01
01 · Theme bloat
Generic WP themes like Avada / Bridge / Divi ship with 50+ scripts. They're fine for portfolios. Death for contractor SEO.
Problems
Why your contractor website is too slow.
LCP over 4 seconds is costing you rankings AND conversions. Three usual suspects: bloated themes, unoptimized images, and the wrong host.
02
02 · Image bloat
5MB hero image. No lazy-loading. No WebP. Foreman uploads phone photos at full resolution. Site grinds.
03
03 · Cheap host
Shared hosting with 1,500 sites on a $5/mo plan. Database lookups take 800ms before anything renders.
What "too slow" actually means
LCP target: under 2 seconds. INP target: under 200ms. CLS: under 0.1. Google's Core Web Vitals are real ranking factors.
The fix stack
- Move to a contractor-tuned theme (Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress).
- Cloudflare APO or FlyingPress for caching.
- Image lazy-load + WebP conversion + responsive srcset.
- Upgrade hosting — Kinsta, WP Engine, or quality VPS.
- PHP 8.3+. Critical CSS inlined.
Typical result on a sub-$10K contractor site: LCP from 5.2s → 1.6s in a weekend.
The Heist Way
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