Tips on how to improve LCP on your site after monetization

Improving Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on your site after monetization is essential for ensuring a positive user experience. LCP measures how quickly the largest visible content element on your page loads and is fully rendered. A good LCP score is under 2.5 seconds. Here are several strategies to enhance LCP while managing your monetization efforts:

1. Optimize Images and Media

• Use Appropriate Formats: Use modern image formats like WebP or AVIF, which offer better compression without compromising quality.
• Compress Images: Optimize images to reduce file sizes. Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress images without significant loss in quality.
• Specify Dimensions: Always specify the width and height attributes in your image tags or CSS. This helps the browser allocate space for images before they load.

html
<img src="example.webp" alt="Example" width="800" height="600">

2. Improve Server Response Times

• Optimize your server and hosting environment to ensure fast response times. This may involve choosing a better hosting plan or provider, optimizing your database, or using server-side caching.

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

• Implement a CDN to serve static assets (like images, CSS, and JavaScript) from locations closer to your users. This reduces latency and speeds up content delivery.

4. Minimize Render-Blocking Resources

• Defer Non-Critical JavaScript: Use the defer or async attributes for script tags to prevent them from blocking rendering of the main content.
• Inline Critical CSS: Inline critical CSS needed for rendering the above-the-fold content and load non-critical CSS asynchronously.

5. Optimize Fonts

• Load web fonts efficiently by using the font-display: swap; property in your CSS. This ensures text is visible while fonts are loading, preventing delays in rendering.

css
@font-face {
    font-family: 'MyFont';
    src: url('myfont.woff2') format('woff2');
    font-display: swap;
}

6. Eliminate Unnecessary Plugins and Scripts

• Review your site’s plugins and scripts, especially third-party ones like ads and tracking scripts. Remove any that are unnecessary, as they can slow down your site.

7. Lazy Load Off-Screen Content

• Implement lazy loading for images and iframes that are off-screen to reduce the initial load time for above-the-fold content.

html
<img src="example.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="Example">

8. Optimize Your CSS

• Minimize and compress CSS files to reduce their size and improve loading times. Combine CSS files where possible to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

9. Reduce the Size of Your HTML

• Optimize your HTML structure to reduce its size. Remove unnecessary comments and whitespace, and ensure that only essential elements are loaded initially.

10. Monitor and Test Regularly

• Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, or WebPageTest to monitor your LCP score and identify areas for improvement. Make adjustments based on the insights gained from these tools.