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What is performance in the context of SEO?

Performance in the context of SEO is a group of technical indicators that reflect a site's loading speed and overall performance for the user. Search engines (especially Google) evaluate performance as one of the ranking factors, because fast sites provide a better user experience.

What performance includes:

  1. Page loading speed How quickly a user sees the first content and can start interacting. The longer the wait, the higher the chance they leave.
  2. Core Web Vitals (Google's key metrics) Three main indicators:
  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): loading speed of the main block;
  • FID / INP: responsiveness and delay on first interaction;
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): layout stability (nothing should jump during loading).
  1. Resource optimization How the site's files load: images, fonts, CSS, JS. Their size and count directly affect speed.
  2. Server response time If the server is slow, the page will be slow too, even with an optimized frontend.

Why this matters for SEO:

  • search engines rank fast sites higher;
  • users leave less often and interact with the page longer;
  • improving performance directly reduces the bounce rate.

Summary: performance is the technical speed and convenience of loading a site, which affects both ranking and user behavior.

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