Why Page Speed Matters for SEO in 2026
Page speed has evolved from a nice-to-have to a hard ranking requirement. Google’s Core Web Vitals update made performance an official ranking signal, and the data from hundreds of case studies confirms what we’ve always suspected: faster sites rank higher, convert better, and retain visitors longer. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you’re losing roughly half your potential visitors before they ever see your content — and Google’s algorithm knows it.
The three Core Web Vitals metrics are the clearest signal of real-world performance. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how quickly your main content loads — ideally under 2.5 seconds. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability, penalizing sites where elements jump around as the page loads. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced the older First Input Delay metric and captures responsiveness to user interactions. Together, these three metrics represent a meaningful proxy for user experience, which is exactly why Google elevated them to ranking factors.
The business case for speed goes beyond rankings. Conversion rate data from across our client base consistently shows that every 100ms improvement in page load time correlates with a 0.5–1% increase in conversions. For an e-commerce site doing $1 million per month, that’s $5,000–$10,000 in additional monthly revenue per 100ms saved. Walmart found that every 1 second of improvement increased conversions by 2%. Amazon calculated that a 100ms slowdown cost them 1% in sales. These aren’t edge cases — they’re consistent findings across industries.
The good news is that most performance problems have well-understood solutions. Switching to a modern static site framework like Astro eliminates most JavaScript overhead by default. Image optimization — including modern formats like WebP and AVIF, lazy loading, and proper sizing — typically accounts for the biggest performance gains. Moving to a CDN-first hosting platform like Cloudflare Pages eliminates time-to-first-byte issues. Eliminating render-blocking resources and inlining critical CSS rounds out the optimization. Implement these four changes and most sites will move from the red zone into the green in a single sprint.