SEO Assessment – The English Sofa Company

Legacy SEO Assessment For The English Sofa Company

The English Sofa Company

Strip categories base or rename as appropriate (keyword rich)

The URL structure is currently unclean in that sections have no keyword relevancy.

Cache Validator Specification

In order to enhance site loading speeds cache validators ought to be specified. Site speed is one of the many factors Google currently uses in regards to ranking websites.

Replacement of _ in URL structure with –

Many of the URL’s currently contain “_”. This is undesirable as Google does not recognise _ as a word seperator and therefore has a detrimental effect of the keyword relevancy of site URLs. Any instances of underscores with the URL structure should be replaced with hyphens instead.

Addition of Tel Markup Contact Number

In order to enable greater usability for mobile/tablet users and to help allow Google to understand contact information easier, the contact number should be marked up with tel attributes.

Remove <meta name=”author” content=”netbizsolutions.co.uk” />

This is excess code that adds no relevancy to the site.

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”EN” /> to “en-GB”

The target document language is not defined correctly and should be modified.

Addition of <meta property=”og:locale” content=”en_GB” />

The Facebook Opengraph schema is missing a targetting meta reference.

Remove <meta name=”copyright” content=””>

This is excess code that doesn’t not benefit the relevancy of the site.

Remove Inline Styles

There are a number of instance where CSS attributes are used inline within the HTML document. Inline styling is a legacy/bad practice approach towards website styling. Ultimately the excess code in the HTML document has a negative impact on the text/html of the site, with more excess code putting down the perceived relevancy of the keywords in the site.

Minify HTML

In order to boost site loading time and to positively impact the text/html ratio of the site, Document HTML should be compressed. This ultimately means stripping excess characters like spacing out of the site. This aspect can be achieved by copying and replacing template source html and using it in a tool such as http://www.willpeavy.com/minifier/.

Special considerations need to made to avoid minifying PHP and JavaScript alongside the HTML, as minifying non HTML elements may break JS/PHP functionality.

Enable Leverage browser caching

In order to speed up site loading times browser caching should be leveraged. This involves making modifications to the htaccess file of the site. The following code should be added to the htaccess file:

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 1 month”
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

Details of this functionality is detailed here: http://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/leverage-browser-caching.html

Removal Of Legacy Code

Legacy code exists on site which should be removed. An example is the file: widget007.old.css. This is currently be called upon page load and as such should be removed.

Addition of ARIA Roles

ARIA Roles help Google understand the purpose of different sections of the site, and can lead to increased perceived importance for core areas. These should be added as appropriate.

Addition of rel=”publisher” markup

In order to ensure appropriate integration with Google + and associated aspects the meta rel=”publisher” should be added to the document head.

Address Markup

To boost Geographical relevancy, Address markup should be added to the contact address.

Remove “Web Design By K2L. Powered by Internet Business Solutions From Footer”

This adds no value to the relevancy of the site and may be removed.

Fix Broken Links (Favicon.ico)

There are a few broken links onsite. This is undesirable from an SEO perspective and any instances of broken links should be fixed.

Enable GZip Compression

In order to enhance site loading times Gzip Compression should be enabled. This is achieved via the appropriate modifications to the servers htaccess file.

In order to enable Gzip Compression the following code snippet should be added to the top of the .htaccess file:

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

Move JavaScript to Document Footer

Following the logical progression in the way that web pages are rendered, it’s appropriate that the main document is loaded prior to enhancements such as JavaScript. As such any instances of JavaScript should be moved to the footer of the HTML document. This is ultimately a web design best practice which helps enable the website to load faster. A faster website load time is factor favourable for both end users and search engines.

Disable Server Signature (Apache)

In order to enhance site security server signatures should be disabled. This is achieved by modifications to the Apache server config.

Addition of Twitter Card Integration

In order to enhance social media integration, twitter card meta should be added to the document head.

CSS Minification

In order to boost site loading speeds, and clear excess code (code bloat) the CSS files of the site should be minified.

Cache Validator Specification

In order to enhance site loading speeds cache validators ought to be specified. Site speed is one of the many factors Google currently uses in regards to ranking websites.

The Chesterfield Company

Covering similar aspects as the English Sofa company the following aspects ought to be addressed.

• Replacement of _ in URL structure with –
• Unorthodox Charset – “Investigate”
• Remove Flash Content as appropriate
• Addition of Tel Markup Contact Number
• Rel nofollow on external links
• Transition Relative To Absolute URL Structure
• Remove <meta name=”author” content=”netbizsolutions.co.uk” />
• <meta http-equiv=”Content-Language” content=”EN” /> to “en-GB”
• Addition of <meta property=”og:locale” content=”en_GB” />
• Remove <meta name=”copyright” content=””>
• Remove Inline Styles And reference in main CSS Stylesheet
• Minify HTML
• Enable Leverage browser caching
• Specify vary: Accept-Encoding headers
• Addition of ARIA Roles
• Addition of rel=”publisher” markup
• Remove “Web Design By K2L. Powered by Internet Business Solutions” From Footer
• Fix Broken Links (Favicon.ico)
• Enable GZip Compression
• Addition of Twitter Card Integration