Skip to content
Check my website
Check my site
SEO

How to measure the speed of a real estate website, and tips to improve it

How to measure your website's speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, and what to improve so it loads faster and ranks better.

SEO consultant 5 min readUpdated on
Brass stopwatch next to a laptop on a table
In this article 5 sections
  1. How to measure a web page's speed
  2. How can you improve a web page's loading speed?
  3. Step by step: how to measure the speed of a real estate website
  4. Ongoing monitoring for a faster real estate website
  5. Frequently asked questions

Tackling the optimisation of your real estate website can seem like a long, complicated process, but there are ways to make it more manageable. You could start, for example, by asking yourself how to measure a web page's speed: it's one of the first steps in optimising a website.

How to measure a web page's speed

There are several tools for measuring a web page's speed. One of the most widely used and recommended is Google PageSpeed Insights. Using it is as simple as visiting its website, typing in your page's URL and clicking “Analyze”. I've left you a step-by-step guide a little further down.

Professional checking their laptop at a bright desk

The tool gives one score from 0 to 100 for mobile and another for desktop. Google shows it in green from 90 to 100 (good), in orange from 50 to 89 (needs improvement) and in red below 50 (poor). If your website gets enough visits, you'll also see real-user data for the Core Web Vitals, which is what Google takes into account.

How can you improve a web page's loading speed?

Once you've measured it, it's time to work out how to improve the page's speed. To do so, follow the recommendations the tool gives you after the analysis. It may be time to optimise images, reduce CSS and JavaScript files, enable GZIP compression or improve the server's response.

Web technician working with a notebook

How can I improve the speed of my WordPress website?

If your website runs on WordPress, you may be wondering how to improve your WordPress site's speed. In this case there are specific plugins that can help, such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. These tools let you take advantage of browser caching, significantly improving your site's speed.

Step by step: how to measure the speed of a real estate website

  • Step 1: Go to Google PageSpeed Insights. To start, visit pagespeed.web.dev in your browser.
  • Step 2: Enter your website address. In the search bar, paste the URL of the page you want to measure and click “Analyze”.
  • Step 3: Wait for the analysis. It takes a few seconds while Google PageSpeed Insights analyses the page.
  • Step 4: Check the score. Once the analysis is complete, you'll get a score from 0 to 100. If it's red (below 50), your website has serious speed problems; if it's orange (50 to 89), there's clear room for improvement.
  • Step 5: Explore the details. Now take some time to review the recommendations Google PageSpeed Insights gives you. They can help you optimise your website's loading speed and usability.
  • Step 6: Make improvements to your website. Following Google's recommendations, you can optimise your images, reduce your CSS and JavaScript files, enable GZIP compression and improve your server's response time.
Person checking their phone on a train platform

Ongoing monitoring for a faster real estate website

Once you've made all the necessary improvements, don't stop there. Check your website's performance regularly with PageSpeed Insights and with the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console, which uses data from real visitors, to track your progress and make adjustments.

The end result, once you've learnt how to measure your website's speed and improve it, should be a faster real estate website, one that is more efficient and more appealing to users. Bear in mind that a fast-loading site doesn't just improve the user experience: it's also an important factor in improving your search engine rankings.

Irantzu Dondiz

Written by

SEO consultant at Landing Agency

At Landing since 2024, working on site architecture, content and SEO audits. Master's in SEO from BIGSEO and a higher diploma in Marketing and Sales.

See their profile and all their articles

Keep reading

All articles
SEO

Real estate link building

Getting other important websites to talk about your real estate agency and link to it: that's how Google recognises it as an authority and moves it up the search results.

Irantzu Dondiz · 6 min read

Frequently asked questions

  • From 90 upwards the score shows in green, but the one that matters is the mobile score: it's the most demanding and it's the one your buyers experience. Don't chase 100 at any cost. Having the page open quickly for your real visitors, which is what the field data section measures, matters more than gaining a few points in the lab test. If the assessment based on your visitors' data passes, you're on the right track.

  • They're the three metrics Google uses to measure the real loading experience. LCP is how long the main content takes to appear (good: up to 2.5 seconds); INP, how long the page takes to respond when you tap something (good: up to 200 milliseconds); and CLS, how much the layout shifts while it loads (good: up to 0.1). These are the thresholds Google publishes on web.dev.

  • Because the score comes from a lab test: it simulates a mid-range mobile on a slow connection, and it varies slightly on each run depending on the server and the network. It's worth running the analysis several times and looking at the trend. Field data, from real visitors over the last 28 days, is more stable and is what Google takes into account.

  • As well as PageSpeed Insights, the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console groups your website's pages by status and alerts you when they get worse. GTmetrix and WebPageTest show you, step by step, what your page loads and in what order, which is very useful for finding the photo or script that's slowing it down. They all have a free version.

  • The usual culprit is photos: galleries with dozens of full-size images, neither compressed nor lazy-loaded. After that come videos that play automatically, third-party maps and chats that load as soon as the page opens, plugins nobody uses and hosting that's slow to respond. If your website is fed by your CRM and the portals, also check how the property pages are generated.

The Landing Agency team in the Barcelona office

Put your website to the test
and see where you lose clients

Check my website