The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is an essential component that must be considered in a website. This article will help you understand the Largest Contentful Paint and how it can be optimized.
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What is Largest Contentful Paint?
Largest Contentful Paint is a metric that shows a website's loading time, which assesses how fast a web page renders its largest elements, including blocks of images and text. A good LCP value indicates a better user experience and a lower bounce rate.
How to Determine the Largest Contentful Paint Score
To determine metrics in Core Web Vitals, including LCP, certain tools are required as a data analysis medium. Some of these tools will collect data in the form of field data and also lab data.
In addition, some of these LCP optimization tools often combine the two data types to provide more specific analysis results. The results of this analysis can then be used to optimize the website you manage.
To determine the LCP score, SEO service platforms frequently use a Google tool called Pagespeed Insights. This tool is free to use and can help users analyze website performance by providing efficient audits and opportunities for improvement.
Here are some steps to determine the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Score using the Pagespeed Insights tool:
- Go to the Pagespeed Insights website.
- Copy and paste your website URL into the search field at the top, then click analyze.
- After that, wait for the process to complete until a display appears showing the access speed power data from the website.
- Then please conduct data analysis. If the data shows a number less than 50%, you must perform additional optimization to ensure that your website functions properly.
Elements That Hurt the Performance of the Largest Contentful Paint
After learning how to calculate the LCP's score on a website, consider the following factors that can impair the LCP's performance on a website:
1. Images
Photos are one of the elements on a website that improve the performance of the website's content. However, it turns out that using photos with large sizes and resolutions significantly impacts the performance of the LCP on a website.
To ensure that the LCP performance on the website runs smoothly, use a medium photo resolution in .webp format. Furthermore, using too many photos and consuming memory will decrease access to websites, particularly in speed.
2. Videos
Similar to photo elements, the video also greatly affects the performance of the Largest Contentful Paint on a website. Basically, websites don't really need content in the form of videos.
So, it's a good idea to minimize content in the form of videos and advertisements with video formats so that LCP performance on the website becomes more optimal.
3. Theme
The website theme is an important component of a website. However, it has been discovered that using a high-resolution background with many labels significantly impacts the LCP's performance.
In addition, using an overly crowded background affects access speed and makes the audience less interested in visiting your website.
It would be nice if you chose a theme with a minimalist background that puts forward the content and structure of the website as the main selling point. This, of course, will make it easier for the audience to access the information on the website.
How to Optimize the Largest Contentful Paint
Here are some ways to optimize LCP that you should be aware of if you want to improve website access speed:
1. Use a CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a tool for improving website traffic management. Later, when the main server is experiencing high visitor traffic, CDN will use additional servers to assist the website.
As a result, this LCP optimization tool is extremely beneficial to a website, especially for those who have a website with a high volume of visitors.
2. Choose an Image with the Right Resolution
The second way to optimize Largest Contentful Paint is by choosing images with the right resolution. As previously explained, images are elements that can hinder LCP performance on a website.
You need to use medium-resolution images for LCP performance to be more optimal. In addition, also consider the selection of image formats in the form of .webp. Also, reduce the content or structure of websites that use images in .jpg format to optimize LCP performance.
3. Server Optimization
In addition to optimizing the web structure, you should also optimize the server that hosts your site. The trick is to perform regular server updates as well as monitor and detect site visitors who may be causing problems for your server.
You must also perform routine maintenance or website maintenance and clean the server cache. The goal is for the server to always run at peak performance, even when website traffic is high.
4. Use Trusted Hosting
Another factor to consider when optimizing LPC on a website is hosting from a trusted platform.
The hosting provider you choose has a significant impact on the speed of your website. In addition, if you choose the wrong hosting provider, your website may become slower to access. So, choose a trusted hosting service.
You also need to consider the price of the hosting you will choose. Choose a hosting service that is relatively affordable with fast access so that the website speed is stable.
Conclusion
That's all about Largest Contentful Paint and how to optimize it on a website. In simple terms, LCP is a metric included in the Core Vital Web that plays an important role in website optimization, especially regarding access speed and audience interaction.