Site Speed and Rankings: How Much Does It Matter?

Speed is a ranking factor. It’s also a conversion factor. Slow sites lose both.

The Direct Impact

• Core Web Vitals — LCP, INP, CLS. Part of Google’s ranking algorithm.
• Mobile — Speed matters more on mobile. Page Experience signal.
• Crawl efficiency — Faster sites can be crawled more often. More pages indexed.

The Indirect Impact

• Bounce rate — Slow sites lose users. High bounce can signal low quality.
• Time on page — Fast sites keep users. Engagement signals.
• Conversion — Every second of delay costs conversions. Even if rankings held, you’d lose leads.

What to Fix First

1. Server response — TTFB. Hosting, CDN, server config.
2. Render-blocking — CSS, JS that delay first paint. Defer, inline critical path.
3. Images — Size, format (WebP), lazy load. Often the biggest win.

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