Hero image not preloaded — slowing largest content load

The LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) image is the main visual — usually a hero banner — that a visitor sees first. Preloading it tells the browser to download it as a top priority, before it has even finished reading the rest of the page code. Without preloading, the browser discovers the hero image late and loads it last, making visitors wait longer to see a complete page. LCP is one of Google's Core Web Vitals and directly affects your search ranking. Add a link element with rel="preload", as="image", and fetchpriority="high" pointing to your hero image in the page's head section. This is consistently one of the highest-return page speed fixes available.