Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
A fast website gives visitors a better experience and makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your pages.
Why site speed matters
Visitors are more likely to leave when a page feels slow or unstable. Search engines also use page experience signals as part of their broader evaluation of websites. Speed is not a replacement for useful content, but a slow site can make good content harder to discover and use.
- Compress large images before uploading them.
- Remove scripts, plugins, and libraries that your site does not need.
- Use caching so returning visitors do not download everything again.
What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are measurements designed to describe important parts of the user experience. They focus on loading performance, responsiveness, and visual stability.
- Largest Contentful Paint measures how quickly the main content appears.
- Interaction to Next Paint measures how quickly the page responds to interactions.
- Cumulative Layout Shift measures unexpected movement while the page loads.
Start with the biggest files
The quickest performance improvements often come from large images, unnecessary JavaScript, embedded videos, and third-party tracking tools. Review these before spending time on small technical adjustments.
- Serve images in modern formats where practical.
- Lazy-load images below the first screen.
- Load non-essential scripts after the main content is available.