Largest Contentful Paint

In 2020, Google introduced the Core Web Vitals, a set of three key metrics that measure a website’s user experience. The goal is to ensure that websites are fast, stable, and responsive. These three metrics are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly the main content of a page loads.
• First Input Delay (FID): How long it takes for a page to become interactive.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How stable the page is as it loads.

Improving these metrics is crucial for both SEO and user satisfaction. A fast and stable website not only ranks higher but also makes visitors happy, encouraging them to stay longer.

What is Largest Contentful Paint?

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is the metric that measures loading performance. To put it simply, LCP is the time it takes for the biggest and most important element on your page to become visible. This element could be a large image, a video, or a big block of text. LCP only measures what is visible in the viewport, which is the part of the webpage a user can see without scrolling. The faster this main content appears, the better the user’s perception of your page’s speed.

How is LCP Calculated?

Google’s recommendation is that your LCP should be no more than 2.5 seconds. Anything between 2.5 and 4 seconds needs improvement, and anything over 4 seconds is considered poor. The LCP is different for mobile and desktop devices, so it’s important to check both scores.

How do I find my LCP?

Before you can fix your LCP, you need to find out what your score is. There are a few different ways to do this:

• Google Pagespeed Insights: This free tool from Google gives you a detailed report that includes your LCP score in the Lab Data section. It will also tell you which element on your page is causing the LCP.
• Google Search Console: In the Core Web Vitals report in your search console, you’ll see which pages on your site have a good or poor LCP score.
• Google Lighthouse: This tool is built into your browser’s developer tools. You can run a full performance report, including your LCP score, on any page, even if it’s not public yet.

How can you improve your LCP score?

A slow LCP score can be caused by a variety of issues. Here are some of the most common causes and how to fix them.

Speed up server responses

If your server is slow, it will take a long time for the user to see anything on their screen. The time it takes for a server to send the first byte of data is called Time to First Byte (TTFB). To improve this, you can:

• Upgrade your hosting: A faster hosting platform will result in faster server response times.
• Use a CDN: A Content Delivery Network places your website’s content on servers that are physically closer to your visitors, reducing the time it takes for a page to load.
• Improve caching: Caching stores a copy of your page, so it doesn’t have to be recreated from scratch every time a visitor requests it.

Remove render-blocking CSS and javascript resources

Render-blocking resources are files that prevent a page from being displayed until they are fully loaded. These are typically CSS and JavaScript files. To fix this, you can:

• Minify your code: This makes your CSS and JavaScript files smaller, so they load faster.
• Place critical CSS inline: You can place the essential CSS code needed to display the top part of your page directly in your HTML.

Optimize images

Images often have a huge impact on LCP, especially if the largest element on your page is an image. Here are a few ways to improve image performance:

• Use modern formats: Use modern image formats like WebP or AVIF for better compression and quality.
• Use the right size: Don’t load a huge image on a mobile device. Use responsive images to serve the correct size for every screen.
• Compress images: You can use a tool to compress your images, reducing their file size without sacrificing quality.

An automated SEO platform like Clickrank.ai can help you with these tasks. The platform’s AI Image Alt Text Generator can help you create good descriptions for your images, and its automated features can help you optimize your images and other assets for speed.

Enable compression

Enabling compression on your server is like zipping a file before you send it. It reduces the size of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files by up to 80%, which can have a big impact on your pagespeed.

Leverage server-side rendering

Modern web frameworks often rely on client-side rendering, where the browser does most of the work to display a page. This can be bad for LCP because the page won’t be visible until the client-side execution is complete. Luckily, most of these frameworks now support server-side rendering, which reduces the amount of work the browser needs to do.

Conclusion

A slow website is a frustrating experience for visitors and can negatively affect your rankings. By focusing on your Largest Contentful Paint score and making the necessary improvements, you can provide a fast-loading page that keeps your visitors happy and improves your SEO.