If you’re a WordPress user and it’s been awhile since you checked your website’s speed, consider adding the GTmetrix plugin to your WordPress toolbox. Rather than a one-off check of your site’s load time, the GTmetrix plugin gives you a way to continually monitor your site through a combination of regular reports and alerts.
After all, website speed is super important and not just from a user experience perspective (although that’s a critical factor, too). How fast your website loads is one of the many ways that Google ranks your website, so if, over time, your website slows down, you may find your SEO visibility diminishing, too.
One solution? The GTMetrix Plugin. Before you download the plugin to your WordPress site, head over to the GTMetrix website and sign up to get an API key that you’ll use to activate the plugin.
While you’re there, you can go ahead and run a performance report on your website (or any other URL). The report includes a page speed percentage and letter grade, as well as page load time and a breakdown of specific page speed elements, their grades and priority levels so you know where to focus your attention.
Once you’ve installed the plugin, you can schedule similar performance reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can also opt to receive alerts that will give you a heads-up if your web page falls below a certain condition you’ve set based on speed/YSlow score, page load time, total page size, etc.
This is one of our favorite features about the GTMetrix plugin. Websites aren’t static, never-changing entities—they’re designed to be frequently updated and added to, especially if your website includes a built-in blog. The ability to run regular reports and receive alerts means you’ll stay on top of your website’s loading time without having to think about it—and if your website does slow down over time, you’ll be able to target the problem areas and implement a quick fix.
Have you tried GTMetrix? We’d love to know what you think. And if you have other must-use WordPress plugin recommendations, we’re all ears!
Image: Nathan E Photography via Compfight cc
