Page Speed and SEO: What Actually Matters

Let’s clear this up: page speed does matter for SEO - but you don’t need a perfect score to rank well. Google’s not sitting there obsessing over whether you’ve shaved off every last millisecond. What it really cares about? That your site is fast enough so people aren’t bouncing before they even see your content.

The truth is, slow pages lead to frustrated visitors - we’ve all been there. We click off, we don’t hang around, and we definitely don’t buy anything. Google sees that behaviour and takes the hint that it means your page isn’t giving people a good time.

But you don’t need to stress about being the fastest site on the internet. A page that loads in 2-3 seconds? That’s pretty good. Getting it from 2 seconds to 1 second? Nice if you can — but that’s not the thing that’ll make or break your rankings.

What Google Actually Measures

Google doesn’t just look at lab scores or technical tests. It watches what real users experience when they visit your site. This includes things like load time. How fast does the main content show up? Interaction delay. How long before people can actually click buttons or fill out a form? Visual stability. Does your page glitch around while stuff’s loading?

Because these things are a nightmare for users, and Google knows it.

All of this comes from actual people visiting your site on different devices, connections, and conditions, so it’s also about being user friendly, not just a number on a speed test.

Common Speed Problems

Got a slow site? Check for common issues like massive images. That one high-res banner you uploaded? It could be bigger than your entire page’s text combined. Compress it.

Too much JavaScript. Every plugin, animation, or fancy effect adds bulk. Before you know it, your page is crawling.