Business moves fast. The web moves even faster. As the leading search engine provider, Google® continually refers to site speed and performance as one of the main factors the influence your site's position in search rankings. Let's take a look at how common website activities create clutter and damage your sites performance over time. Contact Find and Convert today to learn more about our Speed & Performance Audit Service.

1. www.findandconvert.com
Speed & Performance
A Website Architecture Journey
Website’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.

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

3. Have you done any of these?
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.

4. Launch a Website!
• 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
Q1
January
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.

5. Start Blogging
•
•
•
•
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
Q1
February
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.

6. Marketing Campaigns
• 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
Q1
March
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.

7. A Round of Fixes
• XML sitemaps are fixed, they weren’t autoupdating
• 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”
Q2
April
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.

8. New Content is Added
• 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
Q2
April
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.

9. A New Blog Category
• 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
Q2
May
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.

10. A Google Update
• 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
Q2
June
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.

11. A Round of Content Updates
• Content is added, deleted and consolidated
• Navigation is updated
• Inbound links are changed, added & removed
Q3
July
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.

12. Whitepapers & Downloads
• Whitepapers and other downloads are made
available
• New sign up forms
• New Resource pages
Q3
July
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.

13. A Press Release
• The company releases a PR with inbound
links, video & more
• The PR is distributed through a national
agency
Q3
August
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.

14. A Mobile Website
• A new site is created for mobile content
• Choice between Responsive Design or a
Subdomain for mobile
Q3
September
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.

15. Guest Bloggers
Q4
• 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
October
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.

16. Localization
• 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)
Q4
November
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.

17. A Server Move
Q4
• Traffic is beyond expectations due to marketing December
campaigns
• The website is moved to a new server
• Depending on growth a CDN (Content Delivery
Network) might be used
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.

18. A clean website?
After a year or more online, new and revised content has impacted your site.
New
Modified / New
Moved
Deleted

19. 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.

20. Speed & Performance Auditing
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?
Click Here to Learn More
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 Code
Is the HTML minified & compressed?
Is the CSS validated?
Are JavaScript and CSS linked to external files?

21. 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/