SEO Assessment: mailing-list.co.uk

WWW Resolve

The none www. variation of the site does not currently redirect to the www. variation (and vice versa). This will cause duplication issues cross-site unless it is resolved. This areas is resolved via modifications to the .htaccess file of the site (located in the root of the web hosting environment).

Put this code in your DOCUMENT_ROOT/.htaccess file:

To Force using HTTPS
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} To Force www to non www
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mailing-list.co.uk$ RewriteRule ^(.*) http://mailing-list.co.uk/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]

These modifications will also force users to use https://

Further information may be found here: http://www.bewebdeveloper.com/tutorial-about-advanced-htaccess-examples

Robots.txt

Once the site is migrated to the primary domain, the robots.txt will need to be modified to allow the new site to be crawled and indexable.

Lowercase URLs

Some of the URL’s alternate between the use of capitalisation and non capitalisation. The recommendation is that order to avoid conflicts (specifically regards to redirections and link building activities) that any characters used in the URL structure are lowercase.

Clean URL Rewrites

PHP files extensions currently exist at the end of site URL’s, this is undesirable for both usability and SEO purposes.

Full details to remove PHP file extensions are detailed here: http://alexcican.com/post/how-to-remove-php-html-htm-extensions-with-htaccess/
Once these modifications are made; link references and back-end coding should be updated to reference the new page locations.

Correct HTML Language Params

Given the target site audience is intended to be British clientele it’s appropriate to expanding upon the HTML Language and to set it at as opposed to

Low Text/HTML Ratio

The Text/HTML Ratio of the homepage is currently 14% whilst this is fairly acceptable, It’s worth considering the addition of extra content onsite in order to improve the text/HTML ratio and in order to capitalise on additional long tail search phrases.
To avoid cluttering the minimalistic style of the site with excessive text, the built in Accordion features compiled within Bootstrap may be of consideration.

This aspect is referenced here: http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#collapse

Minify HTML

In order to reduce load times and to enhance the text/html ratio across the entire site, the HTML document should be minified. This involves removing extra spaces, line breaks and excess code in the HTML.

The following tool will achieve this: http://www.willpeavy.com/minifier/
Care should be made to avoid minifying any inline JavaScript as this may break site functionality.

CDN Delivery

Provided modifications have not been made to the core Bootstrap files an external Content Delivery Network (CDN) can be used to delivered the bootstrap CSS & JavaScript files. Assuming the version of Bootstrap being used is the latest version, an appropriate CDN to use is…
//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.0/css/bootstrap.min.css
//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.0/js/bootstrap.min.js
Simply replace the references to the locally stored versions of the pertaining files to the externally hosted versions.

Clean HTML5

Given the intuitive nature of HTML5 the following references may be removed from the HTML document:
type=”text/css” (pertaining to CSS references)
type=”text/javascript” (pertaining to JS references)

Inline Styles

Inline Styles should be avoided wherever possible. A few instances of inline styles exist with the HTML of the site. In these occurrences, the inline styles should be removed from the HTML document and referenced in the corresponding stylesheet instead.

Combine JS Files

The site currently utilises an excessive amount of JavaScript files, any unused JS references should be removed and where possible
Move JavaScript to Site Footer In order to speed up site loading times, (a metric Google uses to rank sites) JavaScript( both external references and inline JS) should be moved to the document footer, just prior to the tag.

Leverage Browser Caching

In order to speed up site loading times, leverage browser caching may be enabled. This means that file types from the first visited pages on the site are cached, and reloaded for additional visits and upon further navigation around the site.

## EXPIRES CACHING ##

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”

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
Gzip Compression In order to enable Gzip Compression add the following coding 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

Alt Tags

All image should have Alts tag associated with them. These Alt tags should be keyword rich and pertaining to the associated imagery. As such the homepage is currently missing 3 alt tags.

Domain Expiration

Google has stated that it considers domain registration length as a indicator of site credibility. Whilst the current domain renewal date is an acceptable period of time away (2017). It’s recommended that the domain ownership period is extended to the maximum time period permitted.

Google + Publisher

For primarily social engagement purposes (as well as Google + reviews and associated aspects) a Google+ page should be created for Mailing-list.co.uk.
The implementation of Google+ Publisher is covered in the following article: http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/how-toimplement-the-relpublisher-google-authorship-mark-up/

This page should be linked to from the main head of the HTML documentation (follow the aforementioned document)
XML Sitemap An XML sitemap needs to be created and registered in Google Webmaster tools. Given the large size of the completed site, it’s worth using a number of small XML sitemap pertaining to different areas of site and referenced from a primary sitemap_index.xml file.

NoFollow Attributes

I recommend the addition of rel=”nofollow” attributes to external links specifically in relation to neutral assets where PageRank is not intended to be passed on. This is most notable for social media links once they are added to the site.

Landing Pages

The landing pages could currently benefit from the addition of extra targeted keyword phrases within the content of the page.
In order to ensure that each standalone is considered a credible part of the main site; It’s highly recommended that each page features links to other internal landing pages. The primary recommendation is that a couple of discreet links are added to each landing page, linking through to other landing pages in the local area.
For example: Birmingham would link through to Wolverhampton & Solihull.
This will greatly enhance the internal linking structure of the site, and will ensure that authority follows through the domain optimally.