Speed & performance
Slow server response
One of the 136 checks Lala SEO runs on every page of a site in a free audit.
- How serious
- Worth fixing. Weakens how Google reads or shows the page. Fix after the serious ones.
- Based on
- Industry standard: Google does not document this one, so the check follows established practice.
What is wrong
Your server is taking longer than 800 milliseconds to respond when a visitor's browser requests your page. This is measured from the moment the request leaves the browser until the first byte of your page starts to arrive—a metric called time to first byte, or TTFB.
Why it costs you
When your server responds slowly, visitors see a blank screen for longer. They may leave before the page even starts to load. Search engines also use response speed as a ranking factor, so slow responses make your site harder to find in search results.
How to fix it
Start by asking your hosting provider whether your server has adequate resources—CPU, memory, and bandwidth—for your current traffic. If resources are sufficient, work with them or a developer to identify what is slowing down page generation. Common causes include unoptimised database queries, poorly configured caching, or too many plugins or third-party scripts running at once. Ask your hosting provider to show you server logs and performance metrics to pinpoint the bottleneck.
What the audit tests
- The server starts answering within 800 milliseconds
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