Site speed is no longer a nice-to-have, it's a ranking factor and a conversion factor. The good news: most sites can hit green Core Web Vitals with a focused set of changes.
The three metrics that matter
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how fast the main content loads
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how responsive the page feels
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how stable the layout is
Quick wins
- Serve images in modern formats and size them correctly
- Defer non-critical JavaScript
- Reserve space for images and embeds to prevent shifts
- Use a fast, edge-cached host
Speed is a feature. Treat every hundred milliseconds as money.