SEO & GEO
What is Page Speed?
Definition
How fast your web page loads and becomes interactive — a direct Google ranking signal and a major factor in user experience and conversion rates.
In more detail
Page speed measures how quickly a web page loads its content and becomes usable. Google uses three Core Web Vitals metrics to evaluate this: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading speed, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability.
Google's research shows that 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Portent found that a site loading in 1 second converts at 2.5x the rate of one loading in 5 seconds. Page speed is not just a ranking signal — it directly affects your revenue.
Common page speed killers: uncompressed images (use WebP), heavy JavaScript bundles, render-blocking CSS, synchronous third-party scripts, and missing width/height attributes on images (which cause layout shifts). Test your site at pagespeed.web.dev — aim for 90 or above on both mobile and desktop.
Why it matters
Google uses page speed as a ranking signal, and slow sites lose visitors before they even see your content. Since Google uses mobile-first indexing, your mobile page speed is what determines your ranking everywhere.
Further reading
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