Why Website Speed Matters for SEO and Conversions

Speed affects two things at once: how Google evaluates your page, and how many visitors stick around long enough to do anything on it. Both are worth taking seriously, and both are usually fixable without a full rebuild.

The most common causes

Unoptimised images are still the single biggest offender we find – full-resolution photos displayed at a fraction of their size. After that, it is usually too many plugins or apps loading scripts on every page whether they are needed there or not, followed by hosting that was adequate at launch but has not kept up with the site’s growth.

Fixes that tend to make the biggest difference

• Compressing and correctly sizing images before upload
• Removing plugins that are no longer actually used
• Enabling proper caching at the server level, not just a plugin bandaid
• Loading non-critical scripts after the main content instead of before it