Google made site speed a ranking factor years ago. In 2026 it's a revenue factor. Every 100ms of delay costs you conversions, ad quality scores and rankings.
The three metrics that matter
You only need to obsess over three numbers.
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — under 2.0s
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — under 200ms
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — under 0.1
Where sites usually break
Unoptimised hero images, render-blocking third-party scripts (chat widgets, heatmaps) and heavy client-side JavaScript account for 90% of failures.
Quick wins this week
Compress hero images to WebP under 200KB. Defer non-critical scripts. Preload web fonts. Move analytics to server-side or a lightweight tag manager.
Key takeaway
Fast sites rank higher, convert better and cost less to run in paid media. Speed is the cheapest growth lever you have.
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