search london - the technical factors that every small or local business should be achieving

@JamesBavington@StrategiQ

Search London10th May 2016


The technical factors that every small or local business should be achieving



• 10 years agency experience

• Background in design & development

• Specialist in on-page SEO

• Technical Director at StrategiQ

• Specialised in SMBs

• Studio in Ipswich Suffolk

• Team of 13 creatives & marketers



I ensure StrategiQ’s creative & technical team produce the best possible digital

media for our marketers.



SMBs can have enterprise level, optimised websites without spending loads of money.



Achievable technical objectivesthat Google and most importantly

your users want to see.



before we start…

The Technical Cheatsheet for Small & Local Businesses23-24 June 2016

ungagged.com/londonTickets still available



The Technical Cheatsheet for Small & Local Businesses

1. The Quick Wins2. Structured Data with JSON-LD3. ‘Mobile Friendly’

4. Site Speed & Hosting5. HTTPS6. Area/Coverage Pages7. Google My Business8. Conversion9. The Technical Cheat Sheet for Local/SMBs

23-24 June 2016ungagged.com/london

Tickets still available



Site Speed & Hosting



2010Page Speed is a ranking factor albeit small, mainly targeting slow sites.

bit.ly/SL_speed_algo

Right now..Page Speed is abig usability factor for users, particularly on mobile.

2015Google have been experimenting with SERP Slow Labels.

bit.ly/SL_slow_labels



where do I start?

The Obvious ?

• Use a good theme with minimal plugins.

• Compress, combine and minify your code.

• Compress your images.

• Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

• Reduce DNS lookups

• Compression via .htaccess

The Difference

• Use specialist hosting

• Use 3rd Party performance services

• But perhaps most importantly…



1. Create a culture that strives for performance.

2. Specify performance as a tech requirement.

3. Document, share and evolve best practice.

get buy-in from your developers



http://brook.wpengine.com/



https://wpengine.com

Seek specialist hosting



For the developers:

1. Migration tool

2. Staging environment

3. Git Push & Version Control

4. Automated Daily Back-ups

5. Automatic WP updates

For the SEO / Account Exec

1. Fast EverCache architecture

2. Built-in CDN

3. £34pa SSLs or 3rd party SSL

4. No caching/security plugins needed

5. Built-in Redirect Rules

Example WP Engine Plan

£7 10 installsper month £4 100 installs

per month



We migrated 25 WordPress clients over 3 days from various hosts.

36%Average decrease in page load speed

(Based on an average of 5 tests taken before and after the migration).



That’s great, but is there anything quick and easy I can do in the short-term?



https://www.cloudflare.com/



CloudflareUser Your Server

Routing your site through CloudFlare

CDN Optimisation Security DNS

Integrated, fast DNS services.

DDoS

Protection from advanced DDoS

attacks

Enterprise-grade Website Application

Firewall.

Fast caching for both mobile and desktop

users.

Distributed content that speeds up your

website.



CloudFlare’s free CDN & Optimisation example

3 sec

2 sec

1 sec

0 sec

2.71 sec

2.09 sec

1.67 sec

Shared Hosting

(Based on an average of 5 tests taken before and after the migration).



https:// & Security



Dec ‘15Google have started prioritisingindexing HTTPS:// over HTTP://

bit.ly/https_indexing

Aug ‘14HTTPs is a ‘slight’ ranking factor and increasing usability and trust factor.

bit.ly/https_signal

Jan ‘16Google are still experimenting by shaming insecure sites in Chrome.

bit.ly/http_shame

Dec ‘15Chrome launches a dedicated security panel.

bit.ly/chrome_security_panel



“The goal of this proposal is to more clearly display to users that HTTP provides no data

security.”

You can see this Chrome experiment today, navigate here in your Chrome browser:

chrome://flags



Browsers insist on a SSL/TLSconnection for the HTTP/2 Protocol.

bit.ly/pete_http2



OK, I’ll do it,how much does it cost?



or free at CloudFlare!



User Cloudflare Server



SSL Off

Free Flexible SSL

Full SSL*

* Requires valid SSL on your server

CloudFlare’s free service includes a

Flexible SSL.

Ecommerce still requires an SSL on your server.



converting your site from http to https isn’t as painful as you may think

John Mueller’s migration tips and mythsbit.ly/https_migration

Posted 1st Feb 2016



cumulative iteration of best practice.Anybody can have a fast, secure site.

1. Engage your developers with page speed.

2. Seek specialised hosting. It’s inexpensive.

3. Route through CloudFlare for free CDN & Security.

4. Secure your site. Free SSLs at CloudFlare.

5. Switching to https isn’t as complicated as you think.

summary



Thank you.@jamesbavington

The Technical Cheatsheet for Local SMBsungagged.com/london23rd-24th July 2016

search london - the technical factors that every small or local business should be achieving

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