Your PageSpeed score is Google’s quick verdict on how fast your website loads, out of 100, for mobile and for desktop. For a local business it matters for one simple reason: most of your customers find you on their phone, often on 4G, often in a hurry. If the page takes too long to show something useful, they tap back and call someone else.
Here’s what the score means, the five problems I find most often, and what fixing them did for one of my clients.
What your PageSpeed score means
- 90 to 100 (green): fast. Nothing urgent.
- 50 to 89 (orange): needs work. Most small business sites sit here.
- Below 50 (red): slow. This is very likely costing you enquiries.
Always look at the mobile score first. It reflects how most people see your site, and it’s usually much lower than desktop.
1. Huge images
Photos straight off a phone can be several megabytes each. A homepage with ten of them can take ages to load on 4G. Resize images to the size they’re shown at, compress them, and use a modern format like WebP.
2. Too many plugins
Every plugin can add scripts that load on every page, even pages that don’t use it. Remove the plugins you don’t need and replace two or three small ones with one that does the job well.
3. No caching
Caching serves a ready made copy of your pages instead of building them from scratch for every visitor. On WordPress, a good caching plugin set up properly is one of the biggest single improvements you can make.
4. Heavy sliders and animations
Big animated sliders at the top of the page are slow and rarely help. A strong static image and a clear headline usually load faster and convert better.
5. Slow hosting
If your server takes too long to respond, nothing else fixes it. Cheap shared hosting is often the hidden cause of a poor PageSpeed score. Moving to better hosting can be the easiest win of all.
A real example: 56 to 74
A temporary structures hire company I work with had a mobile PageSpeed score of 56. After compressing images, cutting unused plugins and setting up caching properly, it went to 74. Same design, same content, noticeably quicker on a phone.
Speed was one part of a wider SEO push for them. Thirty days after their new local pages and blog went live, impressions in Google were up 22%, clicks up 33%, and website clicks from their Google Business Profile doubled.
Quick wins you can do today
- Resize your biggest images. Find the heaviest images on your homepage and resize them to the width they actually display at, usually no more than 1,600 pixels wide.
- Delete unused plugins. Deactivate and remove anything you’re not using. Check the site still works after each one.
- Turn on caching. If your host offers built in caching, switch it on. If not, a well known caching plugin set up carefully does the job.
- Lazy load images. Images further down the page should only load as people scroll. Most modern WordPress setups support this.
- Test again. Run PageSpeed Insights after each change so you know what made the difference.
How to check your PageSpeed score
- Go to PageSpeed Insights and enter your homepage.
- Look at the mobile score first.
- Scroll to the “Opportunities” and “Diagnostics” sections. They list what’s slowing you down, roughly in order of impact.
- Test your most important landing page too, not just the homepage.
Don’t chase 100
A perfect score isn’t the goal. Plenty of local sites do brilliantly in the 70s and 80s on mobile. The goal is a page that loads fast enough that people stay, read and call.
If the PageSpeed report looks like another language, send me your web address. I’ll run the check for free and tell you which fixes matter and which you can ignore.
[Get your free website audit]
FAQ
What’s a good PageSpeed score for a small business site?
Green (90+) is great, but most local sites do fine in the 70s and 80s on mobile. Below 50 is worth fixing quickly.
Does PageSpeed affect Google rankings?
Page experience is one of many signals. The bigger win is usually people: a faster site loses fewer visitors before they enquire.
Do I need a new website to make it faster?
Usually not. Images, plugins, caching and hosting fix most slow sites.
