Page speed is a very important factor in your online marketing campaign, however it’s also something that is often overlooked. When you put as much time and effort into your SEO strategy as most people do nowadays, the last thing you want is for your visitors to hit the back button because your website is taking too long to load. Long gone are the days of dial up internet and the patience required just to sign on to AOL. Slow page speed can make all that effort to attract that visitor go to waste, and visitors that leave are even less likely to return to you site in the future, if at all. Additionally, Google takes into account your website’s page speed when determining its rankings and you definitely want this to work in your favor in the SERPS.

Page Speed Tools
There are several tools out there that you can use in order to make sure that your site is up to speed (pun intended). The following are a few we’d recommend:

• Google Page Speed Tool – This is the Google hub of tools and resources for all things page speed. Here you can test, analyze, and optimize your page speed to improve its performance leading to a better user experience on your site. Recommended tools within this family are Page Speed Insights and the browser extensions.

• YSlow – A Yahoo! Developer plugin that can be added to almost all browsers, it analyzes your site and delivers a report card based on how how well it performs. You’ll be able to see areas improvement such as page speed and understand why it may not be up to par with industry recommended page speeds.

Additional Solutions
There are a few things that can always help increase the speed of your web page. Consider reducing or elimination Flash, animation, and audio elements unless they absolutely enhance the function and purpose of your site and its message. These features should be used sparingly and only in very rare cases, as they can jeopordize the opportunity to convert the visitor. In addition, consider upgrading your plan with your hosting provider to ensure that it has the bandwidth to support your site at the optimal speed. Remember, in the case of page load time, faster is better.

By taking advantage of these free tools to analyze your site and page speed, you can gain the insight you need to improve performance. This will ensure your site aligns with what the search engines deem valuable in order to rank desirably within the SERPs.