A slow website will kill your conversion rates. Did you know that even a one-second delay can reduce conversion rates by 7%? You could have the best website design, the highest quality copy, and the most innovative product, but if it takes five or so seconds for your site to load, none of that will matter as the user will already have left.
Speed isn’t just a technical metric for developers to worry about, it’s a fundamental element of your user experience strategy. And while the general consensus is that Google doesn’t use page speed as a major ranking factor, it does have SEO implications as it affects the user experience generally, which is a ranking factor.
So, if your site is loading a little too slowly and it’s impacting both your SEO efforts and conversion rates, then here’s how you can fix it.
Massive image files are a guaranteed way to kill your page speed. Uploading a 5MB photo straight from a camera may look amazing on the page, but it will drag your website down. Luckily, there are a few ways to optimise images for SEO:
You can run your images through a compression tool before uploading them. This drastically reduces the file size without affecting the quality. Plenty of content management platforms also have plugins that will do this for you as you upload.
Another tip is to use modern image formats. Instead of JPEGs and PNGs, use formats like WebP or AVIF where possible, as these offer better quality at a reduced file size.
Use lazy loading wherever you can - this tells the browser not to load images further down the page until the user actually scrolls to them, saving massive amounts of initial load time.
Every tracking code, live chat widget, heatmap tool, and WordPress plugin you install forces the browser to pause and do extra work before it can show the page to the user, and this soon adds up.
You should be auditing your plugins regularly to prevent slow loading. If you aren’t actively using a plugin, ditch it. Don’t just deactivate it either - you need to delete it. Every piece of unnecessary code is dead weight.
You should also manage third-party scripts wherever you can. Excessive marketing trackers can ruin your load times, so use a tool like Google Tag Manager to control when scripts fire, ensuring they don't block the main content from rendering first.
If you want to rank well, you need to be conscious of Core Web Vitals (metrics that measure loading performance, responsiveness, and visual stability). A recent addition to CWV is a metric called INP (Interaction to Next Paint), which has been around since 2024.
Instead of just measuring how fast a page visually appears, INP measures how quickly the page responds when someone actually interacts with it. If a user clicks ‘add to cart’ or taps a mobile menu and the site lingers for a second without doing anything, your INP score will drop.
Fixing this often involves things like keeping JavaScript tidy, but these tasks are best left to your developers.
Another tactic that will most likely require development input in the beginning is caching. Caching creates a saved, pre-built version of individual elements, pages and/or your website. When a user clicks a link, the server hands them the pre-made page instead of having to build it from the database all over again. It makes a big difference and most decent sites use it. There are different options here, depending on how your website is built, but WordPress for example, has plenty of plug ins available.
Hosting is one of those things where you get what you pay for. If you're running a high-traffic eCommerce store on a fiver-per-month shared hosting plan, no amount of image compression or caching is going to help.
Your server is the engine of your website. Invest in a quality managed host, and consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare to serve your site from the servers that are geographically closest to your individual users if you’re not a local business.
A fast website helps build trust, keeps users engaged, and shows Google that you prioritise user experience. Page speed is important, and by implementing these changes, you can reduce your loading times.
However, we also have to note that CWV is a binary pass/fail metric, and whilst they are important, they don’t always equate to ranking improvements. Some sites with poor CWV scores rank well and many with perfect ones don’t. Beyond what we’ve mentioned here, it can be a very resource heavy thing to work on. So while user and page experience is important to Google, don’t lose sight of your website’s overall experience trying to chase a perfect CWV score - sometimes it’s just not possible!
If you need help improving and maintaining your website’s load times, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of our experts today.
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