Category: SEO

When I started building up my website with plugins, themes, pictures, JavaScript and various other features I started noticing a slow down in my website speed. I was less than happy that this was happening but I suspected that because my site is driven by databases then the server has to work a little bit harder than usual. Having a CDN has many benefits and speed is one of them, read on…

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My website seems slow do I need a CDN to help me?

The first thing I recommend you do before even considering buying a CDN is test your website using tools.pingdom.com/fpt/.

This website tests the speed of your website from various locations around the world and gives you a breakdown of what is the main issues effecting your website speed, you may find it isn’t your media files after all it may be something else…

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Optimize your hosting provider first

When you put your url into the test box if you notice the first option that appears ( which happens to be your connection to your host ) is one of your slowest features ( anything about 1 second is pretty poor, anything about 3 seconds and you really do need a new provider ) then this will be a hosting server issue.

Shared hosting

If your website is on what is called a “shared server”  (which most websites are if they are not a large corporation with their own IT equipment) then getting a fast connection can be difficult. A shared server means just that, you share your server with other websites and sometimes there can be hundreds sharing the bandwidth to your server and why a connection can be slow. Some hosting providers do give the option of dedicated hosting but it does tend to cost a lot more…if you are a fairly young online business I would stick with shared hosting until finances permit you to make the transfer to dedicated hosting.

Research your hosting providers for your needs

Some hosting providers are better than others for different reasons and Bluehost.com is one particular host that is recommended for WordPress sites, but don’t take my word for it. I recommend that you consider doing some research about hosts, read customer feedback and possibly look into changing your hosting provider.

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My host is great, so what is a CDN?

CDN is an abbreviation for content delivery network. what a CDN does is distribute your large data files (such as your images,videos, audio and JavaScript, etc) and deploy them on a system of servers in multiple data centers across the world.

Why is having a CDN going to help your website? Speed is one reason a CDN can boost your websites performance but there are more reasons, if you are interested in what they are then please…read on!

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So why should I buy a CDN for my website?

Users have a need for speed

Users are very impatient and getting more impatient.

They expect fast & efficient websites so they can reach the information they want at lightning fast speeds. A user just sees a browser window but behind that computer screen of that web request activated from a left mouse click of your right hand is traveling down the internet highway to process a large amount of data of varying types and putting it together like a jigsaw of varying file types to return it back to the screen of the user wherever they may be.

One datacentre in a big wide world

If you are lucky your website data will be stored on servers that are located in a high tech top of the range data centre like the one at MigSolv.com.  Although this is great the problem with this is that if you are in a far off land such as California accessing a website stored in the UK it will take longer than one closer to where the web request is being made.

Geo-location on the CDN

This is where a CDN steps in. A CDN relieves this issue by delivering that data from the closest server, via geo-location ( Geolocation is simply the identification of where the electronic device request is being made from).

Improves your User Experience

Once you have set up your CDN then the website increases in speed & the user will be happier in at least one area of using your site. Since using my CDN I have seen my bounce rate decreases by 20% and the amount of time people staying on the site increasing.

A CDN will likely improve your conversions

As Goran Candrlic mentions in his post about website conversions and speed. For every 1 second of improvement they experienced up to a 2% increase in conversions. There is some great information on that post about speed and conversion so when you get time check it out!

Search Engines have a need for speed too!

If your site is fast the major search engines will fall in love with your content! You will find you start ranking higher for your pages and higher search engine ranks means more traffic and more traffic means more chance for conversions!

You can’t take me down so easily

The fear of hackers, spammers and others with malicious intent is a constant worry for website owners. Having a CDN gives you some extra redundancy should a hacker manage to take your website down because your files are stored in a type of cloud in varying data centres around the world so you content may still be accessible. One little piece of mind if it ever happens to you and you need to reinstall your content to your website.

 A CDN can help you when you get popular

All website owners dream of gaining thousands of visits a day. Becoming web famous would be a dream and would be the best way to increase conversion rates. As you create more great content your traffic increases thus more requests for the data will be needed putting extra strain on your server. A CDN reduces the pressure on the server and will make your website faster even when you have unpredictable spikes in traffic.

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Which CDN is best for a WordPress based site?

Why I am discussing WordPress? WordPress may be the most popular CMS widely used by website owners worldwide today. Its simplicity of use and lack of a need to understand in-depth coding ( although it is good to have at least some basic html knowledge at least ) to make a website work well for your business.

A very good cache plugin that ALL WordPress sites should have installed is W3 Total Cache.

W3 Total Cache and MaxCDN

W3 Total Cache has a feature to add MAXCDN. When a plugin as good as W3 Total Cache recommends a CDN you automatically know this is probably the best option for your site.

Tried and tested another CDN , Cloudflare

I did try Cloud flare first before I started using MaxCDN as my chosen CDN but I didn’t feel I was getting the level of service I was expecting.

It came with features to block well-known threats from certain IP addresses across the world that are recorded but the problem with Cloudflare is that sometimes it blocked some people who are genuine visitors which seriously frustrated them.

You may say this is a small price to pay for a CDN making sure to keep your website as secure as possible but I think as long as you back up your databases and content as regularly as possible using any backup program, then you have nothing to fear from hackers and spammers as a restore of the system should be pretty straightforward as long as you give your hosting account a very strong password.

MAXCDN was and is the best option for me

I use MAXCDN for my website content and I couldn’t be happier! I am writing this from the point of view of a very happy customer. I could write and promote several CDNs with the chance of getting affiliate percentages from all products like several blogs do but that isn’t why I write about certain products, I write about products I believe in and that I have had a great experience with.  I believe in only promoting products that I truly believe in and that I think  others can also reap the benefits of.

Exceptional customer service

I think what stood out for me with MaxCDN was their live chat feature. When I wasn’t sure whether I had set up the CDN correctly I spoke to one of their employees via the Live chat and I was very very impressed! I created another user with admin privileges so they could access the plugin and the employee then set up the CDN perfectly.

Of course giving access to my website to someone I didn’t know did give me a little apprehension but as I back up my site regularly I felt it would be okay to create a new account and delete it once it was completed.

I was blown away by this level of customer service , they could have pointed me into an online tutorial but they exceeded their requirements and helped all they could!

Clearly faster than before

Making my connection for users to my website faster was really important to me, probably the most important and MaxCDN really delivered. I am much happier with my website speed since using MaxCDN and I highly recommend the product.

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So should I get a CDN for my website?

You may have guessed already but I think EVERYBODYS website should have a CDN. Fact.

If you are serious about generating traffic and providing a brilliant experience to your potential clients or readers then you have to own a CDN for optimum website speed experience.

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MaxCDN is the best option for you and I wouldn’t recommend using any other CDN. You have nothing to lose as you have a 1 month trial too, click the banner below to find out more : –

Broken links can really effect the integrity of your website so it is vitally important you find them before your visitors and search engine bots do! Although it may seem like a minor point you would be mistaken because if you just leave them it makes your business look totally unreliable if you can’t even get the basics right. In this post I will tell you how to avoid the embarrassing broken links from effecting your users experience.

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First things first 404 errors

When a website user cannot find a page they are looking for they arrive at what is called an error 404 page. These pages are not often designed well but can make the experience of reaching a broken link that slightly more forgiving if it is at least pretty. Here is one I designed for MigSolv Data Centre Specialists.

Think about the company’s brand, what would represent their identity in an imaginative way?

Redirect ALL 404 error pages to the homepage

As your website grows you may notice more and more link errors appearing, its natural so don’t worry, if you have over 1000 pages and blog posts there are naturally going to be broken links (i.e. if a visitor bookmarks a particular page they liked) but it still doesn’t look great for visitors.

A way to defuse arriving at an error page is to redirect the lost soul back to the homepage so they can navigate to the desired page they were looking for. To do this you will need to follow these instructions.

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard and on the left hand side options select Appearance > editor.
2. Navigate to the 404.php file of your live theme.

3. Replace the content with that below

Enter this code

You can download the file and replace it for your 404 file if you have access to your back end, or alternatively open it copy and paste the code into your 404.php section on the appearance editor dashboard.
Download 404 file here

How to check for broken links ?

If you are on a mac how to check for broken links

Integrity is a broken links checker for Mac OS and it is the one that I particularly use. It is straight forward and gives you heaps of broken link information.
Download it here : –
http://integrity.en.softonic.com/mac

If your are on a pc how to check for broken links

Link checker 6 is a broken links checker for PC, i’ve not actually used this one yet but the reviews on it look good.
Download it here : –
http://wummel.github.io/linkchecker/

And if you don’t want to download software

If you don’t want to download a program that is okay this Online broken link checker will help you find and correct all the links that aren’t working correctly.
Follow this link below :
http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/

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If you find any other broken link tools or you have your own tips please feel free to comment in the box below.

Google Analytics is a fantastic little tool for analysing how to improve your website through visitor behaviour, locality , referal traffic etc but if your IP address is included in the analysis it may make the results quite inaccurate. In this post I discuss how to exclude IP addresses from the analytics.

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If you are using Google Analytics to give you useful information and you aren’t excluding your IP address you may as well shut down your account with google now. If you are at a loss to what an IP address is or how to find it don’t worry, that is why I wrote this post..I’ll help you as much as I can.

What the heck is an IP address?

Think of an I.P ( internet protocol) address is a unique string of numbers that EVERY single digital device you use or own has if they can connect to the internet. It is like a home address for your computer devices so that it can be identified online. This is why you need to exclude your ip addresses you own to access your website as even when you are working on new content google analytics will see you as a visitor and NOT an owner or designer.

How do I find out my IP address?

To find out your I.P address all you need to do is go to www.google.co.uk and type into the search bar”ip address” and it will come up with your unique IP address. It is that simple 🙂

Ok, got it..so how do you exclude your own IP address from google analytics results?

1 . Firstly you need to login to your account.
2. Click “Admin” in the orange bar on the right hand side.

3. You should receive a screen similar to the above one, just check you have the right website open before you go any further from the drop down boxes.

4. In the third column, the “profile” the fourth item in the list is called “filters” click it!
5. Now click on the filters tab and click the “+ New Filter” button.
You will be given a screen like the one below simply give the filter a name that will help you identifiy it is your computer like “home desktop”.

6.The Filter Type raido button to select is “Predefined filter”.

7. The final step is to choose “Exclude” from the first drop down list then “traffic from the ISP domain” and “that are equal to” then enter your IP address you looked up in Google.  Check whether it’s IPv6 or not (if you don’t know leave it unchecked).

8. Click “Save”

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Complete-oooooooooo!! Your account will no longer include you in the analytic results. Hooray!!

…if you don’t have a Google Analytics account yet, don’t worry it is really straight forward and in a future post I will be blogging how to set up Google Analytics for your cms website.