How to measure search engine optimization with Lighthouse

Why does this matter?

The Lighthouse search engine optimization (SEO) audit scans your page, tests for things that matter to search engines, and gives you a score so you can see specific areas for improvement. SEO matters because it's how you get more relevant users viewing your content. If a search engine has trouble seeing your page, you're possibly missing out on traffic sources.

Audit your page with Lighthouse

Run Lighthouse on a page that's representative of the content that you want search engines to see:

  1. Press `Control+Shift+J` (or `Command+Option+J` on Mac) to open DevTools.
  2. Click the Lighthouse tab.
  3. Make sure the SEO checkbox is selected in the Categories list.
  4. Click the Generate report button.

Lighthouse generates a report for your page so you can see areas where you can improve SEO for your site.

To learn how to fix issues flagged by Lighthouse, see the SEO audits collection.

Next steps

It's worth noting that the audit doesn't cover everything you could do to increase visibility in search engines. You'll have to check the guidelines for individual search engines because they may have different requirements.

Here are some guides for specific search engines: - Bing - Google Search - Yandex

There are also non-technical aspects that can improve visibility of your content in search engines, such as writing in the style of your target audience. Bottom line: make great content for the people you want to attract.

To learn more, check out Google's I/O talks: