Speed Is a Ranking Factor
Google has confirmed that page speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches. But beyond SEO, speed directly impacts your bottom line. Amazon found that every 100ms of latency costs them 1% in sales. Google discovered that a half-second delay in search results caused a 20% drop in traffic.
For small and mid-sized businesses, these numbers translate to real revenue lost every day your website loads slowly.
How to Measure Your Site Speed
Before optimizing, benchmark your current performance using Google PageSpeed Insights (free, gives Core Web Vitals scores), GTmetrix (detailed waterfall analysis), and Google Search Console Core Web Vitals report.
Focus on three key metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should be under 2.5 seconds, First Input Delay (FID) should be under 100 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) should be under 0.1.
Quick Wins for Faster Loading
Optimize Images
Images are usually the biggest culprit for slow sites. Convert to WebP format, compress without visible quality loss, use responsive images that serve appropriate sizes, and implement lazy loading for below-the-fold images.
Enable Browser Caching
Tell browsers to store static files locally so returning visitors load your site faster. Set cache expiration headers for CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts.
Minimize CSS and JavaScript
Remove unused code, minify files, and defer non-critical JavaScript. Every kilobyte matters on mobile connections.
Use a CDN
A Content Delivery Network serves your files from servers closest to each visitor. This dramatically reduces load times for visitors far from your hosting server.
Hosting Matters
Cheap shared hosting might save you $10 a month, but it can cost you thousands in lost conversions. Invest in quality managed hosting with fast server response times, SSD storage, and built-in caching.
Mobile Speed Is Critical
More than half of web traffic is mobile, often on slower connections. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning your mobile site speed directly impacts rankings. Test your mobile performance separately and optimize specifically for mobile users.
The Business Impact
A one-second improvement in load time can increase conversions by 7% or more. For a business generating $100,000 monthly online, that’s $7,000 per month from speed alone.
Need a Faster Website?
Brandastic builds high-performance websites optimized for speed, SEO, and conversions. Get a free website performance audit.
