Improving LCP in WordPress is not a big concern with the following easy steps. At Bobcares, with our WordPress Support Service, we can handle your WordPress issues.

How To Improve LCP In WordPress?

Here are ten ways to speed up Largest Contentful Paint and resolve the Search Console status “LCP issue: longer than 2.5s or LCP issue: longer than 4s,” on both mobile and/or desktop.

Reduce Server Response Time And Increase Time To First Byte

A slow server response time is one of the main causes of a poor LCP. By examining the Time to First Byte, we can estimate the server’s response time (TTFB).

The browser requests a particular piece of content from the server each time we want to view it. The first byte of content that the browser receives from the server is measured by the TTFB.

We will increase the TTFB, which will also increase the server response time and the LCP rating. Note that a good TTFB should be less than 200 ms. There are two methods for fixing a flawed server time:

1. Enable Page Caching :

   The pages of our website will be saved as HTML files on the server after they have been loaded for the first time if page caching is enabled. The result is a quicker display of the content. It’s a quick and efficient way to make TTFB better.
2. Select a Hosting Service with Fast Servers :

   The following PageSpeed Insights recommendations will be taken care of by enabling caching and selecting a quick host: With an effective cache policy, you can lower server response times (TTFB) and serve static assets.

Apply A CDN

We can shorten the time between a user request and a server response by using a CDN. The latency is this period of time. The round trip time is the amount of time it takes from the browser request to the server response (RTT).

It might take some time for all the assets (such as images, JS and CSS files, and videos) to be sent if the users are far from the server’s location. Loading time and the LCP score will be impacted by high latency and RTT.

We can address the following PageSpeed suggestions by selecting a CDN:

• Serve static assets with a caching strategy that works well.
• Set text compression to on.

Please be aware that a CDN will only take into account such recommendations if it is correctly configured. It’s possible that the default settings won’t be enough to boost performance as anticipated.

Postpone JavaScript

To put it another way, we’ll modify the order in which the JS files are loaded. JavaScript is delayed so that the browser will only process and load the JS files after parsing the HTML and creating the DOM tree. Since there won’t be anything to impede it, rendering will go much more quickly, which will boost the LCP metric.

In order for the browser to recognize the resources to defer, we can add the defer attribute to the JavaScript files. The browser will continuously analyse the HTML and create the DOM tree.

Utilizing WP Rocket and its Load Javascript Deferred feature is the simplest way to manage the JavaScript resources. This option is available in the File optimization tab. In addition, if the defer feature conflicts with any file, we can easily prevent certain JS files from being deferred.

Minify CSS And JS Files

By making your code more compact, minification essentially optimizes the code. It means eliminating all line breaks, white spaces, and comments from the code. Therefore, minification will reduce the size of CSS and JS files and speed up their loading.

Although it seems simple, the truth is more difficult. Being sure to have excluded all the appropriate resources while minifying both file types is not always easy, especially if we are not developers. In either case, it takes time. Using a plugin like WP Rocket to manage minification is the fastest and most efficient method. We have the option to minify both CSS and JavaScript files in the file optimization tab.

Optimize The Images

Images are frequently the LCP component on desktop or mobile. We’ll increase the performance of the Largest Contentful Paint by decreasing their loading times.

We will address the following PageSpeed Insights audits by optimizing the images:

• Serve pictures in modern formats.
• Correctly sized pictures.
• Clearly encrypt images.
• Keep the network payloads small.

Compress Text Files

Text files like HTML, CSS, or JavaScript resources should also be compressed. To “zip” our files in a smaller and lighter format through compression, they will load more quickly. The transfer between the browser and server will be quicker once we reduce their size. These resources can be loaded quicker by the browser. LCP and load time will both increase.

Preload For Essential Assets (Such As the Largest Contentful Paint Image)

We may therefore be unsure of the best way to preload the largest Contentful Paint image. Preload is a helpful option. It instructs the browser to give the load on these resources top priority. In other words, the Preload delays the browser’s discovery and loading of these important files (such as the LCP image) for a considerable amount of time. A plugin like Perfmatters can also be used to preload the LCP image.

Make Early Third-Party Connections

The Preconnect option should be used. Assume a CSS or JS file is requested from a third-party, such as Facebook or Google Analytics. The external resource will be requested by the browser. When enabled, the Preconnect option instructs the browser to connect to the external domain as soon as possible. The browser will then handle the request concurrently with the rendering process.

As an alternative, we can use Perfmatters, a plugin. Because our browser may not support the preconnect option, dns-prefetch should always be used as a fallback technique. We’ll then be able to resolve DNS lookups more quickly. In other words, the external files will load faster, particularly on mobile networks.

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Conclusion

To sum up, we now know why the Largest Contentful Paint is important for performance and user experience, as well as how to improve its score. We will improve the LCP grade on the WordPress site by implementing all of these optimization techniques.