LCP: What is it?

LCP or Largest Contentful Paint is one of the most key factors when it comes to technical SEO and Website Speed. So knowing what the LCP is and what it does is a crucial factor to lay the groundwork of your SEO journey.

The Largest Contentful Paint is the render time of the largest text, image or video visible in the viewport, relative to when the user first navigated to the page.

So basically this means the biggest element that the browser needs to load and show to your site visitors. Most of the time it is really obvious what the biggest element is. However, if you are unsure, you can always use Google Lighthouse. There you can insert your URL and Google will do a scan of your site. At the end of this scan, Google tells you exactly which element is your Largest Contentful Paint. So make this clear on an example. On one of my other pages www.last-stand-survivor.com I am creating my own board game. There I did a scan that showed me the LCP of my site.

As you can see also my LCP needs a little bit of improvement. However, in the next section you can see that overall I am good to go.

Talk to us about your LCP

What is a good LCP score?

When you do a scan of your site, Google with give your page an overall score. One part of the score is the Largest Contentful Paint. As the LCP is a time-critical factor, the score is also measured in seconds. So to provide a good user experience, you must aim for a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less.

Why should you care about your LCP?

One big part of SEO is website speed. You can have the greatest content or service in the world, if your site is loading too long, no one will wait for your site to show up. Google and other search engines recognize when people are going to your site and immediately leave it. That is why your content should show up as quick as possible. So the LCP is a key factor for your technical SEO and your website success in general.