Site speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor and affects SEO through three main channels: direct ranking signals, user behavior metrics, and crawl efficiency. Google's Core Web Vitals—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—are official ranking factors since 2021. LCP should be under 2.5 seconds, FID under 100ms, and CLS below 0.1. Sites that fail these thresholds lose ranking potential, especially on mobile where Google indexes first. We've seen client sites jump 8-15 positions after fixing LCP issues alone, though speed is never the only factor. Beyond direct ranking impact, speed affects dwell time and bounce rate. A page loading in five seconds versus two seconds can see bounce rates increase by 90%. Google doesn't use bounce rate as a direct signal, but when users pogo-stick back to search results, that behavioral pattern tells Google your page didn't satisfy intent. Slower sites also convert worse—Amazon found every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Crawl budget matters more than most realize. Googlebot allocates finite time to each site. If your pages take 3-4 seconds to respond, Google crawls fewer URLs per session. For our portfolio sites with 500+ pages, we've seen crawl rate double after server response time dropped from 800ms to 200ms. That means fresh content gets indexed faster and rankings update quicker. Practical targets: aim for server response under 200ms, first-byte time under 600ms, and total load time under three seconds on 3G mobile. Use Google PageSpeed Insights and Search Console's Core Web Vitals report for real user data, not just lab tests. At Ottawa SEO, we prioritize server-side fixes first—upgrading hosting, enabling caching, optimizing database queries—because those give the biggest gains. Image optimization and code minification help but matter less if your server is slow. Speed won't rescue a site with thin content or bad backlinks, but it's table stakes for competitive keywords.