Performance guide
Website speed checklist: the 3 checks a scan runs
How fast your site loads. Slow sites lose visitors and rank lower.
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A slow page loses visitors before it loads, and page speed is part of how Google ranks results. These checks measure what your server sends and how quickly a real browser can show and use the page.
2 of these 3 checks run on the free scan, with no account. The other 1 run on Pro.
- 1
Caching & compression
FreeChecks your site compresses files and lets browsers reuse them, so pages load faster.
Cache-Control: A setting that tells browsers how long they may reuse your files instead of re-downloading them.
Why it matters: Good caching makes repeat visits much faster and reduces your server load.
- 2
Page speed basics
FreeHow long your server takes to answer, and how many bytes a visitor has to download before the page can show.
- 3
Loading speed
ProGoogle Lighthouse scores for how quickly your page loads and becomes usable.
Common fixes
What the report most often tells you to do when one of these checks fails.
- Turn on gzip or Brotli compression for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It typically cuts their transfer size by 60 to 80%.
- Send an explicit Cache-Control policy so browsers and CDNs can reuse files instead of downloading them again.
- Find where server time goes: slow database queries, uncached page rendering, or a cold serverless function. A CDN or full-page cache in front of the server is usually the fastest win.
- Defer scripts that are not needed for the first paint, and split bundles so each page ships only the code it uses.
- Serve images as WebP or AVIF at the size they are shown, with width, height and loading="lazy" on anything below the fold.
Run these 3 Performance checks on your site
One scan covers this list and the other categories, and the report says what to fix first.