Website speed and SEO: why PageSpeed decides your Google ranking
Google ranks slow websites lower. What many do not know: even one extra second of load time measurably costs you customers. Here is how to optimise properly.
Why load time matters more than design
Many business owners invest thousands of euros in a beautiful design, but the website takes 6 seconds to load. That is a mistake, because:
The three most important load-time metrics (Core Web Vitals)
1. LCP, Largest Contentful Paint
When is the largest element visible? Target: under 2.5 seconds.
Common causes of a poor LCP:
2. CLS, Cumulative Layout Shift
Do elements jump while loading? Target: under 0.1.
Common causes:
3. INP, Interaction to Next Paint
How fast does the page react to clicks? Target: under 200 ms.
WordPress vs. Next.js: the speed difference
| WordPress (with plugins) | Next.js (optimised) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical load time | 3 to 8 seconds | 0.5 to 1.5 seconds |
| PageSpeed score | 30 to 60 | 90 to 100 |
| Google ranking | Medium to poor | Very good |
| Server requests | 80 to 150 | 5 to 20 |
The difference is huge. WordPress loads PHP, database queries and dozens of plugins on every page view. Next.js generates static HTML pages that are delivered immediately.
What can you do yourself?
1. Compress images: use WebP instead of JPG/PNG. Tools: Squoosh, TinyPNG
2. Test with Google PageSpeed: pagespeed.web.dev, free
3. Check your hosting: cheap shared hosting is often the biggest bottleneck
4. Enable caching: good caching plugins for WordPress are WP Rocket or LiteSpeed
What does a professional developer do differently?
At OA IT Solutions every website is built with Next.js:
Result: PageSpeed scores of 95 to 100 on desktop and 85 to 95 on mobile, out of the box.
A poor PageSpeed score costs you visitors and customers every day. Have it tested.