Your website's speed isn't a technical detail: it's money and Google rankings. A page that's slow to load loses visitors before it even shows up, and Google knows it. Here's what really matters about web speed and SEO.
What Core Web Vitals are
Google measures your users' real experience with three main metrics:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long the main content takes to appear. Ideally, under 2.5s.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how fast the site responds when someone clicks or types.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): how much the content "jumps" while loading. The more stable, the better.
These metrics are part of how Google decides who to rank higher. Slow site, worse position.
Why speed affects sales, not just SEO
Every second of waiting spikes the share of people who leave. It doesn't matter how pretty the site is: if it's slow on a phone with mobile data, that visitor isn't coming back. A fast website converts better because people stay.
How I make a website load fast
There's no magic, just technical decisions:
- Ship only the code that's needed. No generic themes or plugins loading libraries you don't use.
- Render on the server / statically. The HTML arrives ready, instead of being built entirely in the user's browser.
- Optimize images. Modern formats, correct sizes, and lazy-loading whatever isn't visible yet.
- Mind the fonts and critical CSS. So text shows up immediately, with no jumps or flicker.
This very site is built with Next.js precisely for this: static pages, optimized images and only the essential JavaScript.
The classic mistake
Many people add speed at the end, once the site is already slow, by bolting on cache plugins that hide the problem. Speed is designed from the start: the right architecture beats any optimization plugin glued on afterward.
Takeaway
A fast website ranks better on Google, retains more visitors and converts more. Core Web Vitals aren't a trend: they're how Google rewards sites that respect their users. If your site is slow, you're losing traffic and clients every day.
Want to see how I work? Take a look at my projects.