Google PageSpeed Insights: learn how to use it to benefit your business!
Does your company focus on SEO when thinking about digital presence? Does it analyze Google PageSpeed Insights indicators to identify loading performance? If not yet, be careful: your competitors may quickly overtake you and the loss to your business may take time to recover.
After all, one of the criteria used to rank pages by the main search engines is also page loading. In this article, we will help you learn more about how to use Google PageSpeed Insights to benefit your business website.
<h2″>What is Google PageSpeed Insights?
Google PageSpeed Insights (GPI) is one of the leading SEO optimization tools for business websites. It is, therefore, one of the most used by specialists in the field.
After all, as it was created by the company responsible for the largest search engine in the world (Google), it offers important metrics that are used by the company when ranking sites in organic search.
This is a free tool that allows you to identify your page loading speed. Furthermore, it brings the main metrics related to the topic, so that experts can identify the points that need attention.
This is all carried out precisely by the company responsible for the largest search engine currently on the internet and, therefore, by monitoring the score it offers, it is possible to identify which points would harm your page when ranking alongside competitors.
How does Google PageSpeed Insights work?
Google PageSpeed Insights evaluates your website to identify how it carries information to the user. It essentially presents two points about the page:
- the time it takes for a page to display content above the fold (that is, what is first displayed to the user);
- the time it takes the browser to perform the page rendering process.
In addition to pointing out the average loading speed , Google PageSpeed Insights also allows you to identify potential problem points. This is already a true treasure map so that your company’s web developer knows exactly what needs to be optimized.
The GPI also provides a complete report, containing the site’s average score, as well as each of the metrics evaluated. This is an interesting feature, including for comparing results over time.
Therefore, it is possible to evaluate whether the indicators have improved or worsened and, if it is the second option, identify which changes may have hampered the effectiveness of your website’s loading process.
In the report you will find the evaluation according to 4 criteria:
- performance;
- SEO;
- page accessibility ;
- best practices for optimization.
The entire report is very educational for those who are not experts in the area. To do this, it has colors related to the score, to indicate the points where there is some type of more urgent issue that deserves attention (i.e., it had a low score in the evaluation).
In other words, the points that are in red in the evaluation need to be improved. To achieve this, it is essential to have specialists from digital agencies, who will prioritize not only issues relating to website speed, but also other points that influence search engine optimization.
How can Google PageSpeed Insights help optimize your business performance?
One of the essential criteria that search engines use to measure a website’s performance and determine whether it is relevant to the audience is loading speed. The more responsive your website is, the better it will rank.
Of course, this is not the only criterion. But losing important points here can greatly harm the possibility of achieving better results. As this is a very complete tool, which points out important metrics, it is possible to identify which are the central adjustment points, helping your teams to get straight to the point of what needs to be changed.
It is worth remembering that Google PageSpeed Insights is a good starting point for analyzing page performance, but it is not the only one. Furthermore, consider the data presented in conjunction with other information, as alone it is not 100% accurate. This is because some variables can interfere with the result, including:
- connection of those taking the test;
- cache storage present in the browser;
- hosting service;
- type of device used for testing.
Remember that this is not a bureaucratic analysis: it is directly related to the user experience. A user who encounters problems opening a website, regardless of the platform (mobile or desktop), may abandon the page and look for the information or product they are looking for from a competitor.
Or, you may give up viewing at that moment and forget to return later. Furthermore, a user who quickly leaves your site signals Analytics as if it were a rejection, and Google’s search system penalizes the site, damaging its placement in organic search.
In other words, this is a good diagnosis to avoid problems that could generate a cascade effect for your business and harm the performance of your company’s website.
