Technical SEO
Page Speed
Page speed is how quickly a page loads and becomes usable, on both desktop and mobile.
It affects rankings directly and conversions even more, since users abandon slow pages. Common fixes include compressing images, reducing JavaScript, and using a CDN. Even a one-second delay can measurably reduce conversions.
Third-party scripts are usually the largest and least-tracked cost on a marketing site. Chat widgets, heatmaps, ad pixels, and consent tools each arrive through a tag manager, and they accumulate because adding one takes minutes and nobody owns removing them. Auditing the container once or twice a year regularly finds tags for campaigns that ended, tools nobody uses, and duplicate pixels firing twice. Removing them costs nothing and often does more for load time than a round of image optimisation. Loading what remains after interaction, instead of at page load, recovers most of the rest.
Example
A tag audit on one lead-gen site finds 14 scripts loading before content: two chat widgets (one from a trial that ended), a heatmap tool nobody had opened in a year, and a duplicate analytics tag firing twice. Removing dead tags cuts a full second off load time, without touching a single image.
Frequently asked questions
- What usually makes a page slow?
- In most audits: oversized images, render-blocking scripts, too much JavaScript shipped to the browser, third-party tags such as chat widgets and ad pixels, and slow server response. Third-party scripts are the most commonly underestimated cause because they are added by marketing, not developers.
- Does page speed affect conversion rate?
- Consistently, yes, and usually more than it affects rankings. Every additional second of load time increases abandonment, and the effect is sharpest on mobile and on paid traffic, where you have already paid for the visit before the page finishes loading.
Related terms
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