The previous lesson covered what the three Core Web Vitals metrics are; this one covers how to turn them green. Speed is a hard threshold for rankings and even more so for conversion — every extra second of load time visibly drops inquiry conversion. Before a buyer clicks you in Google, they may already have closed three slow sites.
Diagnose first, then act
Direct answer: run PageSpeed Insights on real data first to see each of the three metrics and identify the LCP element. On export sites 80% of speed problems concentrate in the hero image — fix that first rather than spreading effort evenly.
Three points when diagnosing: ① use lab data to locate the problem and field data (real user data) to confirm actual experience; ② test three templates separately — homepage, product/category page and article page — the problems are usually different; ③ have someone overseas or an overseas node run a test — fast for you in China does not mean fast for your buyers.
Images: the biggest share of an export site’s weight
Direct answer: the hero image determines LCP. Convert all images to WebP (or AVIF), compress the hero image to under 200KB, lazy-load below-the-fold images and preload the hero — do these four and LCP usually passes immediately.
| Actions | How to | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Format upgrade | JPG/PNG → WebP/AVIF, 30–70% smaller at the same quality | Largest |
| Size matching | Output images at display size; do not scale down a 4000px original | Large |
| Lazy loading | Add loading="lazy" to below-the-fold images; do not lazy-load the hero image | Medium |
| Hero image preload | <link rel="preload" as="image"> points at the hero image | LCP benefits directly |
| Hard-code width/height | Declare width/height on img to prevent CLS layout shift | CLS benefits directly |
CDN and server placement
Direct answer: put your nodes where your buyers are. Selling mainly into Europe and North America, choose a global CDN like Cloudflare (the free tier is enough) and keep your server/origin near the target market; never use a setup that is fast in China and routes poorly overseas.
- CDN is mandatory: Serve static assets (images / CSS / JS) from edge nodes so overseas buyers load them from nearby.
- Turn on Brotli compression: Text compression ratio is another 15–20% better than Gzip.
- Check third-party resources: If fonts, chat widgets or analytics code are hosted in regions that load slowly, move them to a CDN or self-host them. Google Fonts is fine overseas, but watch out for font files bundled from Chinese hosts.
- TTFB control: Target time to first byte of <800ms; if you exceed it, check host performance and cache configuration first.
Code and caching
Direct answer: cache everything cacheable, defer every JS that can wait, delete every plugin you do not use. Nine times out of ten a slow CMS site is a site with too many plugins.
- Caching: Turn on browser caching and full-page caching; set max-age of at least one month for static assets.
- JS trimming: Add defer/async to non-critical JS; delete idle plugins and merge duplicate scripts.
- CSS: Inline critical above-the-fold CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- Fonts: Chinese font files are huge, so body text on export sites can use a system font stack and heading fonts should be subsetted.
⚠️ Note: an SEO site’s own speed is its résumé. Teaching others to optimise speed while your own LCP is 3 seconds destroys your E-E-A-T. Every page on this site applies the optimisations above — check the source code to compare.
Speed optimisation checklist (copy it as is)
| Priority | Actions | Corresponding metrics |
|---|---|---|
| P0 | Hero image: WebP + compression + preload | LCP |
| P0 | Global CDN + Brotli compression | TTFB / LCP |
| P1 | Lazy-load below-the-fold images and hard-code width/height | LCP / CLS |
| P1 | Defer non-critical JS, delete idle plugins | INP |
| P2 | Page cache plus long-lived caching for static assets | Return visit experience |
| P2 | Font subsetting / system fonts | LCP |
FAQ
- What is the first step in speeding up an export website?
- Run PageSpeed Insights on real data first to confirm the LCP element. On export websites 80% of LCP problems sit in the hero image: convert to WebP, compress to under 200KB, add a CDN — that single step usually pushes LCP inside 2.5 seconds.
- My export site was built in China and loads slowly overseas — what now?
- Put nodes where your buyers are: choose a global CDN (such as Cloudflare), place the origin near your target market, check whether fonts and third-party scripts load slowly from overseas, and localise or re-CDN all of them.
- How fast is fast enough?
- Getting all three Core Web Vitals green is enough (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1); shaving further tenths of a second returns little, so shift effort to content and backlinks.
Keep Learning (by Track)
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