A few weeks ago I published Part 1 of this series and you can find it here. It dealt with how/why sites are slow and what can be done to fix (or better prevent) the issues. This article will focus on a major reason to make sure you site is as fast as it can be.
From May 2021 Google will begin to use “page experience metrics” (which include page load time, mobile optimisation etc) in its search ranking algorithm.
Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/page-experience
If your brand and content offering is unique then page experience will not matter. We all think that our business and web content are unique but that is not likely to be as true as we wish. Your business and content will likely have a lot in common with others and that means that site speed and other signals will no longer be esoteric features argued over by the tech team.
A slow site will cut the legs off ALL you other digital marketing/adverting efforts and any SEO you are attempting.
VA build sites that are beautiful and fast. If you agency use off the shelf themes or SAAS CMS platforms (Squrespace, WebFlow etc) they will struggle able to jump this hurdle