Improve Performance & Boost Traffic

Website Optimisation

It is a FACT that a fast-loading, error-free website will outperform your competition. Technical SEO will ensure your website can rank effectively. Find out about our one-off service, SEO packages, and free DIY tips.

Has my website
been optimised properly?

We will happily provide you with a Free Website Audit to find out what the story is, but you can find out yourself whether the site is optimised or not. It’s easy and we can tell you how.

As part of our ‘first stage’ for all SEO customers who sign up, we go through an optimisation process. The first thing we do is check how your website performs by testing with two FREE TO USE tools. We use GT Metrix and Google Page Speed

These tools will check the performance of your website and let you know what needs to be done. It’s a good first step to identifying any issues.

What areas should
be optimised to
make my website
fast
and rank better?

Each website is different and we provide optimisation for many types. Mostly, we seem to optimise WordPress, but we do have clients with Joomla, Laravel, custom coded sites and various e-Commerce sites.

Things to identify and fix / optimise to improve performance:

Speed Test:

How fast does your website run? In GT Metrix we aim for A’s and B’s but often we see F’s and worse… Load times are an issue, so start here and identify areas that can be improved.

Code Compliance:

How up to date is your website? Is it using the latest version? Are all add-ons and plugins compliant and providing a benefit without detriment to load times.

Server Performance:

Is your hosting provider up to spec and is the website causing poor performance issues, or is it the server? Some hosts will limit performance depending on the package you buy, so this is an area to check. Maybe a cloud linux package is hampering your load times.

PHP Versions

Are you running an old out of date, PHP version? Sites should not be running PHP5.6 and most (at the time of writing) should be running 7.4 or above. Version 8.0 is now available.

Image Compression

Are you optimising images BEFORE you upload? Are you uploading the right size of image to suit the purpose on your page? We see so many sites, with massive oversized images and this will cause issues. We recommend and educate our clients for best practise, to handle images + we optimise websites with tools to further optimise after you have uploaded.

Hosted Video or Embedded

Sometimes there is a need to host the video and serve it directly, but what’s the impact on page load times. Huge payloads cause problems, so consider remote hosting the video or using YouTube or Vimeo to stream the video and improve page performance.

Render Blocking Javascript and CSS

As part of our cache analysis, we identify how many JS scripts and CS files are loading. Do they need to load straight away, or can they be deferred to improve the initial load time. It is important to check, test and evaluate all files loads and remove redundant files, testing throughout changes to ensure site is operating normally.

Browser / Page / Database Cache

The idea behind caching is to avoid loading everything every time and instead, only loading recent changes. The trick is adapt the rules so that only regularly changing content is updated and regular content that has not changed is cached to improve performance and overall page loading times.

Minification of JS and CSS files

It is beneficial to minify JS, CSS and HTML files, comments and extra spaces which can be removed without causing problems to the site. The objective is to minimise code and reduce file size, yet provide the same functionality while reducing the bandwidth of network requests.

Remote CDN – Content Delivery Network

Using a CDN is recognised as an effective boost to SEO (most of the time and if done correctly). All of our SEO clients benefit from a high performance CDN as standard, which we run through a dedicated sub-domain and SSL unique to the client website. This service pro-actively reduces bandwidth costs and boosts performance even further. 

You can use / try free Cloudflare (or others) and check the results between operating your site with/without CDN being operational. You should see a clear performance benefit. 

FREE Tip: Google Site Kit

If you are running a WordPress Website, install Google’s own Site Kit which taps into Google Search Console and Google Analytics to provide you with key data. 

What is the best strategy to optimise my website for improved ranking performance?

You may have heard the terms ‘on-site SEO’ and ‘off-site SEO’ and maybe even SEO or SEM. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is this: If your website is well constructed, works well on all devices, is quick and has content that is popular and read, shared and liked by others…. it will succeed. 

If your website is not doing well, you need to identify the reasons why?

Website Design: Is it done well?

Most of our client sites see traffic dominating from Mobile. This is why ‘Mobile First’ is so important when putting your site together. Make SURE it’s delivering a good experience for your visitors in Mobile, then Tablet and Desktop devices. If it’s not, get it sorted. If you can’t do it, we can help you. Just reach out to us for some help.

UX / UI Design: is it effective?

The UI  (User Interface) is the construct of your website which forms the functionality e.g buttons, navigation menus and general construct. The UX (User Experience) is how well these are delivered and how well they connect together. If these two elements are optimum, the visitor to your website will be able to access the information they need and perform the purchases, enquiries or actions on your website, effectively. 
Technical SEO: have you solved all errors?
As per our ‘website optimisation’ notes above, Technical SEO is all the technical stuff e.g code base, CMS engine, add-ons/plugins, php versions, server performance etc
Website Speed: do pages load fast? 
Make it fast. The faster your website, the better chance it has or ranking well (assuming you do everything else right too). We know from experience over 20 years in the industry, optimising a website properly, can make a big difference. 

Social Media: are people aware of your site?

Whilst this is not a direct ranking factor, it is an important tool in your arsenal. Once you have written loads of great content and got all of the technical and performance aspects in check, solid content needs to be shared, liked and distributed effectively. This is where social media comes into play. The more eyeballs on content, the more people who can like and share it with others. Improve your social performance and you can improve your rankings. 

Need help to optimise your website ?

The optimisation processes described on this page, form part of our strategy. If you are thinking of using us, we can cover all of this within our SEO packages (starting from only £200 per month), although we offer a one-off Optimisation Service for customers who want to tackle SEO themselves.

Learn more about Website Maintenance >>