Understanding Google Lighthouse Scores and Its Significance in SEO

 

What is Google Lighthouse?

Google Lighthouse is an automated, open-source tool offering major insights for making improvements to your website. With the use of a Google Lighthouse report, you can evaluate and score the level of positive user experience (UX) that users are finding on your web pages.

In general, having a website with good UX indicates that your site visitors are having seamless interactions with your site and its content. In basic terms, providing good quality UX on your website means ensuring that your web page visitors can simply and easily browse, participate with interactive features and complete actions on your site without annoying interruptions.

If Google determines that your website is offering visitors a poor user experience, it may render penalties for your SEO endeavours and limit your brand’s online visibility.

Google Lighthouse Score and Its Significance in SEO

Google is now putting more emphasis on web page experience, using a new set of Core Web Vitals or signals. These signals can be analysed in Lighthouse to reveal to what extent your page viewers are enjoying and benefiting from your website.

Lighthouse also informs you about which elements of UX on your web pages are effective and which ones are not. It also offers valuable tips concerning how to improve your web pages for better conversion rates and a large targeted audience.

Metrics Used by Google Lighthouse

For auditing your web pages to reveal where you need to make improvements, Google uses a basic 1-100 grading system. As you most likely know, Google includes page loading speed and mobile experience in its algorithm. Lighthouse will show you your page level of performance in these major areas of importance.

These user experience ratings are important for the following reasons:

  • Nearly half of all mobile site users agree that the least attractive aspect of mobile browsing is the waiting time while web pages load.
  • Your website conversion rates will drop according to any prolonged loading time required for fully viewing your web pages. According to Google, the rates will drop 7 percent per every 100 milliseconds.
  • Web page visitors will stay 70 percent longer on pages that require less than five seconds to load.

If you are not using Lighthouse, likely, you are not aware of your web page load speed and mobile experience. You will probably continue to lose valuable customers at a rapid rate.

Additional Key Metrics

More key metrics involved include the following:

Web Page Visual Stability. For a good user experience and to increase your target audience and conversion rates, you need web pages with good visual stability. Your pages must load smoothly and rapidly without visual interruptions or interference.

 Good Site Security. Your web pages must be operating on HTTPS to gain and retain the confidence of your viewers and customers. If your site visitors see that your website is not secure, they are much less likely to trust your brand and buy your products.

Lack of Annoying Elements. If your web pages contain pop-ups that slow down page load time and interfere with easy viewing of your major page content, your site visitors will be annoyed and most likely leave your web pages to view those of a competing website.

Lighthouse will inform you of these and other serious issues with your web pages and recommend appropriate changes. After implementing recommended changes, you are likely to benefit from improved Lighthouse scores.

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