Google confirmed page speed as a ranking factor in 2010. Since then, performance requirements have only become stricter. With Core Web Vitals now a confirmed ranking signal, a slow website costs you both rankings and revenue. A 1-second delay in load time reduces conversions by 7% and increases bounce rate by 32%.
Core Web Vitals: Google's Official Speed Metrics
Google measures page performance through three Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint — how fast the main content loads, target under 2.5s), INP (Interaction to Next Paint — how responsive the page is to user input, target under 200ms), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift — how stable the page is, target under 0.1). Failing these metrics leads to ranking drops across your entire site.
10 Ways to Speed Up Your Website
- Use WebP format for all images
- Enable GZIP or Brotli compression on your server
- Implement lazy loading for images and videos
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files
- Remove unused plugins and scripts
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for static assets
- Enable browser caching with proper cache headers
- Reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB) with better hosting
- Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript
- Preload critical fonts and above-the-fold resources
Get your website's PageSpeed score and a prioritised list of improvements — free.
