As a website owner, optimizing your site for search engines is very important. However, to effectively deal with these factors, it is very important to use techniques such as Google SEO tools. One of the most creative solutions you can use right now is Lighthouse.
Lighthouse is quickly becoming one of Google’s favorite SEO tools for mobile websites. Many still use this tool to check the performance of their mobile web pages, but this tool can provide much more guidance on how to improve a web page or app.
What is a Lighthouse?
Lighthouse is an open-source tool provided by Google developers so that anyone can check their web page metrics and score. After knowing its score, we can optimize our web page and improve our score according to the criteria.
The Lighthouse framework is already integrated into other Google SEO tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, and browser-based tools through the Chrome Browser Developer Tools. This program can be run on any page, both public and private.
History of the Lighthouse
Google developers created this tool because popular websites lacked performance, and there was no single measurement tool for it; So they created Google Lighthouse and other SEO tools for performance, reach, and SEO. Lighthouse helped developers around the world improve their web pages accordingly.
Why is the Lighthouse important?
Lighthouse’s high score is important among Google’s SEO tools. According to this score, Google changes the ranking of the website. A digital business needs to have its web page on the first page of search engines and in the first five results. Search engine users rarely go beyond the first page.
A high Lighthouse score means you have a well-performing website. Page loading speed is very important because users don’t want to wait for your web page to load. The recommended minimum page load time is two seconds, which the user unconsciously expects. If your page takes longer than this, your user will slowly become frustrated with your website and may eventually leave.
What is a good score in Lighthouse?
Lighthouse examines the web page and ranks it between 0 and 100. A “good” (green) score is above 90. A poor (orange) is between 89 and 50, and a “bad end-user experience” (red) is a score below 50.
Getting to know the Lighthouse site review criteria
The tools provided by Lighthouse are grouped into five optimization categories: Performance, Best Practices, Accessibility, SEO, and Leading Web Apps. Users can select one, several, or all five categories, depending on which aspect of their website they want to analyze.
Efficiency or performance
In this section, Lighthouse analyzes how fast a website or app loads and how quickly users can access the content. Here, Lighthouse analyzes six-speed metrics:
- First Contentful Paint: This metric indicates the time before the first text or image is visible to users.
- First Meaningful Paint: This metric indicates when the main content of a page is visible to users.
- Speed index: The speed index is a uniform measure to express how fast the content of a page loads.
- Time to Interactive: This measure shows the time when the user can fully interact with the page and its content.
- First CPU Idle: when the main page activity is low enough to process inputs.
- Estimated Input Latency: Generally, each application should perform all calculations during page load within 5 seconds. If the latency is more than 50 milliseconds, users may perceive the application or website as too slow.
Best practices
This benchmark identifies any element of web development that does not follow current guidelines and best practices. 16 Lighthouse-tested practices examine common web development mistakes and modern web development standards. The score of best practices in Lighthouse is between 0 and 100. 0 is the worst possible score, and 100 is the best.
SEO
Lighthouse runs various tests to determine how well a website or app can be crawled by search engines and displayed in search results. These Lighthouse tests, which Google describes as “SEO,” are very limited. Anyone with a website or app that isn’t getting the maximum score should make the necessary adjustments. Lighthouse currently conducts 13 audits in the search engine optimization category.
Accessibility
The Lighthouse Accessibility Tool examines how people with disabilities can use a website or app. This tool tests important elements such as buttons or links to see if they are described well enough or if images have alts so that screen readers can describe the visual content for visually impaired users.
Advanced web applications or PWAs
This department was originally the core of the Lighthouse. This tool was what Lighthouse started as, but now it’s just one of five-tool categories that only matter to leading web application providers. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web apps that provide several benefits to users. Including installability, responsive design, re-connectivity, linkability, discoverability, network independence, and security.
How to access the Lighthouse?
PageSpeed Insights site
Site PageSpeed Insights used only to show one score, but now this model uses Google’s SEO tools from Lighthouse analytics functions. Each URL can be tested to analyze six performance values and the results of additional audits and recommendations. An overall speed score is also compiled from six performance measures.
Developer tools in Chrome browser
As of April 2018, Lighthouse is also available in the Google Chrome browser through Google SEO Tools. Here, users can choose which of the five main categories they want to run an audit on. There are also device options where users can select mobile or desktop, and a range of simulated internet speeds are used for analysis.
Chrome extension
Full Lighthouse tools can also be run using a Chrome extension. You can find the Lighthouse Chrome extension here (if you’re using the Chrome browser). The Lighthouse performance audit can also be done through Google’s web. Dev portal.
Final word
Page loading speed is as important to Google as it is to your users. Poor page load speed can hurt your bounce rate and, to some extent, your organic ranking. Lighthouse helps you analyze web pages and identify areas to improve page load speed and user experience. Pair Lighthouse with other Google SEO tools or similar site audit programs to comprehensively review your site’s performance.
Lighthouse is not the only site speed tool; it is a valuable addition to your Google SEO toolbox. Lighthouse is relatively faster and gives you instant feedback based on real-world usage.