Site speed and page experience are direct SEO ranking factors, with Google even indicating that it uses time to first byte to measure page speed.
Long distances from the origin and heavy pages slow pages down, and a slow page or site speed also indirectly affects other SEO and lead generation metrics, including things such as bounce rate and the fact that Google can crawl fewer pages using their crawl budget.
Using Cloudflare is the best way to improve your time to first byte and page speed and deliver rich user experiences, with Google Trends Analyst John Mueller even stating that CDNs can help websites rank well if they're configured correctly.