Checking your website performance with FREE tools

A website audit takes into consideration all of the elements that affect a website’s performance in search engines and provides insight issues that are affecting your digital presence.

Having a website is one thing. Having a website that you know is working efficiently is another thing. Most small business owners aren’t aware of the many free tools available to them for a little D.I.Y. website testing.

Why Website Testing Is Important

Your website is no different than your car that needs testing from time to time to stay ahead of future problems. One of the factors that Google uses for search engine rankings (as well as your customers) is how well your website performs. Is your website loading slow? Is it easy to navigate? Does it work on smartphones? A lot of small business owners have not tested or looked at their website after they have been launched.

There are now many options for testing your sites. Some of the tests will focus on load times and others may focus more on SEO (search engine optimization) factors. In addition some of the test will also provide detailed information on how to fix problems.

My Favorite Testing Resources

GT Metrix

GT Metrix has a highly detailed scan that will look at your load time. In addition, it provides a visual timeline graph of what is being loaded and how long each step takes. The detail tabs on the test goes deeper into what each section means. The report can be downloaded as a PDF.

SEOptimer

The free scan looks at five key areas on the website scan: on-page SEO, Links, Usability, Performance, and Social. For each area, a graded score is given as well as the recommendations for improvement. The report can be downloaded as a PDF.

SEMRush

Check for over 130 common website issues and get special reports about your site’s crawlability, use of markups, internal linking, speed/performance, HTTPS, and international SEO.

There are many other sites as well to perform your own tests. Each of them have value for seeing how your site is performing. Check out this post for even more auditing resources.

Website Testing Overview

As consumers, we are always searching the web for answers to our questions that we use Google for. It is so common now for people to “Google It” to find answers or hope to find answers on the web.

This is where your website testing comes into play. With the use of these tools you can discover how fast your page loads, how easy your website is to use, does it contain enough content and information. The last thing you want is believing you have a good website and not realize it’s not working the way you hoped.