Near Perfect Page Speed: Why SEO Inc Practices What We Preach
Page speed has dominated the SEO conversation over the past few years, and for good reason. When Google moved Core Web Vitals and its Page Experience signals to the center of its website evaluation, it changed the entire calculus for site owners. Speed stopped being a nice-to-have. It became a ranking input, a conversion lever, and a credibility signal all at once. The day Google made that shift, every website owner and company site was suddenly forced to answer a question they had ignored for years: how fast does my site actually load? Our Digital Marketing Agency figured this out, and the data support how important a fast site is.
SEO Inc saw this coming. We were one of the first digital marketing agencies to recognize where Google was heading, well before most of the industry caught on. When Google was hit with the antitrust lawsuit over AMP, which alleged the company had even throttled the load time of non-AMP pages to make its own format look faster, it confirmed something we already understood: speed was about to become non-negotiable. While other agencies were still treating it as a technical afterthought, we had already built our winning strategy around it.
We Did Not Just Talk About It. We Proved It.
Here is the part most agencies cannot match. Our own pages score 99 and 100 on Google’s performance metrics. Not on a stripped-down test page built to game the score, but on the live site we use to win business every day.
If you have ever run a real website through PageSpeed Insights, you know how hard those numbers are to hit. A single oversized image, one bloated third-party script, or a poorly configured plugin is enough to knock you down twenty points. Achieving a near-perfect score on a content-rich, conversion-focused commercial site takes deep technical discipline across rendering, caching, image delivery, font loading, layout stability, and server response time. Everything has to be right at once, and it has to stay right as the site grows.
To put it in perspective, only about 56 percent of desktop sites and 48 percent of mobile sites even pass Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment, which means more than half the web is failing on mobile right now. And passing is a low bar. It simply means you cleared the minimum. A 99 to 100 performance grade sits far above that threshold, in a small minority of sites on the entire internet. The average website loads in roughly 2.5 seconds on desktop and a sluggish 8.6 seconds on mobile, while Google recommends loading in under 3 seconds. Most sites are not closed.
So before you hire another agency, ask a simple question. Run their own website through PageSpeed Insights. If they cannot make their own site fast, how can they possibly do it for yours? SEO Inc proved this years ago, and we keep proving it every single day.
Why It Matters for Your Bottom Line
This is not vanity. Speed maps directly to revenue, leads, and the user-behavior signals that Google rewards. Take the internet’s typical performance as the baseline, where the average page takes several seconds to load, and the gains from getting faster are dramatic.
Here is what a genuinely fast site delivers:
- More revenue. A one-second delay in load time can cut conversions by 7 percent, and on mobile, that figure climbs to 20 percent. For an online business doing $100,000 a day, a single second of delay can quietly drain roughly $2.5 million in lost sales over a year.
- More leads. B2B sites that load in one second convert at up to three times the rate of sites that take five seconds. When automaker Renault cut its largest page elements to load in under a second, conversions rose 13 percent.
- Lower bounce rates. The probability that a visitor bounces jumps 32 percent as load time moves from one to three seconds, and climbs roughly 90 percent by the time you hit five seconds. On mobile, 53 percent of visitors abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
- Higher conversion rates. Even shaving 100 milliseconds off load time can lift conversions by up to 7 percent. Speed improvements compound across every channel, not just organic search.
- More time spent on the site. Visitors view an average of 5.6 more pages per session when a site loads in 2 seconds rather than 8. Faster pages keep people exploring rather than leaving.
- Stronger E-E-A-T signals. Core Web Vitals are baked into Google’s Page Experience system, and those experience and trust signals matter more than ever in how Google and AI search rank and cite your site. A fast, stable, responsive site signals to Google that you are credible and worth surfacing.
The pattern is consistent everywhere you look. Faster sites earn more, convert more, retain visitors longer, and rank better. Slower sites bleed all of it.
The Myths Slowing Most Sites Down
A lot of the page speed advice floating around the SEO community is built on myths about what the “ideal” score even is, and chasing the wrong target wastes time and budget. The number on the gauge only matters when it reflects the real experience your visitors have on real devices, on real connections. That distinction is exactly where most agencies get lost and where we focus.
Page speed and Core Web Vitals do not have to be a mystery. We have been refining this discipline since before it was fashionable, and we can do the same for your site faster than you would expect.
If you have a question about page speed or Core Web Vitals, reach out to us. And if you are wondering how quickly we can get your site into that top tier, that is exactly the conversation we want to have.
However, this ended with Google’s introduction of Core WebVitals.
The announcement of the new WebVitals metrics has steered clear of all controversies surrounding page speed.
These days, websites focus more on accumulated scores from tools like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, GTmetrix, Measure, and WebPageTest.org.
There is no doubt that advanced tools are effective at measuring a web page’s speed. But the focus shouldn’t be on the overall speed score, but on the individual ones that matter to users.
Google’s Core WebVitals metrics have been introduced to ensure that web admins spend quality time improving the speed metrics that matter most to users.
What are Core WebVitals?
According to Google, Web Vitals is a unified metric that analyzes the speed signals required to deliver a superior user experience on the web.
Google’s pre-announcement confirms that WebVital compliance will be the latest addition to Google’s ranking signals, starting in 2021. It’s already in play for 2021, and dev teams must begin working on Core Vitals quickly.
Website owners must ensure that user experience metrics such as Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, and HTTP security are considered to mitigate the impact of future Google Algorithm Updates.
Core Web Vitals Metrics
Core Web Vitals is a critical set of metrics introduced in May 2020 by Google. It is a score assigned to a page based on site speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Google classifies these three metrics as follows:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The amount of time it takes for a page’s primary content to load. The ideal LCP measurement should be 2.5 seconds or faster.
- First Input Delay (FID): The time it takes for a page to become interactive; the ideal value is less than 100 ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It measures a page’s visual stability. The recommended CLS measurement is less than 0.1.
The core web vitals speed scores may change over time due to advancements in web technologies. In addition, the scores are subject to change based on users’ perceptions of a good web experience.
How to Achieve the Perfect WebVitals Score?
Most SEOs overlook a website’s slow speed, as it requires more expertise than simply changing a page’s title and description. Besides, it would be best to have a certain level of expertise in technical SEO to achieve the desired results.
Adding a cache plugin and optimizing images, CSS, and JavaScript are easy fixes that webmasters often implement. These optimization efforts help improve the server response time and reduce the overall resource size.
However, our research has identified that the websites could not achieve the ideal Core WebVitals score despite these easy fixes.
This is why:
- Cache plugins improve site performance and reduce server response time only when users return to your site or browse several pages within the same session. If the cache expires soon, this advantage will be wasted.
- Images, JavaScript, and CSS are essential for any site’s overall look and feel. However, when the response sequence for each of these is delayed, it can result in a poor user experience and often break the site.
- If you’re running a CMS, you might need several Plugins or Apps to optimize each resource, which can make your site even slower.
The strategy you’re about to learn has worked for many of our clients, and we have guided them to achieve the perfect WebVitals score by following this process.
We realized that achieving the ideal WebVitals score will be problematic if the same web server delivers both primary and secondary resources.
However, hosting platforms like WP-Engine and AWS come ready with all the above features. Moving forward, choosing such hosting providers will be key, meaning SEO will begin much earlier than when you decide on a host.
You might wonder how some websites hosted on WP Engine and Amazon Web Services achieve great WebVitals scores. Don’t worry; the remaining part of this blog will cover that.
Resource Optimization for WebVitals
Several factors contribute to slowing down page load times. First, large image files, CSS files, JavaScript, and the requests made by each increase the browser payload and keep users waiting for a long time.
Fortunately for you, some Google-recommended solutions can improve your site’s user experience while improving your ROI.
We’ve used the same techniques to get the perfect WebVitals score for our client.
1) Optimizing Images for Page Speed
Large image files cause maximum payload on browsers. Therefore, optimizing these images can help speed up your site and enhance the user experience.
Image CDN: If your images are served from the same server, there might be a lot of load pressure on it. An effective way to address this issue is to use a CDN server. AWS and Cloudflare are currently the top choices if you’re looking for a great Image CDN provider.
WebP Format: You also need to make sure that the CDN you have chosen converts images to WebP, Google’s Recommended Image format for Web images.
LazyLoad: Incorporating a lazy-loading technique also improves the WebVitals score. Only the onscreen image resources are included in the initial payload.
The off-screen images will load as viewers reach that specific image viewpoint on the site. Only the dimensions of the off-screen images are loaded to avoid page breaks during loading.
2) Optimizing Java and CSS
GZip Compression: GZip compression has become standard practice for most websites, reducing file sizes and enabling faster network transfer.
Minifying Resources: The first step in optimizing JavaScript and CSS is to minify them. Minification is the process of removing non-critical and redundant resources to improve performance. This is a standard feature offered by many optimization plugins.
Combine CSS and JavaScript: Using a single file to load both JavaScript and CSS reduces the number of requests and accelerates rendering.
When enabled, a single file will deliver all CSS resources, with each resource organized by media type.
The same goes for JavaScript. As a result, the number of DOM requests can be reduced, increasing overall speed performance.
Reduce Render Blocking: One common reason for a low PageSpeed score is excessive use of JavaScript and CSS. Though some Java and CSS files are crucial to a website’s overall stability, not all of them load above the fold, making them render-blocking.
It’s essential to optimize the execution of non-critical JavaScript and CSS. Ensure that these files are rendered only after the user interaction with the site is detected. This will improve the PageSpeed score and help you achieve the perfect WebVitals score.
By now, many of you might be thinking, I have done all these, but my WebVitals Score is not up to what Google expects. If that’s the case, it’s probably because you missed out on one of the significant aspects of CSS and Java delivery – the CDN again.
Deliver CSS and JavaScript Using a CDN: Until you implement a CDN to load JavaScript and CSS, you put pressure on your server’s performance to deliver these resources.
Without the CDN, you can reduce the load put on the server most of the time, but it will still sweat. However, our tests have yielded mind-blowing results for websites that have it enabled.
3) Optimizing the Font
Font rendering behavior is a major speed bottleneck.
Browsers don’t render the text unless the font loads from the payload. This causes delays in rendering pages and results in slower page speed.
To optimize the font, ensure your CDN can override font rendering behavior. For example, a good CDN can switch the rendered text’s font and display the original font as soon as the CSS loads.
Usually, this happens within a few microseconds, as both resources are delivered simultaneously from the same CDN server. This can significantly reduce Cumulative Layout Shift and help you achieve a perfect WebVitals score.
4) Embed Codes
Embedding images and videos on a site can significantly impact and slow it down. However, most businesses cannot eliminate these videos, as they are part of their product demos or introduction videos.
Google recommends a solution for embedded images and videos that lets you lazy-load these assets. Also, ensure the video resources load only when the user selects the “Play media/video” button.
When we implemented this, there was a 70% improvement in Lighthouse performance.
5) AMP Pages
A slow server can significantly affect your website’s performance. AMP cache can help optimize delivery, but it may cause significant UI changes and impact conversion when you enable AMP for the desktop. So making sure your server is responsive and fast remains an important task.
Conclusion
Some website owners might find the introduction of Core Web Vitals overwhelming. However, achieving a perfect Web Vitals score promises a better user experience and improved conversions.
Google says the global average load time for mobile devices and desktops is less than 3 seconds. However, if you check the list of the three top-ranking websites on Google, most have achieved a page speed of fewer than 4 seconds.
Your visitors may leave your website and visit your competitor’s site instead if it loads slowly.
Often, this ends up in “click rage.” Click rage occurs when a user attempts an action without receiving a response. This can cause frustration, and users may not revisit the same site.
Detecting click rage with tools such as Hotjar is a warning to website owners to improve the speed experience.
With Google laying out these metrics, it will be easier for webmasters to optimize their sites to improve SERP rankings and prioritize user experience above all else.
SEO Inc also has another updated Web Core Vitals article you might be interested in here.
Author Bio:
Senthil Kumar Hariram, Vice President of Marketing at Stan Ventures, has over 14 years of experience in the SEO industry. Senthil heads the Core Marketing Strategy for Stan Ventures and its 100+ global clients. Senthil hosts a podcast series titled “SEO On-Air,” where he interacts with various SEO industry leaders like Garry Grant, Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, Bruce Clay, and Barry Schwartz, to name a few, on popular SEO growth hacks and strategies.
Garry Grant, CEO of SEO Inc: Garry Grant is a veteran expert in search engine optimization and digital marketing. With over 25+ years of experience, Garry has successfully built a multi-service operation at SEO, Inc., developing proprietary technologies through complex strategic solutions. In addition, he has extensive experience in critical initiatives and operational responsibilities grounded in information technology and performance management.