FCP
First Contentful Paint
In one line
FCP (First Contentful Paint) measures the moment any meaningful content — text or image — first appears on screen, used as a supporting page-speed metric alongside Core Web Vitals.
Going deeper
FCP (First Contentful Paint) marks the moment the first meaningful pixel — any text or image — is painted on screen. It's used as a diagnostic companion to Core Web Vitals: a healthy LCP usually pulls FCP into a healthy range too.
Slow FCP almost always points to one of two issues: render-blocking resources (heavy fonts, CSS) or a slow server response, i.e. high TTFB. That's why teams typically read FCP and TTFB together rather than separately.
Don't confuse it with LCP. FCP is 'first thing visible'; LCP is 'largest meaningful thing visible'. Looking at both is the only way the numbers match up with perceived speed.
Related terms
TTFB
TTFB (Time to First Byte) measures how long it takes from a request being sent until the first byte of the response arrives — a foundational metric for server responsiveness and LCP work.
SEOCLS
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is the Core Web Vitals metric for visual stability — it sums up how much page elements jump around unexpectedly while the page is loading.
SEOINP
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is the Core Web Vitals metric that captures overall interaction responsiveness across a session — and it officially replaced FID in March 2024.
SEOCDN
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) caches your content on edge servers worldwide so users are served from a nearby node — directly improving TTFB, LCP and overall page speed.
SEOMobile SEO
Mobile SEO covers the rendering, speed and UX of your site on mobile devices — effectively a baseline expectation since Google moved to mobile-first indexing.
SEO