How to Use Pagespeed Insights Checker for Better SEO and UX

Let's start with a very direct and a very important question. Do you want to know exactly what the Google search engine thinks about your website's speed? And I don't mean a rough guess, or an estimate from a third-party tool. I mean the real, the direct, and the completely unfiltered opinion from the single most important and most powerful search giant in the entire world.

For many, many years, the process of trying to understand how Google actually perceived our website's performance was a little bit of a mystery. We could use a number of different and of various tools to be able to test our site's speed, but we were never really sure if those tools were measuring the specific and the exact things that Google really cared about.

But then, the brilliant people at Google gave all of us website owners a wonderful and a very powerful gift. They gave us a direct and a transparent window into their own, personal analysis. It is a free and an official tool that is called PageSpeed Insights. It is, for all intents and purposes, your official, performance report card, and it is graded by the one and only teacher whose opinion matters the most for your SEO. Now, the report that it gives you can be a little bit technical and it can be full of some strange and of some confusing acronyms. But understanding that report is the absolute key to being able to unlock a faster website and to be able to achieve better rankings.

The "Official Report Card": What is Google PageSpeed Insights?

So, what exactly is this powerful and this important tool? Google PageSpeed Insights, which is often just shortened to PSI, is a free tool that has been created and that is maintained by Google itself. Its one, and only, job is to analyze the performance of a single webpage on both mobile and on desktop devices.

It will give you a simple and an easy-to-understand, overall performance score that goes from 0 to 100. And, most crucially of all, it will also provide you with a detailed and an actionable list of specific and of helpful recommendations on how you can go and you can improve your page's speed, and these recommendations are coming straight from the horse's mouth. The best and the simplest analogy is to think of it like you are taking your driving test. You can practice your driving with your friends and with your family as much as you want. But the one, and only, opinion that actually matters for you to be able to get your license is the opinion of the official and of the certified, driving examiner. In the world of web performance, PageSpeed Insights is that official, and final, examiner.

Deconstructing the Score: It's All About the User

Now, it is very important to understand that the final, overall performance score that the tool gives you is not just a random and an arbitrary number. It is a very clever and a very carefully, weighted average of a number of different and of specific, performance metrics. And it has a very heavy and a very deliberate focus on the real-world, user experience.

The most important and the most heavily weighted components of this score are, as of 2025, a set of three, key metrics that are known as the Core Web Vitals. These are the things that Google has identified as being the most critical for a good, user experience. They are the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), the Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). In the simplest terms, Google is trying to use these metrics to be able to measure what a real, and an impatient, human being actually feels when they are trying to load your page. Does it feel fast? Is it frustrating to try and to interact with? And is it stable, or does it jump around all over the place? This is what that final and that all-important score represents.

The Two Worlds: Mobile vs. Desktop Performance

One of the most important and most insightful features of the PageSpeed Insights report is that it will always give you two, separate and distinct, scores: one for your mobile performance, and one for your desktop performance.

It is absolutely crucial that you understand that, in our modern world, the mobile score is the one that matters the most for your SEO. As we have discussed before, Google now uses what it calls "mobile-first indexing." This means that the Googlebot will primarily and, in most cases, only look at the mobile version of your website to be able to determine its overall quality and to be able to decide where it should rank in the search results.

It is a very, very common and a very dangerous mistake for a business owner to look at their fantastic, desktop score of 95 out of 100 and to think that everything is perfect, while completely ignoring their terrible, mobile score of 35 out of 100. This is a massive, and a glaring, red flag. In a mobile-heavy and a mobile-driven market, like the one that we have right here in Sri Lanka, you should be completely and totally obsessed with your mobile score, above all else.

The Simple Way to Get Your Official Grade

So, how do you actually go and you get this official, and this incredibly valuable, report card from Google? Well, of course, you can go directly to Google's own, PageSpeed Insights website to be able to run the test. But you don't always have to. Many of the modern and of the best, SEO tool suites and many of the simple, and the free, online checker tools will have this functionality built right into them.

The workflow is incredibly and wonderfully simple. You just go to the website. You will see a single, a simple, and a very clear input box. You just have to enter the URL of the page that you want to test. You click the "Analyze" button. The tool will then, in the background, send a secure and an official request directly to Google's own, PageSpeed Insights API. A few moments later, it will get the full and the comprehensive, official report back from Google, and it will then display it for you in a clean, a beautiful, and a very user-friendly format.

The Power of a Dedicated Pagespeed Insights Checker

This pressing need for a fast, for a simple, and for a completely reliable way to be able to get this direct and this unfiltered feedback from Google itself is exactly why a Pagespeed Insights Checker is such an absolutely indispensable and an essential tool.

The core and the most profound benefit of using one of these tools is that it is giving you direct and it is giving you actionable advice, right from the very source that is the one that sets all of the rules. You are not just getting a bunch of generic and of general, performance tips. You are getting a specific, a detailed, and a prioritized, to-do list, directly from Google, that tells you exactly how you can make your page better in their own, powerful eyes. And the amazing thing is, with the kind of powerful and completely free tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can get this direct and this powerful line to Google's brain, any time that you want.

What to Look For in a Great PSI Checking Tool

As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most trustworthy ones are designed to be fast, accurate, and incredibly easy to understand. They are built to give you actionable insights, not just a bunch of confusing, technical data. A really top-notch online tool for checking your page speed should have a few key features. It should include:

A clear and an explicit statement that the tool is using Google's own, official, PageSpeed Insights API to be able to get all of its data.
A clear, a simple, and a very visual display of the final, and the overall, performance scores for both your mobile and for your desktop versions.
A full and a detailed breakdown of all of the different, Core Web Vitals and of all the other, important performance metrics.
The full and the complete list of all of the different, "Opportunities" and all of the "Diagnostics" that Google provides you with, and it should have some clear and some simple explanations for each one.
A user-friendly and an intuitive interface that makes the complex and the data-rich report easy for you to be able to navigate and to be able to understand.

A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any modern and for any serious website owner.

The Human SEO: Turning Google's Advice into a Faster Site

Now for the golden rule, the part of the process that turns a simple, diagnostic report into a real and a tangible improvement in your website's speed. The online tool has done its job. It has given you the diagnosis from the doctor. Now, your job is to be the one who applies the treatment.

The beautiful thing about the PageSpeed Insights report is that it is your own, personal, and your completely customized roadmap to a faster and a better website. Your job is to simply follow it. If the report gives you an "Opportunity" that says, "Serve images in next-gen formats," then that is Google, very clearly, telling you, "You should stop using JPEGs and you should start using the modern, WebP format." If it tells you to "Properly size images," then that is Google telling you that you need to use an image resizer to be able to make your images the correct dimensions before you upload them. And if it tells you to "Minify CSS" and to "Minify JavaScript," then that is Google telling you that you need to use a minifier tool to be able to put all of your code on a diet. The tool is the thing that points out the problems; you, or your developer, are the one who has to go and to fix them.

Stop Guessing What Google Wants, and Start Giving It to Them

Let’s be honest, your website's speed is not just a feature; in our modern and our competitive world, it is the feature. A fast and a responsive website is a successful website. And Google's own, PageSpeed Insights tool is the absolute and the definitive way to be able to measure it.

So, why would you ever guess what Google wants when you can just go and you can ask them directly? It is time to stop flying blind with your web performance. By using a PageSpeed Insights checker, you can get a clear, an actionable, and an official report card from the most important and the most influential teacher of all. It’s time to act on all of their recommendations, it’s time to improve your score, and it’s time to give both your users and the search engines the lightning-fast and the beautiful experience that they both demand and deserve.