(The Relationship Between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Ranking: Google Lighthouse)

Abstract

Purpose – Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the digital marketing strategies adopted by companies. Businesses carry out SEO studies to achieve better performance in organic search results. As of 2019, the search engine Google possessing 87.14 % of the market in Turkey has developed the Lighthouse tool to improve the quality of web pages. Lighthouse, extensively utilized by businesses, performs an analysis that measures on-page SEO and provides a SEO score at the end of the analysis. In the present study, it is aimed to determine the relationship between the SEO score provided by the Lighthouse analysis tool and Google rankings. Design/methodology/approach – Keywords have been needed to be used in the research. Using data from Google Trends, the top-searched product names under the shopping category in the last 12 months in Turkey have been identified. As a result of each search containing the predetermined keywords, the SEO analysis of twenty web pages which were organically ranked has been carried out with Lighthouse. The relationship between the emerging results of the analysis and Google rankings has been measured by Pearson correlation analysis. Findings – The research reveals that there is a weak negative correlation between Lighthouse SEO score and Google rankings. 160 web pages have been analyzed and in the URL’s of 97.5 % of the analyzed web pages have been found to include the keywords. Discussion – The findings have revealed results that will direct the SEO studies of the companies. It is recommended that even if businesses score 100 or closer to 100 at Lighthouse analysis, they should not settle for this and they should continue their SEO studies. Besides, as a result of the weak correlation between on-page SEO factors and Google ranking, it is assumed that off-page SEO is more valuable for businesses.