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General 10 min read· Updated Apr 2026

How to Improve Your Lighthouse Score from 50 to 90+

A tactical guide to dramatically improving your Google Lighthouse performance score. Covers the exact audit items that move the needle most, with prioritized fix order.

How Lighthouse Calculates Your Score

Lighthouse weights 6 metrics to calculate performance score:



TBT and LCP account for 55% of your score. Fix those first.

Step 1: Run a Baseline Audit

Before making any changes, run an audit on VitalFix to establish your baseline:


1. Go to vitalfix.dev/dashboard

2. Enter your URL and click "Run Audit"

3. Note your Performance, LCP, TBT, and CLS values

4. Check the "Opportunities" tab for prioritized fixes


This gives you a clear before/after comparison.

Step 2: Fix the Highest-Impact Issues

Attack issues in this order (highest impact first):


1.Eliminate render-blocking resources — inline critical CSS, defer non-critical
2.Optimize images — WebP format, proper sizing, lazy loading
3.Remove unused JavaScript — tree-shake, code-split, remove dead code
4.Minimize main thread work — break up long tasks, defer non-critical JS
5.Enable text compression — ensure gzip/brotli is enabled on your server
6.Add image dimensions — prevent CLS from dimension-less images

Step 3: Re-Test and Iterate

After each change:


1. Deploy to a staging environment

2. Run another audit on VitalFix

3. Compare against your baseline using the History tab

4. Repeat until you hit 90+


Real improvement is iterative. Don't try to fix everything at once — tackle the biggest wins first.

Test these fixes on your site

Run a free audit to see your current General score and get prioritized fix recommendations.

Run Free Audit

Related Guides

LCP8 min

How to Fix LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — Complete Guide

INP9 min

How to Fix INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — Responsiveness Guide

CLS7 min

How to Fix CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — Stop Layout Jank

TTFB6 min

How to Reduce TTFB (Time to First Byte) — Server Speed Guide