Boost Your Online Presence: Mastering SEO Strategies

My SEO analysis is based on the website www.elddis.co.uk. I used the tools HubSpot Grader, SEO Site Check-up, Seoptimer, PageSpeed Insights and SiteImprove to carry out my analysis.

Task 1 

Task 2

SEO

HubSpot Grader showed a result of 30/30 for SEO. The Elddis website gives permission to index which allows the pages to appear in search results, content plugins which allows search engines to understand content and meta descriptions which tell visitors what the page is about in search results. All of which help increase organic website visitors as search engines are more likely to display the website if those elements enabled.

 However, a more in-depth report from SEO Site Check-up showed areas for improvement specifically with Meta Descriptions. The Meta Description is too short and needs to be between 150-220 characters, currently it is only 128 characters. Despite Meta Descriptions not being a direct ranking factor, they are important form SEO as they help users find pages that match their needs. A more in-depth description would help users identify if the website is useful to them and can result in more organic website visitors as people know the website can offer them the information they are looking for.

Performance

An ongoing issue that repeated in all reports was website performance. The main issue being that the page sizes are too big and take a long time to load. For example, the SEO Site Check-up flagged that the HTML webpage is 88.46Kb, however the average should be around 33Kb. This may result in search engine spiders avoiding the website as it simply takes to long to load, which in turn may result in less website traffic as the website is less likely to show in search results.

 Another ongoing issue that is flagged in several reports is experience issues regarding Images. The SiteImprove report shows that images are missing alt attributes which may result in poor performance. Alt text helps improve SEO performance as search engines will recognise keywords in the alt text and boost your search ranking. This is important as without alt text the website can miss out on organic traffic as the search engine won’t identify the website as having the information needed for the user.

Links

Within the SEOptimer report the website scored a C+ regarding links. There are 49.5K Backlinks to the website which in turn leads traffic to the main website. This benefits the company as it increases organic visitors to the website and increases the trustworthiness of the website. Backlinks are links on one website directing to another. They are important as ‘they signal to search engines like Google that other sites consider the content credible, potentially boosting its search ranking.’ (Dean, 2024)

The HubSpot Grader report showed that the website has descriptive text in its links. This is beneficial as it helps visitors understand what they will see on the page if they click the link. Clear and descriptive links are important because it allows the user and search engine to identify the information on the page easily. Descriptive links are more likely to increase organic traffic as users will click on them as they know what they will see on the page.  

 

Mobile

The SiteImprove report revealed that the website does have Mobile issues and it only scored 43/100, meaning the website has critical errors that need to be fixed to improve SEO.

 One issue being the lack of sizing data on images uploaded to the website. They dimensions aren’t provided and therefore the images may not load correctly on a mobile phone. This gives a poor experience to the user as the images should size according to the device they are on. 

 Despite this, the Elddis website can be easily viewed on a mobile phone. The website is responsive, and all text can be read well on the mobile version of the website. Viewability is important to ensure the user can obtain the information they are looking for whilst on their mobile phone.

Security

The HubSpot website grader report scored the website 10/10 in the area of security.

It confirmed that the HTTPS on the website was active and secured. This is important as it gives visitors confidence when visiting the website and it ensures them that the website is authentic and trustworthy. ‘Hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of HTTP, which is the primary protocol used to send data between a web browser and a website. HTTPS is encrypted in order to increase security of data transfer.’ (Cloudflare, 2024).

 This report also confirmed that it has secure JavaScript Libraries, this is important because intruders can exploit outdated JavaScript libraries. It is important to keep them up to date to ensure the businesses and the user data is kept secure.

Speed

The PageSpeed report showed that the website passed the core web vital assessment. But the PageSpeed report also did show a list of diagnostics to improve website performance and speed, similar to the other reports. For example, Elddis could reduce image sizes and reduce unused Java Script to increase page speed.

An issue that was highlighted in the PageSpeed Insights report was ‘avoid enormous network payloads – total size was 36,354KB’.  ‘network payloads are the information a web browser and a server exchange when a user loads your website.’ (NitroPack, 2024). A network payload that is too high can result in slow loading speeds and frustrate visitors.

To conclude, the Elddis website is strong in some areas of SEO, however improvements could be made to strengthen the SEO on the website and to boost digital marketing success.

 

Reference List

Dean, B. (2024) ‘Backlinks’ [Online]. Available at: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/backlinks [accessed 17th March 2024]

Cloudflare (2024) ‘What is HTTPS?’ [Online]. Available at: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/ssl/what-is-https/ [accessed 17^th March 2024]

NitroPack (2024) ‘How to Avoid Enormous Network Payloads (The Smart Way)’ [Online]. Available at: https://nitropack.io/blog/post/avoid-enormous-network-payloads#:~:text=So%20network%20payloads%20are%20the,that%20makes%20up%20your%20website [accessed 17^th March 2024]

Task 3

My top 3 recommendations to improve SEO on the website are:

1.       Add alt attributes to all images

Alt text helps improve SEO performance as search engines will recognise the keyword in the alt text and boost the search ranking. This is important as without alt text the Elddis website can miss out on organic traffic as the search engine won’t identify the website as having the information needed for the user. This improvement is likely to boost website visitors.

 

2.       Reduce HTML size

Large HTML size may affect search engine results as search engine spiders may avoid the website if it takes to long to load, which in turn may result in less website traffic as the website may not show in search results. If the HTML size was smaller, spiders are more likely to identify the page and show users the Elddis website near the top of the search results which will result in more organic traffic. 

 

3.       Improve Image sizing for mobile

This will ensure all users get the same experience on mobile devices. Websites that ensure a good user experience are prioritised by search engines and therefore will achieve higher volume website visitors.