If your website feels sluggish or is struggling to rank on Google, the culprit is likely hidden in your Core Web Vitals. Specifically, two metrics dictate the first impression your site makes: FCP (First Contentful Paint) and LCP (Largest Contentful Paint).
When these metrics are in the red, your site frustrates users, increases bounce rates and signals to Google that your page offers a poor experience. The good news? Fixing them is straightforward if you know where to look.
Here is your actionable guide to resolving FCP and LCP issues and turning those red scores green in 2025.
Understanding the Metrics: FCP vs. LCP
Before fixing them, you need to know what you are aiming for.
- FCP (First Contentful Paint): This is the time it takes for the browser to render the first piece of DOM content (text, logo, header). It confirms to the user that the site is actually loading.
- Target: Under 1.8 seconds.
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): This measures how long it takes for the main content (usually a hero image or H1 tag) to fully load. This is the primary indicator of perceived load speed.
- Target: Under 2.5 seconds.
7 Steps to Resolve FCP and LCP Issues
- Compress and Modernize Your Images
Unoptimized images are the most common cause of a poor LCP score. If you are serving massive, high-resolution files, you are forcing the user’s browser to work overtime.
- Compression: You can reduce file size by 50-80% without losing visual quality using compression tools.
- Next-Gen Formats: Stop using heavy PNGs or JPEGs. Convert your images to WebP or AVIF. These formats support transparency and high quality at a fraction of the file size.
- Result: Faster load times and significantly less bandwidth usage for mobile users.
- Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS
Browsers pause everything to read CSS files before displaying content. If your CSS is unoptimized, the screen stays blank longer (hurting your FCP).
- Inline Critical CSS: Identify the CSS required for “above the fold” content and put it directly in the HTML head.
- Minify Files: Remove whitespace and comments from your stylesheets to reduce file size.
- Remove Unused CSS: Don’t make the browser download code it doesn’t use on that specific page.
- Defer Non-Critical JavaScript
Just like CSS, JavaScript can block the browser from rendering the page. If you have heavy JS libraries loading in the <head> section, your FCP will suffer.
- Move to Footer: Place non-essential scripts right before the closing </body> tag.
- Use the Defer Attribute: Add defer or async to your script tags. This tells the browser to process the HTML first and load the script in the background.
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- Reduce Server Response Time (TTFB)
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is how long the server takes to start sending data. If your server is slow, FCP and LCP are delayed before they even start.
- Target: Aim for a TTFB under 200ms.
- The Fix: Upgrade to faster hosting (like LiteSpeed servers), optimize your database queries, and ensure server-side caching is enabled.
- Optimize Fonts for Instant Rendering
Fonts often cause “flashes of invisible text,” which delays FCP. Browsers sometimes hide text until the font file is fully downloaded.
- Preload: Use <link rel=”preload”> for your primary fonts.
- Swap Strategy: Use the CSS property font-display: swap;. This tells the browser to show a system font immediately and swap it to your custom font once it loads.
CSS
@font-face {
font-family: ‘MyFont’;
src: url(‘MyFont.woff2’) format(‘woff2’);
font-display: swap;
}
- Implement Smart Lazy Loading
Lazy loading stops the browser from downloading images that aren’t visible on the screen yet. However, you must be careful:
- Do: Add loading=”lazy” to images below the fold. This frees up resources for the initial view.
- Don’t: Never lazy load your Hero Image (LCP element). This will actually worsen your score because the browser will wait to load the most important image.
- Leverage Caching and CDNs
If your server is in New York and your visitor is in London, latency will hurt your speed.
- CDN (Content Delivery Network): Use a CDN (like Cloudflare) to store copies of your site on servers globally. This ensures users download data from a server near them.
- Browser Caching: Enable Leverage Browser Caching in your .htaccess file. This allows returning visitors to load your site instantly from their own device’s memory rather than downloading everything again.
Final Thoughts
Improving Core Web Vitals isn’t just about chasing a high score on a tool; it’s about respecting your user’s time. By optimizing images, handling scripts properly, and improving server response, you create a seamless experience that Google rewards with higher rankings.
If you are struggling to identify exactly which scripts or images are slowing you down, you might need a deeper audit.
Check out my full guide click here: Advanced Core Web Vitals Optimization