How to Use Google Lighthouse to Improve Site Speed?

We are living in an age of constant technological advancement. New and innovative tools are being introduced to make the user experience better. One of such innovations is Google Lighthouse.

You are probably thinking;

“What is Google Lighthouse?”

Well, it is an automated open-source tool that helps improve the quality of web pages is referred to as Google Lighthouse. In simple words, it checks your website and indicates what improvements can be made in its SEO, performance, and accessibility for high-quality web pages. This tool will also provide a score that means improving your page and how significant it is.

It is a must-have tool developed by Google. It is available to operate from Google Chrome – it is readily available in Chrome DevTools.

Worried that you don’t use Google Chrome? Well, here is a piece of good news for you. You can also get the Google Lighthouse extension for other browsers as an npm module or a web tool.

Google Lighthouse for Website Performance

This article will discuss everything about how to use the Google Lighthouse to improve site speed. Here are some fantastic tips, tricks, and tools on ways to keep your web pages fast and light.

Site speed can be tricky for Search Engine Optimization practitioners; it is crucial for ranking on Google and a significant factor in customer’s experience. According to various studies, even a tiny fractional improvement matters. Every company features a millisecond improvement in loading a page to a 1% increase in the revenue.

Speed Tips from Google Lighthouse

In today’s discussion, we’ll talk over the different speed tips from Google Lighthouse. These strategies will help you speed up your web pages and improve the overall quality.

Eliminate Render-Blocking

Every time the audience visits your page, their browser downloads, requests, and processes external CSS and JavaScript files – this is known as render-blocking. So, whenever a visitor accesses your website, their browser processes the render-blocking file before looking at the things they want to purchase.

CSS and JavaScript are the most powerful tools. However, they might also slow down the site. It doesn’t necessarily mean the CSS and JavaScript files load to show the meaningful page content at the start of the process.

For JavaScript, add some pieces of inline in the HTML when required. Besides, critical CSS is often inclined as well.

Provide Smaller Payloads

CSS, HTML, and JavaScript – each of them can be compressed and minified to reduce the size of the file. In simple words, Minification is the process of shrinking a file without altering how the browser processes it. Minification includes carriage returns, removing comments, formatting, and irrelevant strings.

On the other hand, compression shrinks the size of a file – just like a zipping tool. There are numerous compression services like Gzip and Brotti that shrink the file size without changing its functionality. Therefore, you can easily use these tools to shrink the file sizes without impacting their function.

Optimize Images

Optimizing doesn’t necessarily mean reducing the image quality. Several formats like JPEG 2000, WebP and JPEG XR provide high-grade quality images at high compression rates – this means the image and the web page will load rapidly.

Moreover, you can also take responsive images that specify the image size for every page load. This way, you can generate numerous sizes of every image and put up the smallest one required for every page. You can also use a content delivery network – it makes the process a lot easier.

Extend the Caching

Your visitor’s browser can temporarily collect a file. This is quite helpful for repeat visits to a web page and the files used on the website. The browser accesses the stored, local copy each time until the cache period expires. After time expiry, the browser requires a new version which caches it again.

However, this isn’t as advantageous for first-time visitors. Only those who make it past the first click and often return to the site can seek the benefit.

Conclusion

Google lighthouse online is among the best technological evolvement to data. By improving the quality of the web pages, Google lighthouse can attract more visitors quickly.

By implementing the speed tips and strategies from Google Lighthouse, you can quickly increase the traffic to your website, which ultimately means more revenue. To find out more ways to improve the audience towards your webpage, stay connected.