SEO Glossary
LCP has been an official ranking factor since 2021. Pages with an LCP below 2.5 seconds show measurably lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates. Studies show that every additional second of load time reduces conversion by up to 7%. For SEO, a poor LCP means not only lost rankings but also less crawl budget, because Googlebot moves through the site more slowly.
LCP measures the render time of the largest image or text block in the visible area. Typical LCP elements are: hero images, headlines in large type, CSS background images, or video thumbnails. Important: LCP changes while the page loads — the final LCP value is only settled once the DOM is stable.
Four levers determine your LCP: server response time (TTFB), render-blocking resources, resource load delay, and client-side rendering. Optimize your hosting (EU servers, CDN), inline critical CSS, preload the LCP image, use modern image formats such as WebP or AVIF, and compress images to the exact display size. mekyn does this automatically — Lighthouse 95+ out of the box.
Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse (in Chrome DevTools), the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), and the mekyn DACH CWV Tracker are the most important tools. For field data, CrUX is the gold standard — lab data from Lighthouse can deviate because it is measured under idealized conditions.
You can find a detailed answer in the explanation above. For practical application, we recommend our tools.
You can find a detailed answer in the explanation above. For practical application, we recommend our tools.
You can find a detailed answer in the explanation above. For practical application, we recommend our tools.
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