Technical Seo
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
A Core Web Vital that measures how long it takes for the largest visible element (usually a hero image or heading block) to render on screen. Google considers under 2.5 seconds as good.
Why Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Matters for SEO
LCP is the metric users feel most directly. If your biggest content element takes forever to load, visitors perceive the page as slow regardless of what else loads quickly. It's often the hardest Core Web Vital to fix because it touches server response, resource loading, and rendering.
How Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Works
The browser identifies the largest image, video, or text block in the viewport and records when it finishes painting. Common culprits for poor LCP are slow server response times (TTFB), unoptimised images, render-blocking CSS/JS, and client-side rendering that delays content.
Common Mistakes
- Lazy loading the hero image that is the LCP element
- Not preloading the LCP image or font
- Ignoring slow server response time (TTFB) as the root cause
Want to go deeper?
Read the full guide: Core Web Vitals →
Sources & Further Reading: