How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) in WordPress?
Are you wondering what Largest Contentful Paint means and how it can impact your UX and SEO performance? Keep reading! You’ll discover what LCP is, how to test and grade it, what factors influence it, and how to optimize WordPress performance to fix poor LCP scores on both mobile and desktop (LCP longer than 2.5 or 4 seconds).
What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Why Is It Important?
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a Core Web Vitals metric that measures how long it takes for the largest visible element in the viewport to load. Until the LCP loads, you typically see almost nothing on the page—because the LCP element is always located at the top of the screen.
LCP is usually an image or a block of text. However, it can also be a video or animation. The LCP element may differ between mobile and desktop.
As you can imagine, the largest element is most relevant to user experience and perceived load speed.
Think about it: If the largest element doesn’t load quickly, your user experience will suffer. You’ll be staring at an almost blank page, waiting for it to load—and may even leave the site. A few seconds can make a big difference during browsing.
That’s why Google included LCP as one of the Core Web Vitals that measure how good your user experience is.
In June, LCP will become part of the Page Experience Signal, a new ranking factor. So, Largest Contentful Paint is essential not only for offering a great user experience but also for improving your SEO performance.
In addition, LCP accounts for 25% of your total PageSpeed Insights score. Improving its performance will likely boost your overall page speed rating.
What Is a Good LCP Score?
A good score means your LCP should be 2.5 seconds or less. If that’s the case, your page will receive a green rating and pass the evaluation.
If LCP is between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds, the score is “needs improvement” – you’ll get an orange rating.
If LCP is longer than 4 seconds, the score is “poor”, and you should fix it as soon as possible.
How to Reduce Largest Contentful Paint Over 2.5 or 4 Seconds on Mobile and Desktop
Here are 10 ways to improve Largest Contentful Paint performance and fix the Search Console issues:
“LCP issue: longer than 2.5 seconds” or “LCP issue: longer than 4 seconds” on both mobile and desktop.
Improve Time to First Byte (TTFB) and reduce server response time
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Defer JavaScript
Remove Unused JavaScript
Defer non-critical CSS, inline critical CSS, and remove unused CSS
Minify CSS and JS files
Optimize images
Compress text files (like HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
Use preloading for critical assets (fonts, hero images)
Establish early connections with third-party resources