Introduction
In recent years, every business has been aiming to improve its user experience, as it plays a crucial role in guaranteeing the success of its website. Google’s core web vitals are key metrics that calculate how well users are interacting with a webpage. Among these, the Largest Contentful Paint stands out as a key indicator of a website’s loading performance. Google has provided some valuable tips to fix the LCP web vitals for all the websites that have been struggling with LCP issues.
What is LCP?
LCP is a core web vitals metric that measures the time it takes for the largest visible element of a webpage to load and become visible to the users. This could be an image, video, or a block of text. The faster this element loads, the more satisfied the user will be with the page’s speed and performance. Here is a benchmark that Google has set for LCP:
- Good LCP: 2.5 seconds or less
- Needs improvement: Between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds
- Poor: 4.0 seconds or more
If a website’s LCP is poor, it simply implies that the page is taking too long to load its main content, this might lead to increased bounce rates.
Why is LCP Crucial for a Website
LCP plays a major role in enhancing the overall user experience of a website, hence it is a very crucial factor for website admins, digital marketers, and SEO experts. Websites that take a longer time to load or display content are more likely to have higher bounce rates.
The chances of people leaving a website significantly increase with extra seconds of loading time.
LCP not only affects user retention, but Google has made it clear that it is a significant ranking factor for SEO. If your website’s LCP is slow, it can immensely affect your website’s performance in the search results, further impacting the organic traffic and online visibility.
Tips by Google to Fix LCP Web Vitals
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Identify What Data You are Looking At
The most common mistake publishers and SEO agencies tend to make after seeing that Page Speed Insight (PSI) bans a page for a low LCP score is to fix the issue in the Lighthouse tool or through Chrome Dev Tools.
Google suggests staying on PSI as it offers several hints for identifying the issues behind poor LCP performance.
It is crucial to analyze what information PSI is providing, especially the data taken from the Chrome User Experience Report, which are from unknown Chrome visitor scores. These are of two types:
- URL-Level data
- Origin-level data
URL-level scores highlight performance metrics for an individual page under analysis. On the other hand, Origin-level data shows the overall performance of the entire website, collectively across all pages.
If a page has gained enough traffic, PSI will display its URL-level data. However, if the traffic is too low it will show the origin-level data, which contains every aspect of the site performance.
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Analyze The TTFB Score
Google advises businesses to consider the TTFB score because TTFB is the first thing that happens to a webpage.
Byte is a fundamental unit of digital information that represents text, numbers, or multimedia. TTFB (Time to First Byte) measures the time it takes for a server to deliver the first byte of data, helping to identify whether the server’s response delays are contributing to the slow LCP performance or not.
Focusing on optimizing a website is not going to solve a problem that is happening because of a low TTFB score.
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Compare TTFB With the Lighthouse Lab Report
Google advises testing with the Lighthouse Lab tests, particularly the “Initial Server Response Time” audit. The objective is to determine whether the TTFB issue is consistent, in order to reduce the chance that the PSI values are displaying a faster loading time than the majority of user experience.
Lab results are not based on actual user visits, they are replicated by an algorithm, based on a visit that was initiated by a Lighthouse test. This type of test is beneficial as they are repeatable and enables the audience to identify a particular cause of an issue.
If the Lighthouse test does not replicate the problem that implies that the test has not seen the same TTFB problem that the users have seen.
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Tips on How to Determine if CDN is Making an Issue
Google recommended a remarkable tip about Content Development Networks (CDNs), such as Cloudflare. A CDN stores copies of web pages at various data centers to improve delivery speed. While this helps with loading speeds, it can also block out any performance issues at the origin server. It is crucial to keep in mind that the CDN does not replicate the web page at every data center globally. Instead, when a user requests a page, the CDN fetches it from the initial server and creates a local copy of the page at the closest data center. Therefore, the initial fetch will be slower than the upcoming ones. If the original server is already slow, the first fetch will be slower in comparison to fetching the page directly from the server.
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Fix can be Consistent
Finally, Google said that an issue could be fixed only when it has been verified and repeatable.
How to Optimize for the Largest Contentful Paint
Google shared these 5 crucial tips to enhance LCP performance
- The Page speed insights can offer valuable information for fixing LCP issues, besides other major information from this blog that will help explain the whole concept effectively.
- The PSI Time to First Byte (TTFB) metrics can measure basic factors that contribute to poor LCP scores.
- Lighthouse Lab tests are essential for rectifying, as their results are repeatable. This repeatability is important for accurately identifying LCP issues which will help to apply the right solutions.
- CDNs can conceal the exact cause of LCP issues. Google suggests using an approach to avoid the CDN and fetch a true lab score, which can help in more precise fixation.
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Google stated 6 possible causes for poor LCP performance
- Server Performance
- Code
- Database
- Redirects
- Slow connections due to geographical location
- Poor connections from particular areas that can be due to specific reasons such as ad campaigns.
(Source)
Conclusion
Improving your LCP is important for not only improving customer experience but also for maintaining and enhancing your website’s SEO performance. By optimizing images and reducing server loading speeds, website admins can significantly reduce the LCP loading time, offering a smooth and faster user experience.
Website performance is not a one-time task. Keep an eye on your website and stay up-to-date with Google Core Web Vital’s regulations. Optimize your website elements accordingly to maintain your website speed, and keep it responsive.
By incorporating these strategies, you can not only fix your LCP issues but also improve the overall web performance for your visitors.