Website speed and why it matters for a small rental site
A visitor who's waiting for your home page to load is making a decision about your property before they've even seen a photo of it.
The single biggest, most common cause of a slow small-business website is oversized photos — a photo straight from a modern camera or phone is often many times larger than a web page needs, and loading several of them on one page adds up fast. Resizing images before uploading them (most site builders also offer automatic compression) is usually the single highest-impact fix available, and it requires no technical skill.
Avoid auto-playing video backgrounds or large embedded maps on every page if speed matters more to you than decoration — both are common, both are heavy, and a static image with a link to an interactive map on its own page usually serves the visitor just as well.
If you're using a website builder or platform, check whether it offers a built-in speed or performance report — most popular ones do, and it will point at the specific heavy items on your specific pages rather than general advice.
Google's own guidance on page experience confirms that loading speed is one of the signals search engines use alongside relevance — not the only one, and not a substitute for good content, but a real one that costs nothing to improve once you know where the weight is coming from.