Notion 75
Tools to improve SEO and reduce website impact
Target skills
Actively improving and maintaining your website's performance metrics will give you a significant advantage in online visibility in the long run.
In this point, you'll discover some great free testing tools that can ultimately help you avoid SEO disasters or other performance penalties.
Google Lighthouse https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdconlkpinefehnmjammfjpmpbjk?hl=en
Lighthouse runs various tests to establish how well a website or app can be found by search engines and displayed in the search results. Once installed on the Chrome browser, the Google extension generates an SEO report on the visited web page.
Here is an example of how to find Lighthouse in your Chrome settings and a screenshot of its test results:
The setting for finding this option in your Google Chrome browser are: Customize and Control Google Chrome > More tools > Developer tools > Lighthouse > Generate report
PageSpeed Insights
To use this tool, you would simply enter your website's URL and, within seconds, you get a detailed report on everything that is hindering your site's performance.
A score of 80-90 is a good goal to aspire towards! A perfect 100/100 score doesn't necessarily guarantee you a top spot in search results. Also take into account that Core Web Vitals only represent 55% of your overall PageSpeed score.
Below is an example of how the Erasmus+ website scores in terms of its Core Web Vitals (which we discussed in the previous point):
Image description: This picture shows you the speed of the website of Erasmus+ for the latest 28 days. The website is passed when it meets the four main criteria and makes your website quick or slow. Therefore, according to its criteria (First Contentful Paint 0.9 seconds, First Input Delay 18 milliseconds, Largest Content Paint 1.7 seconds, Cumulative Layout Shift 0.05 milliseconds), the website of Erasmus+ is passed Core Web Vitals Assessment.
The above tools will provide you with detailed and actionable reports that will allow you to improve the performance of your site. Take into account that according to the results, items listed in red will be your top priority, followed by those in orange.
By optimizing the performance of your website, you also improve the user experience. It is therefore easier for a visitor to get the information they are looking for when your website is fast. This is a great advantage and having a web host that prioritizes performance will contribute positively to this. Optimized sites also require less server work, which is good for the environment.