One major factor to SEO rankings is how long it takes a user to see any content rendered to the screen. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) has become a key metric to measure when the largest content element in a viewport (user’s screen) becomes visible. It can be used to determine when the main content of the page has finished rendering on the screen. You may have heard us talking about this all the way back in 2021, which is because Google has announced that page experience will be a ranking factor starting from May 2021, and LCP has been one of the key metrics for page experience ever since.
Why LCP matters
Web developers and SEO specialists have been paying attention to LCP and work to improve their client sites as much as possible. Google itself has provided some key data and case studies to show how a faster load time can negatively affect your site. Mainly, longer page load times have a severe effect on bounce rates. For example:
- If page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce rate increases 32%
- If page load time increases from 1 second to 6 seconds, bounce rate increases by 106%
What are New Things to Consider with LCP in 2023?
However, some things with LCP have changed since our initial posting back in 2021. For example back in 2021, LCP was recommended to be less than 2.5 seconds for a good score. Google has not published specific guidelines for recommended page loading times. However, the general consensus among SEO industry experts is that a page load time of your LCP should be completed in 2 seconds or less. Back in 2021, we saw that images were the largest contentful element on a page for our clients, but this may not be true for pages that have large videos, animations, or text blocks. If you are going to have video content or other large filesize content, things like CDNs, lazy loading and other techniques can improve your LCP.
You May Need to Redesign for Speed
While a lot of these techniques may help in lowering your LCP time, you may not be able to achieve the under 2 second threshold without some significant redesign. This is especially true for pages that have a lot of images above the fold. We have found that a fundamental rebuild of most older websites is needed to achieve LCP speeds under 2 seconds. All our SEO websites easily get under 2 second LCP ratings. If you haven’t gotten a site built with us, let’s get started today!
