Short version
In our benchmark of website builders, the #1 agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands have the worst lab scores of all 19 agencies. The research shows lab speed doesn't track position, but link equity on the ranking page does. Four explanations from the data.
Sort our website builders benchmark by position in Google and something awkward happens. The #1 agency in Belgium, Inspira, has the worst Performance score in its country: 27 out of 100. The #1 in the Netherlands, Yourhosting, has the worst of its own: 28 out of 100. Their LCP in our lab test: 19.4 and 21.4 seconds. If speed matters so much for rankings, how does the slowest one win? That question landed after we published the benchmark — and since nobody could answer it, I dug in myself.
What I researched
The benchmark edition of September 10, 2026 covers 19 website builders: every agency in the Belgian and Dutch top 10 for “website laten maken” that actually builds websites (the comparison platform at NL position 6 falls outside the measurement). I tested each homepage three times on mobile via the PageSpeed Insights API, taking the median per value.
One day later I added four new layers. The CrUX field data from Google: the LCP real Chrome visitors experience, aggregated over 28 days. Link data from Moz: Domain Authority, Page Authority and the number of linking root domains. A fresh SERP capture with the exact ranking URL per position. And an on-page analysis of the ten highest-ranking URLs: title, h1, word count, prices and schema.
One caveat up front, because I keep reminding myself of it too: this is research with 19 agencies, one search query and one measurement moment, and the SERP was fetched through a datacenter connection. The correlations below are indicative and prove no causal relationship. They do challenge an assumption that sits in almost every agency proposal.
The full table: speed next to authority
Here is the benchmark table in a different order: not by score, but by Google position per country. The lab values come from our September 10 measurement; the Moz link data and CrUX field data are from September 11, 2026. Twelve agencies have no CrUX sample — too few real Chrome visits — so they get a dash.
| Agency | Lab score | Lab LCP | Field LCP (p75) | DA | PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inspira (BE #1) | 27 | 19.4 s | — | 22 | 29 |
| Conversal (BE #2) | 70 | 18.2 s | 1.09 s | 33 | 43 |
| Kreatix (BE #3) | 41 | 7.5 s | — | 25 | 32 |
| Green Bananas (BE #4) | 35 | 18.8 s | 1.63 s | 23 | 30 |
| KMO Shops (BE #5) | 47 | 4.8 s | 2.51 s | 32 | 24 |
| Adworkx (BE #6) | 43 | 21.2 s | — | 12 | 24 |
| Zenjoy (BE #7) | 82 | 3.0 s | — | 24 | 26 |
| Swift Marketing (BE #8) | 38 | 26.4 s | — | 13 | 24 |
| Riseweb (BE #9) | 59 | 11.7 s | — | 10 | 13 |
| WebsiteDeal (BE #10) | 59 | 9.4 s | — | 1 | 33 |
| Yourhosting (NL #1) | 28 | 21.4 s | 2.08 s | 70 | 49 |
| WJ Webdesign (NL #2) | 96 | 1.7 s | — | 15 | 39 |
| Webstijn (NL #3) | 51 | 15.4 s | — | 15 | 15 |
| VrijdagOnline (NL #4) | 43 | 12.2 s | — | 25 | 40 |
| Websteen (NL #5) | 52 | 11.0 s | — | 19 | 25 |
| 2manydots (NL #7) | 39 | 14.5 s | 2.19 s | 26 | 38 |
| Stuurlui (NL #8) | 92 | 3.2 s | 1.21 s | 35 | 37 |
| Scrolla (NL #9) | 46 | 10.6 s | 1.31 s | 24 | 25 |
| Creative Corner (NL #10) | 62 | 9.9 s | — | 57 | 25 |
Read the DA and PA columns the way they are meant: Moz estimates based on the link profile, not Google numbers. That is exactly why they are useful here — they measure authority, something Google does take into account and our lab score does not.
Speed and position: no usable relationship
The benchmark surprise was no fluke. Compute the Spearman rank correlation across all 19 agencies and no speed measurement tracks a better position. A positive ρ here means a higher value goes with a higher (worse) position number.
| Factor | ρ | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| PA of the ranking URL | −0.52 | Higher PA, better position — strongest factor |
| DA of the domain | −0.20 | Weak relationship |
| Linking root domains (log) | −0.14 | Almost no relationship |
| Lab score (Performance) | +0.32 | Higher score, slightly worse position |
| Lab LCP | −0.28 | Weak, and against expectation |
| Field LCP (p75) | −0.07 | No relationship (n=7) |
Two things stand out. The lab score correlates slightly positively with the position number: agencies with the best lab scores ranked a bit lower on average. And the field LCP — the speed real visitors experience and the one Google can actually see — doesn’t track position at all. That is not proof that speed doesn’t matter; Core Web Vitals are a signal. But on this query, between these nineteen agencies, speed does not separate the winners from the losers.
What does track: link equity on the page
One factor jumps out: the Page Authority of the URL that actually ranks, at ρ −0.52 by far the strongest association in the dataset. Not the domain as a whole (DA −0.20), but the specific page sitting in the results.
How the Dutch #1 built its authority
Yourhosting is a hosting platform with DA 70 and 46,561 linking root domains. The link data shows how: 11,285 linking domains point at it with an empty anchor text, 10,556 with “contact” and 9,780 with “algemene voorwaarden”. These are footer links on tens of thousands of hosted customer sites. Not a content strategy, but scale. For a hosting company that is a legitimate mechanism — and an authority no independent agency can copy.
The small agencies’ weapon
Small agencies do the opposite. WJ Webdesign (DA 15, NL #2) has a top anchor that literally reads “website laten maken”, from 70 linking domains. Conversal (DA 33, BE #2) counts 144 with the exact same anchor. Their positions hang partly on targeted link building using the exact search term as anchor text. Google calls that pattern at scale a risk, and I recommend nobody copy it blindly — but in this dataset it visibly works.
The Belgian #1 did it differently again: Inspira (DA 22) ranks mostly on brand anchors from its own customer sites and topical links to the pricing blog that sits at #1.
The right URL for the query
Only three of the nineteen agencies rank with their homepage. Eight do it with a landing page, four with a blog, three with a services page and one with an FAQ page. Google is not rewarding “the agency” here, but the page that answers the search query most directly.
The pricing blog that made a small agency big
The clearest case is Inspira. With DA 22 and 439 linking root domains the domain has little to defend, but the ranking URL is a blog that answers exactly the question behind the query: what does a website cost? The title nearly quotes the question, the page is full of prices, and it keeps answering until the visitor stops asking. It is the pattern across the top 10: the URL that wins is the page that matches the searcher’s intent most simply.
What the winners do on the page itself
The on-page analysis of the ten highest-ranking URLs (top 5 per country) shows a strikingly uniform pattern:
- All ten have the search term exactly in the title and in the h1.
- Nine of the ten show prices on the page — and nine of the twenty search results carried a price indication in the snippet.
- Nine of the ten have FAQ schema with visible questions.
- Four of the Dutch top 10 have review stars in the snippet (Stuurlui 4.8 from 124 reviews, Websteen 4.9 from 74) — a CTR signal that is almost absent in Belgium.
None of that is speed. It is relevance, clarity and trust — neatly readable in the HTML Google sees.
What this means for your website
Three conclusions you can take from this data. One: speed counts through field data, not through your lab score — and it is a tiebreaker, not the main rule. Two: the question isn’t “is my site fast” but “which of my pages answers the search query most directly” — that is usually a specific landing page or blog, not your homepage. Three: link equity grows on the page that ranks, so that is also the page your links should point to.
I hold myself to the same yardstick: with DA 18 and 306 linking root domains, we are not on page 1 of this SERP yet, and I’m not writing that away. The benchmark exists precisely because we want to measure honestly. What this study does show: the way up is not another point of PageSpeed, but the right URL with the right answers and the link equity that belongs to it.
Want to know how your own site scores on both yardsticks? The approach is in our guide to higher rankings — and the surprising gap between lab score and real visitors is in lab versus field. What smaller agencies specifically do to rank next to the giants is worked out in small agency, big competitors.