Google uses page speed as a ranking signal. A 1-second delay costs you 7% of conversions. Here's what actually moves the needle on load time.
Google announced Core Web Vitals as official ranking signals in 2021, and they've only gotten more important since. Sites that load slowly don't just lose users — they lose rankings. Here's the plain-language breakdown.
You can check all three at pagespeed.web.dev for free. Enter your URL and get a score out of 100. If any score is below 70, that's your priority to fix.
Images account for 60-80% of page weight on most small business sites. A single uncompressed hero image can be 5-10MB — enough to tank your score on its own. The fix: compress your images before uploading, use WebP format instead of JPG/PNG, and don't upload a 4000px image when it's only displayed at 1200px.
SiteForge automatically serves optimized versions of your images at the right size for each device. If you paste an image URL directly, make sure the source image is already compressed.
Loading 5 font weights from Google Fonts adds up to 800ms on slow connections. Load only the weights you actually use: usually regular (400) and bold (700). If you use a decorative font only in headings, load only that subset.
Chat widgets, marketing pixels, social share buttons — each one adds its own network request and can delay your page significantly. Audit what's running on your site. Every script should earn its spot. If you can replace a feature with a simpler native alternative, do it.
Since 2019, Google uses mobile-first indexing — your site is ranked based on its mobile version, not desktop. Test your site on a real mobile device on a 4G connection. If it feels slow, it is slow. Most visitors are on mobile, and mobile users have less patience for slow loads.
A fast site ranks higher, bounces less, and converts more. Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Your business is smaller, but the principle is the same. Speed is a competitive advantage that most small business websites ignore.
"We went from a 41 to a 94 on PageSpeed. Our organic traffic doubled in six months."
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