Slow pages erode trust before anyone reads your headline. Search engines also weigh user-centric metrics like Core Web Vitals; on mobile, latency hurts both rankings and form completion.
Practical priorities
Serve images at appropriate dimensions; trim font and CSS overhead; defer or drop heavy third-party scripts. Enable compression and sensible caching on the server.
Performance is ongoing: re-test after every major script, widget, or hero image change.