools for Testing Website Speed

Since Googles algorithms started to use web page load time as a search ranking parameter, good tools for testing website speed has become important for SEO. If your website is generally slow, taking several seconds to download, it will most likely have a negative influence on your rankings. On the other hand, if your website breaks the speed limits…., it will be an advantage. How much it influences rankings today is difficult to know, but back in 2010 when Matt Cuff announced it, Google estimated about 1% of search results would be influenced. May sound like not worth the effort, but just knowing Google focus on this makes it important.

Most internet users are just as unforgiving as search engines when it comes to slow websites. And users needs comes before SEO always. It is about providing value and solutions, and without too much waiting time!  Therefore, website performance should be one of your top priorities. To help you speed up your website and identify bothersome performance bottlenecks, I have compiled a list of free tools for testing and analyzing website speed. Some of these free tools will provide detailed data, while others also generate suggestions to help you take necessary actions. The tools will most likely advice you to optimize your CSS and JavaScript files; I provided some tips for this previously. When talking about website speed I want to share with you that I have had good results using WordPress themes for my business sites. WordPress and the themes created for this powerful platform can help you get a handsome and fast loading website.

I hope you will find this list helpful, and if you have experience with other tools for testing and improving website speed, kindly let us know by adding your comments below. I also encourage you to share this post with your friends.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a powerful tool for analyzing and monitoring your website speed. It grades your site’s performance and provides actionable recommendations to fix any issues found. You can also use the GTmetrix for WordPress plugin to develop and maintain a faster, more efficient, and all-around improved website experience for your users.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed is an online speed testing tool that analyzes web page content before generating
suggestions that will make your web pages faster. It is an open-source project started at Google aimed to help optimize web pages by applying web performance best practices.

Neustar Web Performance

This tool is an easy and quick way of generating performance data from your site

Web Page Analyzer

This speed testing tool is very handy and can provide you with descriptive site analysis and
how you can improve it. Web page analyzer features web page speed report, global report,
external files calculation, loading times, analysis and recommendations.

Stingray Aptimizer

This online speed testing tool generates report in a unique way. After entering the URL of
the website you are testing, the tool will send you an analysis report after 5 to 10 minutes
through email. The analysis is in PDF so you can review it anytime you want.

WebPageTest

This speed testing tool will allow you to conduct tests from different places around the
world through real browsers and consumer connection speeds. You can perform simple
or advance tests that include video capture, multistep transactions, content blocking and
more.

Pingdom Tool

This tool generates multiple reports such as page size and task performance grades such as
browser caching. The Pingdom tool also provides a breakdown of the downloading time of
each webpage object. It will allow you to trace performance history and conduct tests from
different locations.

OctaGate Site Timer

This is a simple online speed testing tool that will allow you to enter the URL of the website
you want to test. The tool will then generate a bar graph that shows web page objects,
which contains download start and end times as well as the duration for each.

Show Slow

This is an online website speed testing tool that is open sourced. It monitors the
performance metrics of your website over time. It takes the ranking results of Page Speed,
dynaTrace AJAX Edition, WebPageTest and YSlow, and graphs them.

Free Speed Test

This online website speed testing tool checks load time and website speed via
multiple data centers worldwide. This will allow you to know the actual loading time of
your website in practically all corners of the globe.

Anders

Anders is Co-founder of Tripwire Magazine. He is into WordPress topics, Web design, Web-development and also interested in SEO and Online Marketing. He has started Splashmagazine.com and he’s also writing for other blogs. Anders is a passionate blues musician and a family-man, as well.