How to Check Your Website Speed in 5 Minutes
Practical guide: the best free tools to test website speed and what the scores you receive actually mean.
Website speed is one of the most important SEO factors and one of the main reasons visitors leave without buying. The good news: you can check your website speed right now, for free, in less than 5 minutes. Here is how.
Google PageSpeed Insights, the official tool
Go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your website URL. Google analyzes the page and gives you a score from 0 to 100, separately for mobile and desktop.
Score interpretation: 0-49 (red) = serious problem, needs urgent attention. 50-89 (orange) = has issues, can be improved. 90-100 (green) = good.
Most importantly: look at the mobile score, not desktop. That is where customers are won or lost. Most websites score between 20-50 on mobile, well below optimal.
Core Web Vitals, what Google actually measures
Below the overall score, PageSpeed Insights shows you three metrics called Core Web Vitals. These have been official Google ranking factors since 2021.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), how long it takes for the main element to appear. Ideal: under 2.5 seconds. FID/INP, how long until the site responds to the first click. Ideal: under 200ms.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift), measures whether page elements "jump" while loading. Ideal: under 0.1.
GTmetrix, more detail
Go to gtmetrix.com for a more detailed analysis. GTmetrix shows you exactly which files load, how long each takes, and what the biggest problems are.
The "Top Issues" section is the most valuable, it tells you directly what needs fixing: unoptimized images, blocked JavaScript, inefficient CSS, unconfigured cache.
Test from "London" or a European location for results relevant to your audience.
What to do with the results
If your mobile score is below 70, you have a problem directly affecting sales and Google rankings. It is not a content problem, it is a technical problem.
Most common causes: oversized unoptimized images, too many plugins, slow cheap hosting, unoptimized CSS and JavaScript.
Some issues you can fix yourself (compress images at squoosh.app). Others require technical intervention, code optimization, cache configuration, CDN, lazy loading.
If you tested and your mobile score is below 70, contact us. At PixelFit we do the complete audit for free and explain exactly what needs fixing on your specific website, not generic answers, but concrete solutions.