It is good to have an idea of the performance of your website / platform in various areas. This way you can also see and assess the further growth and impact of adjustments. That is why performance checks and in particular a baseline measurement are so important.
Why make a baseline measurement?
When you want to clarify whether things get better or worse, whether in sales, conversions, visitors, etc., it is a good time to get started with the necessary adjustments for a baseline measurement.
You can then see what the impact of adjustments is on your performance. You simply get to know whether you are on the right track or not.
Why should you monitor progress?
Periodically looking at how your website / platform is doing is highly recommended. If you have set a certain course but you never see where you are on the road then you may find yourself in a different direction than you had planned.
In addition, with a periodic check you always have the option to switch back or adjust where necessary.
That does not mean, however, that you should leave no room for changes. Making an adjustment and looking at results the next day (especially in the search engines) has almost no direct impact. Although Google’s algorithms are becoming faster and more dynamic, you can still rely on a period of weeks before you can really judge the difference on a lot of subjects.
But that is not the case for all tests, in fact in this item I will focus on tools with which you can immediately see tangible progress.
In short; Optimization is a continuous process whereby you have to periodically check the status.
Place the customer BEFORE your rankings
Beforehand, the actual experience of a user must always be seen as more important than the ranking / appreciation that comes from various tools.
The reason is simple; you can score 100/100 in the necessary tests, but if your website / platform does not appeal to a potential customer in terms of both appearance and use, the chance that they will complete your desired goal (the conversion) is much less realistic.
But in addition to the user experience, you can also focus on how various tools (and therefore standards) see your website / platform. Because search engines and browsers also want things to be as easy as possible just like people do. The more you can deal with that, the more profit it will bring you.
Tools for insight
To make a good (baseline) measurement we have a whole internet of tools that can provide us with information. There is also the problem immediately, how do you know which tools can really help you in working towards a better website / platform?
There are a lot of tools on the web and I understand that sometimes you can not see the forest through the trees. However, many of the tools are too limited, too unclear in what you can do to improve business, etc.
I am going to help you with that!
I focus on two of the main aspects; SEO and pageload.
In addition, where possible we will also provide free solutions, because that is often something that is thought; it must cost money to improve!
I will not go in-depth on the mentioned tools, they must be able to point out themselves otherwise they are not really good tools at all.
SEO
Making sure that you are well-liked by search engines is of course impossible to ignore at this time. From experience I have two free tools that can help you to improve your SEO performance on page level.
SEObility https://www.seobility.net/en/seocheck/
SEObility is a tool to quickly see on page level how well a website does in the field of SEO. But this tool also includes various other aspects, mainly with a view to speed / performance. In addition, it gives clear feedback on points for improvement that are possible.
What is a good score?
The aim is always to score above 80/100, that is when the tool returns a green score.
SEOSiteCheckup https://seositecheckup.com/
Because SEO is an area where a second opinion is always good, I also include SEOSiteCheckup.
Pay attention; This tool does have 1 disadvantage; you can only run it once per day per IP.
What is a good score?
The aim is always to score above 80/100, that is when the tool returns a green score.
Pageload
Being good at SEO is important, but if you do not load your website in a good way, that can have the necessary disadvantages on both your SEO and the experience of your visitor. No one, whether it’s a person or a search engine, likes a slow website.
But sometimes a fast website is not the only solution. The way different things load can also have a huge impact on the experience.
Pingdom https://tools.pingdom.com/
Pingdom has made their speed test for websites to help analyze the loading speed of websites and learn how to make them even faster. With this you can determine whether a webpage is fast, slow, too large, which practical tips and best practices you do / do not follow, etc.
In addition, with the feedback, Pingdom is clear about what actions you or your host can take.
Pay attention; With Pingdom you can use different servers to test from. The server in Amsterdam, however, has stopped a while ago. For testing in Europe it is advisable to use the locations Frankfurt and London.
What is a good score?
This depends a bit on your website but as fast as possible … To give any indication should always be able to load your website under the (1) second. This is to refer back to studies that people in micro-moments already decide what they are going to do, so every ms in fact counts.
Load times of ySlow Browser extensies (available for Chrome / Firefox)
Just like in the field of SEO, it is advisable to have a second opinion in the field of pageload.
Load times is only meant to give a clear picture of the time required for the different stages of pageload such as; Redirect, DNS, Connect, Request, Response, DOM, Interactive, Content loaded, Load event. If an inexplicable long time is needed for something, there is probably something of a bottle-neck that you have to tackle.
ySlow is a tool originally developed by Yahoo for the ability to properly assess pages in terms of performance. ySlow takes a huge number of aspects into account, from server settings to optimizing images to the number of blocking elements.
What is a good score?
The score is given in two parts; Grades (F-A) and 0-100.
A good score is actually a grade B (80+) grade A (90+) is beautiful but often a lot of work to get done.
Google Tools
Let’s be realistic, if we say search engines we mean Google. Of course you have Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex and Baidu. But the market is with Google. With the exception of Yandex in Russia and Baidu in Asia.
Of course, Google itself also has the necessary tools to gain insight into both SEO and Pageload. But before I treat them a warning in advance; they may not be the best tools for their purposes.
BUT I would always recommend to take them into the overall picture.
Striking absent among the tools is a real SEO appreciation from Google. Google deliberately chooses not to say a concrete valuation / ranking outside the search results.
That while they of course offer a lot of guidelines and documentation in the field of best practices. A good starting point in this is; https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
But Google does offer a whole range of other tools and I take the one that can give you the most concrete feedback in the areas of SEO and pageload.
Google Search Console
URL: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
Google Search Console is a free service from Google. With this service you as a website owner / manager can keep track of the presence of your website in the Google search results. Recently this tool has been given a new interface with which you can view even more historical data.
Google Search Console wants to use you to gain insight into how Google indexes your website. Whether there are problems with your website, what they are. To have more insight into search traffic.
Google Analytics
URL: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Google Analytics is free software from Google to display statistics from your website. With this service you can easily see how many visitors come to your website, what the traffic sources are, which pages are viewed and where a visitor leaves.
In short: a statistics service from Google that gives you a lot of insight about visitors to your website.
In combination with other tools from Google you gain insight into your visitors. Analytics is used by many companies, as well as by SEO specialists. By using GA you get a lot of insight in the basics.
Google Analytics can provide you with a great deal of insight, but it can also be difficult to get a good picture of what matters to you specifically because of the amount.
Google Structured Data Tool
URL: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/
If we go deeper and look at optimization which is specifically aimed at the search engine and not at the searcher, then you end up with things like structured data. Something that starts to become more important with things like rich snippets, featured snippets, knowledge grapshs etc.
For more information about Structured data and the possibilities it offers, I refer you to; https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data
Fortunately, many applications, themes and plugins are now busy to ensure that your website / platform is equipped with this structured data.
But you also need to be able to see how it stands in terms of your website / platform. For this, Google has created the Google Structured Data Tool.
Google Pagespeed Insights
URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=en
What I am very satisfied with are the other Google tools. As mentioned above Google Pagespeed Insights is a tool that I look at with mixed feelings.
The reason is that in essence the tool may also provide too little concrete actions / advice on what you can actually do. But also looking too specifically at fixed measuring points, which are not always fair with respect to your website / platform.
BUT it is a tool that also gives an indication from Google and you should not forget that fact. However, I do think that if you get a good rating in the other tools and Google Pagespeed Insights does not, that is more to Google Pagespeed Insights than it is to your website / platform.
Optimizing is a lot of work
That is simply the case, there is so much to look into when it comes to having good insight into the performance of your website / platform. And only when you have that you can start looking at how I will get even more out of it.
But every time that circle of optimization starts again. You can always keep going because the perfect website does not exist. New techniques will always be added, adjustments to existing techniques will be made and so on.
With this item I hope you have given the necessary insight into tools with which you can make your own start in the area of optimizing your website / platform. But I also understand that it is a lot of work and that not everyone would want to do this themselves. Nice fact io that I just love that!
If you say I want to look together at a customized solution in terms of optimization, then I would like to get in touch with you so that we can see together what we can do for you and your medium.
The path to performance starts here!
