Largest Contentful Paint: How to Measure and Optimize It

One of the things that need to be considered in managing a website is Core Web Vitals. In it, there is a metric called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The measurement of this metric can have an impact on website SEO. For that, you need to know how to optimize LCP through this guide.

LCP is a metric introduced by Google in 2021 to measure the user experience. This element is part of the Page Experience Update, which contributes to the overall score of Core Web Vitals.

To understand how to optimize LCP, you need to know some important things about this metric. how to measure it, and the factors that make it score low. Check out the full discussion below.

What is LCP?

Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP, is a metric that assesses a website's loading time based on the rendering of elements known as "above-the-fold content." In this case, the elements in question are all aspects of the page that are displayed without scrolling.

LCP measurements are carried out to determine the quality of the user experience. A good score indicates that the user can access the page without requiring a long loading time. It also shows a lower bounce rate.

The several elements considered in the "Largest Contentful Paint" measurement are:

• Images
• Image tags
• Background image with CSS
• Video thumbnails
• Text

The shorter the time to load the above elements, the better the LCP score will be. This score will also be proven by the ranking of website pages in the SERP because LCP is one of the metrics that Google pays attention to.

Good and Bad Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

A good website page loading time, according to Google, is less than 2.5 seconds. If all major elements can be loaded in the specified short time, then the website's LCP score will be good.

If users have to wait a long time to see above-the-fold content, then that means your website's LCP needs to be improved. Long loading times will cause users to leave the page and seek out other sources of information.

There are three LCP scores that Google will give websites: Good, Need improvement, and Poor. Here's a breakdown of LCP scoring based on Google's guidelines:

• Good: loading time ≤ 2,5 seconds
• Need improvement: loading time ≤ 4 seconds
• Poor: loading time < 4 seconds

Measuring LCP Score

Before getting into discussing how to optimize LCP, you need to know how to determine the score. To find out the Large Contentful Paint score, you need to use certain tools, such as:

PageSpeed Insights

As one of the tools provided by Google, PageSpeed Insights can help you identify the biggest elements on a website page. When entering the analysis page, you will find the "Diagnostics" section. It will record elements that affect LCP metrics and improve them.

Google Search Console

Before designing your LCP optimization strategy, you can see the score via Google Search Console. The LCP score can be found in the Core Web Vitals tab on the left side of the GSC navigation. There are two types of reports that you can get from GSC: desktop and mobile devices. Check both and determine which element is causing the low LCP score.

Factors Affecting LCP Score

As previously mentioned, Large Contentful Paint is influenced by several factors. Generally, large elements that create long loading times can result in low LCP scores. Among the many plugins and other elements that contribute to this, there are several technical factors that also need attention, including:

Server Response Time

Having a slow server response time can have a negative effect on page load times. This aspect can have a negative impact on LCP, which can reduce website ratings in the eyes of search engines.

Slow server response can be caused by back-end problems or unoptimized database queries. In short, everything that happens technically in website management can be a factor in slow server response times.

Use of JavaScript and CSS

Light web pages are easier to load. Therefore, the use of JavaScript and CSS can be burdensome to load, which makes for a bad LCP score. You can reduce existing plugins on website pages to speed up website loading, especially above-the-fold content, and improve the LCP.

Slow Resource Loading Time

As with JavaScript and CSS, visually rich resources or content can usually take a long time to load. If there are a lot of large elements on a page, the loading time becomes slow, which worsens the LCP score.

Therefore, avoid using large images and GIFs. But that doesn't mean the use of visual elements isn't necessary at all. You can still add attractive images by optimizing them using an image SEO strategy.

Client-side Rendering 

The client-side rendering process is one of the most widely used web development methods. However, this method takes time to save and load JavaScript elements before entering the main content, which can slow down loading times.

How to Optimize LCP

After knowing how important LCP is and what affects it, it's time for you to perform optimization according to SEO rules. There are several ways to accomplish the optimal score of LCP:

Optimizing CSS

CSS files are one of the resources that block the rendering process. To render the main content of the page, resources must come first. Therefore, you need to optimize the CSS file so that its size is not too large.

Remove obsolete code and optimize background images with media queries to resolve this LCP issue. 

Perform Image Optimization

One way to optimize LCP is to adjust the images on the page. Some methods that can be applied in this case are:

• Perform image compression
• Change image formats that are easier to load
• Add video instead of a GIF
• Make sure the dimensions or size of the image are in accordance with the page

Speed ​​Up Server Response Time

To optimize LCP effectively, you can speed up server response time. An effective way to do this is to use a fast hosting service. Besides that, you can also optimize the server so that the performance is more stable.

Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Content Delivery Network (CDN) are servers spread all over the world. With a CDN, the content of a page can be displayed in a shorter time. This is because the distance between the proxy server and the user's location is closer than the main server. 

Pay Attention to Website Fonts

Apart from images, a big element that needs to be considered in fixing the LCP issue is font. Usually, the font files used on websites are large, so the loading process takes a long time. For that, reduce the font size and update the page style to use that font for faster loading.

Implementing a Caching System

Enforcing a caching system is an effective way to optimize LCP. A large amount of large data that must be accessed will be cached, resulting in faster page loading and lower TTFB significantly.

Optimizing JavaScript

JavaScript optimization needs to be done to shorten page loading time. You need to check this program regularly so as not to slow down page speed. To implement this method, you need to remove unused code, update code, and break code.

Thus, a guide about how to optimize LCP, the factors that influence it, and how to find out the score. To ensure that your website is optimally optimized, you can use SEO services that provide optimization services with professional SEO specialists.