For a long time, I thought of site speed as a straightforward SEO checklist item.
Improve it if you can.
Move on to the next thing.
I didn't pay enough attention to how poor mobile performance could affect the overall experience of someone arriving on an article.
That changed when I started investigating why some of my pages weren't performing as expected in Discover.
The Mobile Pages Were the Problem
A few of my older article templates were noticeably slower than the newer ones.
The difference wasn't always obvious on desktop.
On mobile, though, it was much easier to notice.
Images took longer to appear, some scripts weren't doing anything particularly useful, and certain template elements added unnecessary weight.
Since Discover is heavily associated with mobile users, I didn't want performance problems sitting underneath otherwise improved content.
How I Tested the Pages
I used Google PageSpeed Insights to check individual URLs.
I also looked at the Core Web Vitals information available in Google Search Console.
I wasn't trying to chase a perfect score.
That was another lesson.
A PageSpeed score isn't the goal by itself. I wanted to understand what was actually slowing the pages down and fix the problems that mattered.
The Fixes Were Surprisingly Simple
The biggest improvements came from fairly ordinary cleanup.
I compressed oversized images and made sure I wasn't serving unnecessarily huge files to mobile users.
I also removed a few unused scripts from older templates.
Some template elements that weren't contributing much to the page were removed or simplified.
None of these changes felt revolutionary.
But together, they made the pages feel faster.
Did Impressions Suddenly Explode?
No.
And I think that's important to say.
I wouldn't describe site speed as an “impressions button.”
After the fixes, I continued monitoring the pages alongside the other technical and content changes.
The performance improvements made the pages healthier from a user-experience perspective, but I couldn't isolate them as the sole reason for changes in Discover impressions.
That's why I now think about speed as part of the foundation rather than a guaranteed traffic tactic.
The same principle applies to the broader technical work I covered in [Technical + Semantic Fixes That Unlocked My Discover Impressions].
What I'd Check Today
If a page is struggling, I wouldn't immediately blame content.
I'd check the content, images, mobile experience, Core Web Vitals, indexing, and other technical basics together.
Sometimes the problem isn't one huge mistake.
It's several small ones adding up.
