Google Lighthouse is the industry standard for testing website performance, and is now built into our SEO plugin, SmartCrawl.
Lighthouse has historically been able to run in several ways: as a Chrome DevTools, as a separate Chrome add-on (with a few restrictions), and as a Node package (incorporating it into your build process).
Now, you can do it from right within SmartCrawl’s dashboard (or if you’re a WPMU DEV member, from our streamlined Hub interface), without touching a line of code.
Continue reading for the full article, or use the links below to jump to any section:
Why Lighthouse?
A Guided Lighthouse Tour
The Start of Something Big
Looming Large: Page Experience
What to Look for in Lighthouse Results
Setting Up Lighthouse in SmartCrawl
WordPress Dashboard Settings
(Re)Ports of Call
The Hub Settings
Advantages of Using Lighthouse SEO in SmartCrawl
A Beacon of Light(house)
Alright, let’s delve into this illuminating new feature.
optimization articles in the past, many variables go into your testing results. What Lighthouse tests via your local machine in a controlled environment does not equate 1:1 to real-world usage. Still, it is a useful indicator on the whole, and a valuable addition to your toolkit.
announced a set of three metrics with which the browser would measure performance.
Known as Web Vitals, these metrics ? Loading, Interactivity, & Visual Stability ? became part of a Google initiative to provide guidance for quality signals.
With Web Core Vitals comprising more than half of Lighthouse’s performance score, the focus changed to new, more refined goals.
Lighthouse Scoring Calculator:
Lighthouse scoring calculator allows you to select device type and scoring version.
The Lighthouse report also features some opportunities to improve the site speed of your mobile site, including how much loading time they will save. These include reducing render-blocking stylesheets, render-blocking scripts, properly sizing images, and fixing offscreen images.
Lighthouse gives you a tremendous amount of insight into the performance of your page. You can and should parlay these findings to your advantage.
Setting Up Lighthouse in SmartCrawl
Armed with the knowledge of how important search metrics are, let’s implement our supreme surveyor of SEO-ness, SmartCrawl. (Say that five times fast!!)
You will have the option to continue using SEO check ups, but we highly recommend switching to the new SEO Audits. With it, you’ll get the best of the web on your own site, ensuring it’s always optimized for search engine results ranking. (Also, please note that our SEO Checkup tool will become fully depreciated after the next few version releases.)
SmartCrawl’s documentation.
One health test you’ll be glad to test positive for is SmartCrawls’s SEO.
Each Audit includes an overview, a status, and a description on best practices or how to fix. Click the dropdown arrow next to any listed audit to see suggestions on how to improve your SEO.
Single-click simplicity to all the fixes or recommendations SmartCrawl makes.
We recommend addressing as many of the identified issues as possible to ensure your site is the most SEO friendly.
Moz account by providing your API credentials (Access ID and Secret Key).
Checking SEO tools via the Hub interface is visually pleasing, useful, and convenient, as users can view all their sites’ scores in the same place. And, this can be done in tandem with accessing the information through the WP plugin dashboard, or instead of it. It’s really nice having the option for both.
SEO features are fully integrated with the Hub, so you can manage all your connected sites from a single, streamlined point of access.
free trial of our full membership, or our fully dedicated individual site hosting service. If you’re not completely happy, we’ll refund your hard-earned moolah.
Whoever you use as a hosting service, and whatever plugins or tools you avail yourself of, keep Google Lighthouse and Page Experience signals in mind, and make sure your tools & providers are trusted and reliable.
