Best Practice Optimisation Tips for Your CMS / eCommerce Systems

ОРАСЕ 7 BEST PRACTICE (AND OFTEN OVERLOOKED) OPTIMISATION TIPS FOR YOUR CMS OR ECOMMERCE WEBSITE Ensure latest Кeep the Remove unused themes memory usage and file size low version of system is in and plugins /extensions use Utilise Don't automate titles, Minimise Use plugins for SEO and caching the number of plugins categories and tags description, H1 tags used (1 of system is in use Ensure latest version Always ensure you use the latest version of your system. Here we've shown three of the largest open source systems and their versions as at 31/01/15 are: 3.3.6 1.9.1.0 4.1 W Wordpress Versions Reasons to have the latest version are: Recommended by the suppliers themselves - It will be the recommendation of your platform supplier and any agency or developer that you may use 4.2 3.7 Reduce hacking threat - Latest versions of software often reduce hacking threat, sometimes this is a main reason for 4.1 3.6 the release Be seen as forward thinking - Customers and analysts will see your site as cutting edge/forward thinking if everytime they check the system uses the up-to-date version 4.0 3.5 3.4 Guarantee software is supported - The current version will always be supported whereas historic versions may not be 3.9 Enjoy more functionality – The newest version will have more functionality than previous ones 3.8 3.3 Easier and faster - Generally speaking new versions become easier to use and faster too 2 Remove unused themes and plugins/extensions 3 Keep the memory usage and file size low Here are a list of reasons why you should remove unused themes and plugins: Speed Mobile Friendly SEO Lower KB pages will perform even better on mobile devices, which is Speed is a known factor in search engine ranking Improve the speed of the site by keeping the file size and memory usage low. Site speed is all-important in keeping people on your site once they visit, a slow response increasingly important, especially now that Google will be elevating mobile-friendly sites in its Test your site now with the Google Tool search results Security Speed Space and they will leave Unused themes/plugins will "clutter" the A single security vulnerability can compromise an application. Reduce the hacking threat! Even unused themes and plugins will cause speed issues, s0 remove them! https://develope rs.google.com/s peed/pagespee d/insights maintenance screens 4 Utilise plugins for SEO and caching Tools like Yoast, All in One, SEO Suite Ultimate, etc. should be used in your system Meta titles Page titles H1 tags Categories Meta description and URLS Tags Unsurprisingly using an SEO plugin will improve your rankings through sound SEO 5 Don't automate titles, descriptions and H1 tags Don't forget to also optimise for speed and page load times as this is another factor in Google's algorithm - using one of the recommended plugins for caching can often help Black Hat Bad for SEO Readability For titles and H1 tags issues Many systems automate titles, descriptions, H1 tags - this is a bad practice, this can be considered a black hat or low effort approach significant SEO benefit can be lost with automation. This is A software tool will often create illegible text, which would particularly the case where H1 tags are duplicated across the have been avoided 6 Minimise number of plugins used by human proofreading / intervention entire site Maintenance Speed Hacking threat Reduce site “business" Using a lot of plugins is extremely time consuming from a maintenance perspective A high number of plugins will undoubtedly cause speed/performance related issues The higher the number of Too many plugins can make a site look too "busy" - ask yourself are these plugins all really needed? plugins is the more the hacking threat is too 7 Use categories and tags Recommended approach "Software providers recommend the Improved SEO "The use of categories and tags has been proven to improve SEO" Improved user experience "Users can click on Tag pages generated traffic "Many sites report 5% of traffic arising from tag categories/tags if they have an interest in that use of categories and tags" pages; however be careful to avoid duplicate content" topic, which helps improve navigation and value" Follow these best practice optimisation tips for your CMS or eCommerce website and you will see a noticeable improvement in user experience, SEO and security! Sources https://wordpress.org/about/stats ОРАСЕ www.opace.co.uk