What Is Page Speed? Definition for SEO
How fast a website loads, and an important ranking factor.
What is page speed?
Page speed is the loading speed of a web page. Google has confirmed page speed as an official ranking factor, and slow pages lose both rankings and visitors.
Example: an online shop shows large product photos saved as uncompressed PNG files. On a phone, the page takes a long time to show anything. After converting the images to WebP and loading them lazily, the same page appears much faster.
Page speed is the general measure of how fast a page loads. Core Web Vitals are Google's specific metrics for loading, interactivity and visual stability, and they are one way to measure page speed. For the details, read our guide on optimizing Core Web Vitals.
How to improve page speed
- Image compression – WebP/AVIF instead of PNG/JPEG, lazy loading
- Code optimization – minify CSS/JS, inline critical CSS
- Caching – configure browser and server caching correctly
- CDN – a content delivery network for faster delivery
- Server – fast hosting with HTTP/2 and GZIP compression
Fast pages are also easier for crawlers to fetch, which is part of a clean technical base for search engines and AI systems. See our page speed optimization service if you need help.
Frequently asked questions
What is page speed?
Page speed is the loading speed of a web page. It describes how quickly a page loads and becomes usable for visitors.
Why does page speed matter for SEO?
Google has confirmed page speed as an official ranking factor. Slow pages lose rankings and visitors.
What is an example of page speed?
An online shop with large uncompressed product photos loads slowly on phones. Converting the images to WebP and loading them lazily makes the page appear much faster.
How does page speed differ from Core Web Vitals?
Page speed is the general measure of how fast a page loads. Core Web Vitals are Google's specific metrics for loading, interactivity and visual stability.