What It Is
When a client cannot hold a position in a SERP or in an LLM answer, or has already lost it, compare their page speed with the two or three competitors that pulled ahead. If speed is the largest gap you can find, present it as the diagnosis. This is how Erika Braeger of Ten Speed answers a client who asks whether speed really matters.
For an ecommerce client, Jeremy Rivera pairs the gap with Walmart’s own 2012 performance data, as catalogued by WPO Stats: Walmart saw up to a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second of load-time improvement, and every 100 ms of improvement brought up to a 1% increase in revenue. In the same data, shoppers who converted had seen 3.22-second page loads, against 6.02 seconds for those who did not. For B2B SaaS, Erika frames a bounce as lost monthly or annual recurring revenue rather than one lost sale.
How It Works
- Pick the query or LLM answer where the client slipped or cannot hold its position.
- Identify the two or three competitors now ranking or being cited ahead of them.
- Run the same speed test on the matching page from each site, under the same conditions.
- If speed is the biggest difference you can identify, lead the recommendation with it and show the gap side by side.
- Attach the business case: Walmart’s 2012 figures (up to 2% more conversions per second, up to 1% more revenue per 100 ms) for ecommerce, or recurring revenue lost to bounces for SaaS.
Who Recommends It
- Erika Braeger endorses — Ten Speed. “The page speed on your site is significantly slower, and these other two, three competitors have pulled ahead of you, and this is the biggest difference that I’ve been able to identify.” Unscripted SEO episode →
- Jeremy Rivera endorses — Host of the Unscripted SEO Podcast. Uses the Walmart page-speed study as the revenue argument for ecommerce clients. SEO Arcade episode recap →
Difficulty & Time Estimates
Read the full conversation: Erika Braeger on machine readability, page speed and technical debt (Unscripted SEO), or the SEO Arcade breakdown, technical SEO triage with Erika Braeger.