Last updated on September 20th, 2023 at 06:17 am
Websites have become a mode of sharing information with a large number of the population in a digital space. Whether it’s social media, news or business marketing, everyone is using this medium to enlarge their medium of work. Basically, a website is the digital face which represents the user’s objectives. A user of a website can be an individual or an organisation. A website comprises various web pages which reflect the user’s aim in making the website. Website speed and website rating are the two things which make it accessible to users.
Website speed
The speed of a website is checked by calculating the time between clicking on a specific link and the opening of the web page. In other words, website speed is the time duration which a web page takes to open. Less than two seconds is the ideal time for a web page to open. This creates a positive impression on the users who are accessing it. Website speed plays a crucial part when making it rank on the first pages of Search Engines. When an owner wants its website to come on the first pages of Search Engines, he or she optimises the speed of the website. With the optimisation of the speed, the website is observed by search engines to consider it for the first pages. The speed of the website is not the only thing which matters, but many other factors which make a website rank on the top pages. When the speed of a website is slow, it will not get a proper ranking on Search Engines. The quick response of a website is essential as it allows the user time to check the content of the webpage in a short duration of time. Taking more than three seconds for a page to open creates a negative impact on the website. It is a psychological impact which makes a user impatient when seeing the web pages taking time to load. Excessive time in opening the webpage decreases the number of visitors to the website. For e-commerce businesses, the speed of the website is crucial as it helps to provide high-quality service to their consumers. Reduction in the speed of websites is not advisable as it can disrupt or damage a business’s reputation in the digital space.
Tools to check website speed
A regular check on website speed helps the owner of the website to know the development which is required for optimising the website speed. To assess the speed of your website, you can use some of the following tools.
Google Page Speed Insights
The users of a website can check the speed of their websites through PageSpeed Insights by Google. As websites are designed for computer and mobile pages, this tool provides a range of data about the web pages. This data is provided by Google by assessing the real-time feed of the webpage. Google uses the data from the User Interface of Chrome to assess the speed of the website. In a similar way, Google gives scores between 0-100 to show the quality of speed provided by the website. A high score reflects the high efficiency and speed of the website.
Sematext
Like Google PageSpeed Insight, there are other tools which help to analyse the website speed. Sematext is one such tool which provides various means to monitor and increase the speed of the website. Sematext is widely used by technicians who work to detect any flaws in the optimisation of the website. This tool helps to monitor the load time of a webpage and extracts the performance matrix of the website. Under this tool, owners can check the speed of websites operating on computers and on mobile phones. Sematext also sends notifications to the owners if a change is required in the website.
GTmetrix
One of the commonly used online-based tools is GTmetrix, which generates scores for the website based on load time and requests happening. GTmetrix is a free tool available on the internet. Under this tool, you have to put in the URL of your website. Once it completes its analysis, it gives a report in metrics. Under these metrics, various points show the function which denotes the speed of the website. A speed representation can be seen in the report. GTmetrix recommends ways of improving your website speed based on the report it has generated.
Website ranking
The position of a webpage which comes on the Search Engines is referred to as website rankings. In Search Engine Optimisation, website ranking plays a crucial part in the highest position. This allows the website to receive a large number of people, which in turn increases awareness about the website. There are many factors which contribute to website ranking on Search Engines. A number of keywords used, internal links, backlinks and URL structure are some of the contributing factors to the website ranking. Increased traffic is received with the increase in website ranking. Website ranking has been widely used by small-scale to large-scale businesses in order to get high traffic on their business through organic search. Many companies use this platform to generate leads without any additional cost. In a similar way, the top ranking of the websites helps the owners to stay ahead of their competition in the market. Making the website usable on mobile devices has become an essential part of increasing the rank of the website. Web Authority has also played an important part in optimising the websites to increase their ranking. Authority reflects the quality of the website, which makes it trustworthy. The higher the authority, the higher its quality.
Tools to check website ranking
Ahrefs
Optimising a website to make it come on the top ranking of Search Engines is one of the most difficult things to do. To assess the changes required for the website and increase its quality, Ahrefs is used. This is an online-based software which is used to search for keywords, analyse competitors and track the rank of the website. This software is mostly used by small business owners who conduct SEO for their websites. Ahrefs gives various information about a website, such as domain rating, anchors and URL rating. It can be said that an observer can see the current position of a website through this tool.
SEMrush
Moz Pro
For the collection of data for website ranking and web page optimisation, Moz Pro is widely used. This tool gives a brief understanding of how your website is working and what type of traffic it is receiving. In this way, the owner of the website is able to target specific keywords which have accurate volume. This tool helps to provide a brief overview of how the website is being ranked based on the keywords used in it. Moz Pro is used to measure the current status of the websites in Search Engine.
Relationship between speed and ranking of the website
The speed of the website and the ranking of the website are dependent on each other. Apart from other factors such as content and keywords used in the web pages, website speed is one of the contributing factors to increasing the rank of the website in Search Engine pages. Speed is one such factor in website ranking, which is observed by Google. In other words, the sooner a web page takes time to load, the higher the rank of the website. Slow website speed turns into a bad customer experience. This decreases the traffic toward a website, which in turn has a negative impact on the website’s ranking. As Google is one of the widely used search engine platforms, it ranks the website based on its performance. Google puts customer service as a high priority, which is why when a website takes time to open, it puts the website on the lower pages of its search engine. This creates a negative impact on the website with a decrease in website ranking. It is necessary to use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Sematext to keep track of the speed of the website. Through these tools, the owner of the website can detect the reason which decreases the website speed. In a similar aspect, tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush should be used by website owners to keep a regular check on the development of their websites. In this way, they can optimise their website speed to increase the website ranking on Search Engines.
