Ultimate Guide to Local Website Speed Optimisation

Last Updated on 10 October 2025 by Dorian Menard

You know how frustrating it is when you’re trying to check a local business’s opening hours or find their address, and their website takes forever to load? In my experience as the founder of Search Scope, slow websites are the silent killer of local businesses in Australia. It’s a problem that directly costs you customers and, eventually, hurts your Google rankings.

The stakes are higher than ever in 2025. Research shows that 53% of mobile visitors will abandon your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Even a one-second delay can slash your conversions by 7%. It’s not just a technical issue; it’s a business growth issue.

This isn’t just another checklist. This is a practical, no-nonsense guide to local website speed optimisation, built on what actually works for Australian businesses.

I’m going to walk you through the technical fixes, content tweaks, and essential maintenance needed to make your website faster, keep customers engaged, and get ahead of your local competition.

TL;DR: Key Takeaways for a Faster Local Website

Core Web Vitals are Non-Negotiable: Google now uses Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and the new Interaction to Next Paint (INP) to measure user experience. Passing these is essential for your rankings.
Local Hosting is Your First Win: Choosing a web host with servers in Australia (ideally your city) is the fastest way to reduce load times for your local customers.
Modern Tech Matters: Using LiteSpeed servers, modern image formats like AVIF, and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can dramatically improve performance.
Mobile Speed is a Priority: With most local searches happening on phones, a slow mobile site is invisible. Google’s mobile-first indexing means your mobile speed heavily influences your overall ranking.
Regular Testing is Key: Speed isn’t a “set and forget” task. Consistent monitoring with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix is necessary to maintain performance.

Mastering Core Web Vitals: Your Website’s Report Card

Think of Core Web Vitals as Google’s way of grading your website’s user experience. Since 2021, these metrics have become a direct ranking factor, and in 2025, they are more important than ever for local SEO performance.

Here’s what you need to focus on:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long does it take for the main content (usually an image or block of text) to load? Aim for under 2.5 seconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How quickly does your site respond when someone clicks, taps, or types? This replaced First Input Delay (FID) in early 2024 to better measure overall responsiveness. A good score is under 200 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Does the layout jump around as the page loads? This is highly annoying for users. Keep your CLS score under 0.1.

Passing these isn’t just for Google. It’s about creating a smooth, frustration-free experience that turns visitors into customers.

Technical Speed Improvements

Getting the technical foundation right is the first and most impactful step in local website speed optimisation. Let’s break down where you should focus your efforts.

Choose the Right Australian Web Host

Your web host is the home of your website. If that home is on the other side of the world, it will always be slower for your local customers. Hosting your website on servers located in Australia is critical.

Choosing a host with servers in your target city (e.g., Sydney, Melbourne, Perth) further reduces the physical distance data has to travel, leading to faster load times. Look for providers that explicitly mention their Australian data centres.

Hosting Provider	Key Feature for Speed	Australian Data Centres
SiteGround	Google Cloud infrastructure and local servers.	Sydney, NSW.
Crucial	Australian-owned with high-performance VPS options.	Sydney, NSW.
Kinsta	Premium managed WordPress hosting on Google Cloud.	Sydney & Melbourne.

Pro Tip: Don’t just look at server location. A key feature for fast hosting in 2025 is NVMe SSD storage, which is significantly faster than traditional SSDs and essential for websites with databases, like eCommerce or booking sites.

Many cheap international hosts seem appealing, but the latency they introduce for Australian visitors can kill your conversions. Always prioritise a quality local host.

Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) stores copies of your website’s files (like images and scripts) on servers around the world. When a user visits your site, the content is delivered from the server closest to them.

For an Australian business, this means a customer in Perth can load your site from a Perth-based server, even if your main hosting is in Sydney. This drastically reduces latency.

Source: https://speedvitals.com/cdn-performance-tracker

While many CDNs exist, some of the top performers for the Oceania region are:

Cloudflare: Offers a generous free plan and has a massive network, with 8 edge servers in Australia alone, making it a great starting point.
Bunny.net: Known for its high performance and affordable, pay-as-you-go pricing, with 7 points of presence across Australia and New Zealand.
QUIC.cloud: The CDN built specifically for LiteSpeed servers. It’s tightly integrated and offers a free tier that is often enough for many local businesses.

Demand a Modern Web Server

The software your web host runs on its servers makes a huge difference. At Search Scope, we exclusively use and recommend hosts that run on LiteSpeed web servers. They are consistently faster than older technologies like Apache and even outperform NGINX in many real-world tests, especially for WordPress sites.

The main advantage of LiteSpeed is its built-in server-level caching module, LSCache. This is far more efficient than the PHP-based caching plugins required by other servers.

In benchmark tests, LiteSpeed can handle WordPress requests up to 10 times faster than NGINX with its FastCGI cache. This translates to a website that feels instantly responsive to visitors.

When you combine a LiteSpeed server with its free LSCache for WordPress plugin, you get an all-in-one optimisation solution that handles caching, image optimisation, and code minification without needing multiple, potentially conflicting plugins.

If your host doesn’t offer LiteSpeed, a well-configured NGINX server with a premium caching plugin like WP Rocket is the next best choice.

Content and Structure Speed Tips

Once your technical foundation is solid, the next step is to optimise the content on your pages. Images are often the biggest culprits for slow load times.

Optimise Your Images for Speed

Large, unoptimised images can bring a website to a crawl. Using modern image formats and ensuring they are correctly sized is crucial for fast loading, especially on mobile devices.

Modern formats provide much better compression than old formats like JPEG and PNG.

Image Format	Best Use Case	Performance Note
AVIF	Best for high-quality photos.	The newest format. Offers the best compression, around 50% smaller than JPEG.
WebP	Great for photos and graphics.	Excellent compression (25-34% smaller than JPEG) and is universally supported.
SVG	Ideal for logos and icons.	Vector-based, so it’s perfectly scalable and usually has a very small file size.

You can use plugins like ShortPixel or Imagify to automatically convert your images to these formats and compress them. The LiteSpeed Cache plugin also includes its own powerful image optimisation service.

Warning: The most common mistake is uploading images straight from a camera or phone. A single photo can be 5-10 MB! Always resize images to the maximum dimensions they will be displayed at on your website before uploading.

Implement Lazy Loading Correctly

Lazy loading is a technique that stops images and videos from loading until the user scrolls down the page and they are about to come into view. This dramatically speeds up the initial page load.

Modern browsers and WordPress support native lazy loading with a simple attribute:

<img src="image.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="Description">

However, it’s crucial to get the implementation right. Here are the key best practices:

Don’t lazy load “above the fold” images: The main hero image or banner at the top of your page should never be lazy-loaded. This is often your LCP element, and delaying it will harm your Core Web Vitals score.
Use it for below-the-fold content: Images, video embeds, and even comment sections are perfect candidates for lazy loading.
Use a plugin for better control: While native lazy loading is good, a dedicated performance plugin like Perfmatters or WP Rocket gives you more control to exclude specific images from lazy loading.

Content Type	Loading Priority	Implementation Method
Hero Images & Logos	Immediate	Standard loading (no lazy load)
Below-Fold Images	Deferred	Lazy loading
Video Embeds (YouTube, Vimeo)	Deferred	Lazy load or use a “click-to-load” preview image
Comments Section	Deferred	Load on scroll

Mobile Speed Optimisation

With the majority of local searches happening on mobile devices, optimising for mobile speed isn’t optional, it’s essential. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing. A slow mobile site will drag down your rankings everywhere.

Why You Should Avoid AMP for Local Business

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was a technology pushed by Google to create stripped-down, fast-loading versions of web pages for mobile. However, we do not recommend it for most local business websites.

The reality is that AMP is complex to implement correctly and often breaks essential website features like contact forms, interactive maps, or booking systems, which are vital for a local business. Since Google removed the AMP icon from search results in 2021 and no longer requires it for the “Top Stories” carousel, its main benefits have disappeared.

In my experience, the time and money spent trying to fix a broken AMP implementation is far better invested in solid, fundamental website optimisation. A well-built, responsive website can be just as fast as an AMP page without all the technical headaches and limitations.

Focus on responsive design, image optimisation, and the technical tips in this guide. This will give you a fast mobile site that works for both users and your business goals.

Speed Testing and Maintenance

Optimising your website’s speed is not a one-time fix. It requires ongoing monitoring to ensure performance doesn’t degrade as you add new content or plugins.

The Best Tools for Speed Testing

Several excellent tools can help you monitor and diagnose performance issues. Here are the ones we use every day:

Google PageSpeed Insights: Essential for checking your Core Web Vitals scores. It provides both “lab data” (a simulated test) and “field data” (from real users via the Chrome User Experience Report).
WebPageTest: My personal favourite for in-depth analysis. It gives you advanced data and waterfall charts that let you see exactly how every single element on your page loads, helping you pinpoint bottlenecks.
GTmetrix: A great all-rounder that provides a performance score, Core Web Vitals, and a waterfall chart. Its reports are easy to understand, making it great for business owners.
Lighthouse: This is built directly into the Chrome DevTools. It provides detailed reports on performance, accessibility, and SEO, making it a powerful tool for on-the-fly checks.

Understanding Speed Reports: Lab vs. Field Data

When you use a tool like PageSpeed Insights, you’ll see two types of data: Lab and Field. Understanding the difference is critical.

Lab Data is a test run in a controlled, simulated environment. It’s great for debugging because the results are consistent and repeatable. The overall “Performance Score” in PageSpeed Insights is based on lab data.
Field Data comes from actual, real-world users who have visited your site over the last 28 days. This data is collected by the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). This is the data Google uses for its ranking signal.

What matters most? Field data. A perfect lab score doesn’t mean anything if your real users are having a slow experience on different devices and networks. Always prioritise improving your field data scores.

Focus on the Core Web Vitals metrics within these reports, and aim for a Time to First Byte (TTFB) of under 200 milliseconds, which indicates a responsive server.

A Simple Maintenance Schedule

A consistent monitoring schedule helps you catch issues before they impact your users and rankings. Here’s a practical schedule for a local business:

Frequency	Tasks	Key Focus Areas
Weekly	Quick scan of your homepage and main service page on PageSpeed Insights.	Check for any sudden drops in Core Web Vitals scores.
Monthly	Run a detailed GTmetrix or WebPageTest analysis.	Look at the waterfall chart for slow-loading resources or third-party scripts.
Quarterly	Perform a full technical review.	Audit WordPress plugins, check for database bloat, and review your hosting performance.

By keeping a simple log of these checks, you can track performance over time and act quickly when a problem arises.

Conclusion

For Australian businesses, a fast website is no longer just a technical nice-to-have, it’s a fundamental part of a successful online strategy. It directly impacts your user experience, conversion rates, and visibility in local search results.

By focusing on the right foundations like quality Australian hosting and modern server technology, and combining that with smart content optimisation and regular maintenance, you create a digital storefront that is welcoming and efficient.

A faster website keeps visitors engaged, builds trust, and ultimately drives the growth of your business in a competitive market.