Just a few days back, Matt Cutts, one of the top Google Inc. employees announced that website loading speed is going to be one of the important criteria for a website’s Google ranking. In simpler words, it means that your website has a low chance of being on the top of the searches if your website is slow.

Now, the question you will ask is, “How do I check if my website is slow?”. I have a solution ready with me. No need of taking a stop-watch in your hand and waiting for your site to load. Actually, you can do that but the results it will givewill be incorrect and vary each time. So all you need to do is depend on one of the websites below.

Webpagetest : This website tops my charts because of the utilities it provides. On entering your site name and selecting a browser (no need to change other settings unless you know what you are doing), press enter. The process may take about 30 secs – 1 minute. After that, it will provide you a waterfall of the time taken for every element to load, an optimization checklist and content breakdown. This site is highly recommended by us.

Pingdom Tools : This tool is very useful for people who are completely new to the internet. All you need to do is enter the website url and it will give you a waterfall according to the time taken for the website to load. By this, you can distinguish between the elements loading normally and ones taking a lot of time and can edit/delete it.

Site-Perf : This one is for the advanced types. You can use this if you need a detailed analysis of your website. For estimation, you can use any of their 3 servers from US and Holland. I like the detailed info this website gives me.

iWebTool : Are you one of those who have many domains and less time to check the loading time of all? Well then, iWebTool will do the trick for you. This checker allows you to add domains in bulk.

If you are a Firefox user, you can use the plugin Page Speed.

If you are facing problems of low speed, you need to change your hosting ASAP. I am currently using BlueHost and trust me, it’s damn good. Other options include HostGator and 3ix (cheap premium hosting). So improve your website speed and see how your Google search rank increases.