LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

What is LCP?

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is a Core Web Vitals metric that measures how long it takes for the largest visible element of a page to load, usually an image or a heading. A good LCP is 2.5 seconds or faster, measured for at least 75 percent of visitors.

Why is LCP important?

• First impression: visitors quickly see what the page is about and are less likely to leave.
• Ranking signal: Google measures LCP as one of the three Core Web Vitals.
• Concretely fixable: the cause is often a heavy image or a slow server.

Examples of LCP

• Good: 2.5 seconds or faster.
• Needs improvement: between 2.5 and 4 seconds.
• Poor: longer than 4 seconds, for example because of a hero image of several megabytes.

How do you improve LCP?

Use PageSpeed Insights to find out which element determines your LCP. Compress that image, use a modern format such as WebP and do not lazy load it. Also make sure you have a fast server and caching (technical SEO).