WordPress vs Next.js: Why I Migrated and Got 3.2× More Traffic

For years, my transient house site ran on WordPress. It worked — but it was slow, bloated, and every page load meant PHP rendering + 40+ database queries. Average load time: 7.8 seconds.

I migrated to Next.js (a React-based framework that pre-builds pages as static HTML). The result: load time dropped to 0.8 seconds. Lighthouse score went from 42 to 98. And Google started sending 3.2× more organic traffic within 60 days.

WordPress sites load one second slower = 20% fewer conversions. For a transient house owner in Baguio, that's real money walking away.

Google Core Web Vitals now penalize slow sites hard. Next.js solves this by serving pre-rendered pages via CDN. No database queries per request. No bloated plugins.

If you run a service-based business in the Philippines with a WordPress site, you're leaving traffic (and bookings) on the table.