Have you done a fitness test on your website lately? Our bodies aren’t the only thing that we need to keep in shape. Keeping your company website at peak performance is vital to your bottom line. Give your website a quick physical with these easy tests to check for optimal performance.

Mobile friendly

Just like some gyms cater to big, sweaty, grunting muscle men, and some provide services to a wider audience, your website needs to cater to a variety of screens, not just bulky desktop monitors.

Google Mobile Friendly Test

Results: Red = bad! Green = Good!

Speed

You know a sprinter when you see one; a thin body with well defined leg muscles. Your visitors expect your site to load like Usain Bolt, not like the best customer at the local doughnut shop.

Speed Test

Results: What we’re really looking at is “Load Time”. Anything that measured in milliseconds (ms) is fantastic. 1-3 seconds is ok, 3-6 not so great, over 6 is well, let’s just say you’re not going going to the Olympics with times that like.

Links

Links are like having friends to workout with, which makes fitness easier. How many friends does your website have?

Link Check

Results: This gives us bonus info along with the link stats.

• SPAM score – If you’re over 6 or 7, your site has things you need to fix, below 4 is best.
• Domain / Page Authority – This reflects a basket of things including links and traffic.
• Page Links – Look for “root domains”, this is how many unique sites are linking to you. Further down the page you’ll see a breakdown that gives you the authority score for these sites as well. Ideally, you’ll have lots of links from high authority sites.

Interpreting your scores

If your site passed all the tests with flying colors, congratulations! If it struggled on a few, it might be time for a tune up. If it bombed, huffing and puffing to get up a flight of stairs, it may be time to call in the website personal trainer.

As a business person, trying to squeeze physical fitness into your daily routine can feel like an exercise in futility. But what if that hour of daily exercise actually made you more efficient and successful? What if it made you a better boss or parent and helped you balance work with home? According to all the research that’s precisely what happens when you make exercise a priority.

Regular exercise will give you more energy throughout the day and better sleep at night. If you have more energy you can proactively tackle that to-do list, be more efficient and get more accomplished. Increasing blood flow to the brain helps you think more clearly, increases creativity and problem solving skills.

Sounds pretty good so far? But wait, there’s more…

Studies have shown that regular exercise actually helps people keep a better balance between the personal and the professional. People feel more efficient and effective at work, which boosts confidence, leading to more relaxation at home. Basically exercise helps you to feel like “I got this!”.

Being physically active raises endorphin levels (the feel-good hormone) which reduces stress and tension. Repetitive body movement of activities like running and walking gives your brain a chance to focus on one task.  This can help you forget, or at least let go, of the day’s stressors. Exercise has even been shown to help reduce mild depression and anxiety.

Investing an entire hour of your limited time in something new can seem overwhelming, but if the results are a healthy body and a better version of you, then that is a sound investment.