Google announced back in May 2020 the Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics site owners can use to improve the quality of their site and user experience. These Core Web Vitals are:
- LCP – Largest Contentful Paint
- FID – First Input Delay
- CLS – Cumulative Layout Shift
Site owners can see performance reports right in the Google Search Console, where the labels “Poor, Needs improvement, and Good” will be applied to each metric. In this article, we’ll focus on the LCP issue, and what you can do to resolve it.
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What Is Largest Contentful Paint?
LCP also known as Largest Contentful Paint measures the time taken by the server to display the largest visible element in the portview. Ideally, LCP should be less than 2.5 seconds, but if you are seeing an LCP issue in your Search Console it means the server is taking too long to render the element.
An LCP issue lowers a site’s overall Core Web Vital experience and can affect a site’s performance throughout the Google services, such as its ranking in the SERPs.
What causes Largest Contentful Paint issue?
Here are some of the possible reasons that may be the cause behind issues with LCP;
- Server response time
- Render-blocking Javascript
- Using client-side rendering
How to Fix the LCP Issue?
If you are seeing an LCP issue in your Search Console, here are a few steps to resolve it:
1. Identify Which Pages Aren’t Loading
In your report, you will be provided with a total number of URLs on your site that are affected by the LCP issue. Once you’ve identified the URLs that are leading to the problems, use the PageSpeed Insights and enter the links to allow the tool to test them.
After the test is complete, you’ll receive additional data that can help you improve your site’s speed.
2. Identify the Largest Element That Is Dragging the Load Time
The report has an “Opportunity” section where you can find suggestions for improvements to help your pages load faster. Usually, it will be the element (or multiple elements) that have not been properly optimised for the web and is taking too long to load, such as an image or video.
You can simply fix these issues by either removing the element if it’s not important to your user experience or resize them to allow the page to load faster.
3. Validate and Re-test
Once you follow the suggestions of the Search Console and PageSpeed Insights, it’s important to test it again and see if the LCP issue has been resolved. Note that the report may not be updated right away, so you may need to wait a bit until you can see if the changes worked.
Over to You
Australian Internet Advertising is happy to assist Sydney Business owners improve the quality of their site and boost user experience, and we can do it through a personalised SEO strategy designed to help you optimise your efforts.
Get in touch with us for more information about how we can help, or call us directly at 1300 304 640.
