No matter if you are an SEO agency or a webmaster if you don't know about the largest contentful paint or LCP, then you may miss something big in 2021 about search engine optimization algorithms.
You can’t survive as an SEO company without knowing LCP. And as a webmaster, you won't be able to rank your website higher without this new algorithm.
Yes, you guessed it right, Google is just about to use this new algorithm for search engine optimization of websites. But how this new algorithm will work and how it will rank your website on the search engine result pages (SERPs)? Many questions pop up in your mind as an SEO company. Don't worry we are here to help you with it. We will let you know how you can utilize this new search engine optimization algorithm to rank your website higher.
Largest Contentful Paint or LCP
As a webmaster, you may find an SEO company to optimize your website with this new algorithm called Largest contentful paint. But you must know the basics of this new algorithm.
Google has announced recently that it will be using LCP or the largest contentful paint metric for user experience. And as you all know that user experience is the next generation of search engine optimization.
What Is LCP?
The largest contentful paint is the portion on your website which takes more time to download. If something takes more time on your page then it will impact SEO health. So more LCPs do more harm to your site rankings.
Why & When Google Will Use It?
But why Google will use and when it will start using these metrics to rank websites on SERPs?
Why: Enhanced User Experience
User experience will matter most while ranking sites. You will need an SEO company that can enhance the UI on your website. Google, Bing, and other search engines are trying hard to show sites only with enhanced user experience.
When: Anytime In 2021
Google can start using this new metric for site ranking anytime in 2021. It was announced officially in July of this year.
What Things Will Be Considered In LCP?
As you have learned that LCP or the largest contentful paint is the new algorithm that will be used in the future. Then what things will be considered to rank sites with LCP? What things an SEO company will have to take care of? Following are these things.
Images
Images are the most important portion of the content on your website for LCP. Because these days bloggers and websites are using more visual content. Some sites are using graphics, illustrations and some are using image slideshows to deliver content. So if there are any high dimension and high size images on your webpage, it will be considered seriously by the LCP and no doubt it will kill your SEO ranking.
Largest Paragraph
Not only images, but text in long paragraphs will also be considered seriously in the largest contentful paint. We know that text in long paragraphs is not going to slow down your webpages. Your SEO company will tell you not to worry about it, but you have to worry about it. Google’s new user experience metric, LCP, will consider it too.
Anything Which Downloads Slow
Other than high size images and long text paragraphs, anything which is large (in terms of content) on your webpages, are killing user experience. And Google won't bear such things anymore.
How To Get a High Score In LCP?
Yes, a good question to be answered rather than hiring an SEO company. You can try various things to get a high score in LCP. More high scores you have, the more Google will love your site. But an SEO company can help you in a better way if you want better and quick results, however, the following are the ways to do it for you.
Use Resized Images
As we have mentioned, the largest contentful paint will be considering images most of the time, so the best thing is to resize your images. Never allow them to cover most of the portion on your webpages. Try the following two things.
Upload Low Size & High Quality
Try to resize your images in a smaller size before you upload them on your webpages. Never compromise with the quality. Quality also matters.
Don't Resize With HTML Codes
Many webmasters are using HTML and other codes to resize the image. They don't compress and resize images in actuality. They just use codes to do it. Which won't work. You can’t trick Google with this simple thing.
Enhance Server Speed
The speed of your website server will also matter a lot. You have to enhance the server speed, yes, most of the small websites will face issues with it. But you can hire an SEO company to migrate your website to a new server. Following are some tips to do it.
Use Non-Shared Hosting
Try to use non-shared hosting as shared hosting will slow down your page loading speed. It will also load the heavy content (images, large paragraphs, etc.) after a few seconds of page loading completely. So it will kill the user experience.
Buy Premium Hosting
Try to use premium and VIP hosting for your websites. They provide dedicated servers and your page loading speed will enhance too.
Use Light coding
Coding structures can also make your web pages load faster or slower. So always get in touch with your developers and ask them to make your site load faster. If you don't have an in house team, then go to an SEO company to do it.
Be Serious About Mobile Optimization
User experience is directly linked with mobile optimization. Google ranks mobile-optimized websites most. So mobile optimization will be important to get the best LCP score.
The largest contentful paint is a user experience metric. It will be in use by Google in 2021. So the whole world has started working upon it from now. The demand for an SEO company with the largest contentful paint optimization will increase. Many websites have started optimizing their content according to this new algorithm announced by Google.
