Why a Technical Audit Matters

A technical audit helps you identify issues that can hurt user experience, search visibility, and conversion rates. Common focus areas include performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices. Running a quick audit is the fastest way to spot problem areas and prioritize improvements (Google SEO Starter Guide).

One of the easiest tools to get started with is Chrome's built-in Lighthouse audit. It's free, fast, and provides actionable insights for developers, designers, and marketers alike.

What Is Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is a diagnostic tool built into Chrome DevTools. It runs automated tests against a page and reports scores and recommendations across these categories:

• Performance
• Accessibility
• Best Practices
• SEO

Because the web is mobile-first, Lighthouse also lets you test mobile performance, which is critical for modern SEO and user experience (Google: Mobile-First Indexing).

Step-by-Step: Run a Lighthouse Audit

Follow these simple steps to run a mobile-first audit in Chrome:

1. Open the page you want to test in Google Chrome.
2. Right-click anywhere on the page and choose “Inspect” to open DevTools.
3. In the DevTools panel, select the “Lighthouse” tab.
4. Choose the device type - select “Mobile” for a mobile-first audit.
5. Select the categories you want to evaluate.
6. Click “Generate report” (or “Analyze page load").

Lighthouse will load the page, run its checks, and present a report with scores and detailed recommendations.

Interpreting Lighthouse Results

• Scores: Each category receives a numeric score (0–100). Green scores (90+) indicate strong performance, while yellow and red highlight areas needing attention.
• Diagnostics: Includes metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
• Opportunities: Specific suggestions to improve performance with estimated time savings.
• Passed/Failed Audits: Clear indicators for accessibility, SEO, and best-practice checks.

For example, a Performance score of 96 means the page is well-optimized, but you should still review the Opportunities and Diagnostics to catch incremental gains.

Quick Wins and Next Steps

After you run the audit, consider these next steps:

• Prioritize fixes by impact: Start with items that yield the biggest UX or SEO improvements.
• Address Core Web Vitals: Focus on LCP, TBT/FID, and CLS, since they directly affect search ranking and user experience.
• Optimize assets: Compress and serve responsive images in modern formats like WebP.
• Minimize render-blocking resources: Defer or async non-critical JavaScript and CSS.
• Improve accessibility: Fix missing alt attributes, color contrast issues, and ARIA labeling problems.
• Re-run regularly: Run audits after major changes and periodically to catch regressions.

👉 If you’re ready to take this further, explore our specialized services:

• Technical SEO Audits
• Performance Optimization

Best Practices for Testing

• Run multiple tests: Network conditions and page variability mean one run is not always representative.
• Test representative pages: Audit your homepage, landing pages, and key templates.
• Use lab and field data: Combine Lighthouse lab data with real-user metrics (e.g., Chrome UX Report or analytics).

Conclusion and Call to Action

Running a Lighthouse audit is a fast, effective way to surface technical issues affecting performance, accessibility, and SEO. It only takes a few minutes and gives you a prioritized list of improvements.

Try it now on your site: open Chrome, run Lighthouse as a mobile audit, and review your scores. If you’d like expert guidance, check out our SEO Services and we’ll help you prioritize fixes for long-term growth.

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References

1. Google SEO Starter Guide
2. Chrome Developers – Lighthouse Overview
3. Google Developers – Mobile-First Indexing
4. web.dev – Core Web Vitals