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Speed & Performance

A Website Architecture JourneyWebsite’s are not static and neither are the search engines that crawl them. It’s important

to understand that every time content is added, deleted or changed, “clutter” builds up affecting your website’s speed and performance. Search engines score your

website’s speed and performance. Consequently, monitoring your site architecture is not optional when you need to earn and

maintain organic search engine rankings.

A clean website!After careful planning, implementation and launch, your website is clean and clutter free.

The following pages outline 12 activities with which anyone who is responsible for a website should be familiar. Whether or not you consider yourself “technical,” it is important to understand that each activity has an impact on your website clutter, speed and performance.

Have you done any of these?

• The website goes live, traffic begins• Site is confirmed and is being indexed by

Google• Analytics & Webmaster Tools are setup and

working• Small issues arise, small content changes are

made

Q1January

Architecture Advice:

• Be sure analytics is properly setup.

• Be sure to have Google Webmaster tools setup.

• Be sure to have both xml and html sitemaps auto-updated.

• Test your website on all popular browsers; desktop, tablet & mobile.

• Content & navigation should be silo’d with logical hierarchy.

Launch a Website!

• First blog posts are live• Categories & Tags are assigned• Buying and using copyright images• Blogs are copied, inbound linking starts,

Comments too• Analytics data is reporting activity

Q1February

Architecture Advice:

• Be sure that Google is not indexing www & non-www versions.

• No Index paginated blog pages.

• Carefully consider blog URL structure before going live.

• Make sure your images have links and titles.

• Don’t use copyrighted material for your business site.

Start Blogging

• A new marketing campaign = More traffic, More links

• Calls to action are added strategically throughout the site

• Content is placed offsite linking back to marketing pages

• Content updates are made to link more pages & posts internally

Q1March

Architecture Advice:

• Make links that are going to temporary landing pages nofollow.

• Landing pages for marketing campaigns should be noindex.

• Keep an eye out for duplicate meta descriptions and meta titles.

Marketing Campaigns

• XML sitemaps are fixed, they weren’t auto-updating

• A custom 404 page is properly setup, it was not working

• Social media icons fixed • Javascript is updated – critical release due to

hacking concerns• A few URL’s were changed to be more

“optimized”

Q2April

Architecture Advice:

• Be sure that you have an updated / clean XML sitemap.

• Test your custom 404 page.

• When changing URL’s be sure to also use 301 redirects.

• After changing URL’s update internal links to new page.

A Round of Fixes

• Home page is updated after reviewing analytics

• New pages of content are added• Other pages are consolidated• Links are sprinkled throughout site to new

content pages

Q2April

Architecture Advice:

• Use htaccess to ensure all urls are lower case only.

• Watch out for exact match site-wide links that can be found in the footer or sidebar.

• Make sure there is only one H1 title used on each page. It is ok to have multiple H2 and H3 tags.

New Content is Added

• A new blog category is created for your targeted audience

• Index bloat is in progress• Pages are being indexed in Google that

shouldn’t be

Q2May

Architecture Advice:

• Carefully use categories and tags. Overuse can be detrimental to rankings and may be seen as duplicate content.

• Consider how your blog is used before finalizing your permalink URL structure. The URL structure should align with how your blog is organized.

• Use Canonicals appropriately to prevent duplicate content. No Index tag pages to prevent index bloat.

A New Blog Category

• A new Google update is released• Rankings on some previously well ranked

search terms are falling• No one is sure why rankings are falling• SEO Firm is hired and content is modified to

address concerns

Q2June

Architecture Advice:

• Track your most important keyword rankings and check your analytics to help know when Google updates impact you.

• Over optimization and short cuts will come back to hurt.

• Keep up to date by following Google and understanding How Algorithms Work.

A Google Update

• Content is added, deleted and consolidated• Navigation is updated• Inbound links are changed, added & removed

Q3July

Architecture Advice:

• When consolidating content understand which pages are ranked better before making changes.

• Use 301 redirects wisely and don’t forget to update internal links to the new or final URL.

• Make sure URLs are SEF or Search Engine Friendly.

• Be sure to update meta data, not just visible content.

A Round of Content Updates

• Whitepapers and other downloads are made available

• New sign up forms• New Resource pages

Q3July

Architecture Advice:

• Resource pages are great.

• Be sure landing pages are set to noindex or in a subdomain that Google is not able to index.

• Create an evergreen page for resources that grows and stays up to date.

Whitepapers & Downloads

• The company releases a PR with inbound links, video & more

• The PR is distributed through a national agency

Q3August

Architecture Advice:

• Press releases will quickly distribute links back to your site. Good or bad, be sure links are accurate and if page is deleted or moved at a later day, that redirect it using a proper 301 code.

• Watch out for pagination. Too much can create index bloat. Especially true when indexing category and tag pages.

• Make sure to use canonicals and no indexing appropriately.

A Press Release

• A new site is created for mobile content• Choice between Responsive Design or a

Subdomain for mobile

Q3September

Architecture Advice:

• Do you optimize your site to be responsive or create a separate subdomain for mobile use.

• Make sure mobile versions accessed via a PC redirect to the desktop version.

A Mobile Website

• Guest Bloggers are invited to participate on the blog

• Two new blog categories are created with several new tags

• Outbound Links need to be monitored so they aren’t going to low quality sites

Q4October

Architecture Advice:

• Guest blogging is great when done right. Be sure to monitor inbound activity from guest blog posts.

• Include a biography page for the blogger.

• Do you have a robots.txt file telling crawlers what directories to ignore?

• Do not stuff keywords into the blog post or any pages. Write engaging content.

Guest Bloggers

Q4November• Some pages are modified to present data

based upon location• New pages are created for International

growth• New pages are created for specific locations

(NYC, LA, Miami)

Architecture Advice:

• Localization can create some interesting URL and indexing challenges, especially when redirecting by IP. Be sure to understand indexing results before going live with the changes.

• Understand which URL Structure is best for your International needs: Subdomain, subdirectory, or TLD.

Localization

• Traffic is beyond expectations due to marketing campaigns

• The website is moved to a new server• Depending on growth a CDN (Content Delivery

Network) might be used

Q4December

Architecture Advice:

• Server moves can be common for a growing website.

• Check for hard coded IP addresses and update to domain names before moving the site.

A Server Move

A clean website?After a year or more online, new and revised content has impacted your site.

Modified / NewMovedDeleted

New

How cluttered architecture impacts your site.

All websites experience clutter over time. Clutter impacts your site’s ability to score well with search engines, negatively impacting ranking and traffic. Below is a graph that shows how website clutter buildup can impact your incoming traffic resulting in fewer leads and sales opportunities.

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Traffic vs Clutter

Lost Traffic Traffic Clutter

Invest in learning all the critical architecture factors that impact how the search engines score your website’s speed and performance. Here are a few of the 80+ factors we recommend you study:

Are URLs SEF friendly/optimized?Can URLs be accessed by Upper Case & Lower Case versions?Are there WWW & Non WWW versions of the site?

Are titles optimized?Are meta descriptions optimized?Are H1s optimized?

Are 301 redirects set up properly?Is the site using 302 redirects?Are there 404 pages?

Is the site organization intuitive (silo’d)? Is there a logical category / subcategory hierarchy?Are there related links in each category?Are all pages crawlable by robots without a sitemap?

Is there an HTML sitemap?

Is there an XML sitemap?Are URLs duplicated in the sitemaps?How does the site function when you turn off CSS, JavaScript?Is Flash used for important elements?

Is there duplicate content within the site?Is there duplicate content between subdomains?Is there duplicate content with other sites?

What internal pages do they link to the most?What is the quality of outbound linking?Are there too many links on a page?

Speed and CodeIs the HTML minified & compressed?Is the CSS validated?Are JavaScript and CSS linked to external files?

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Speed & Performance Auditing

Need help?

If you need assistance auditing your website and identifying the clutter, contact us today to learn about our website

Speed and Performance Audit.

727-234-0952 http://www.findandconvert.com/audit/