Craig Campbell is an SEO consultant based in Glasgow, Scotland with 16 years of experience in the industry. He discusses common SEO mistakes and how to fix them, including performing audits using SEMRush to identify issues like crawlability, errors, and warnings. Campbell also covers optimizing site speed by reducing page load times and improving time to first byte through techniques like trimming page size, updating plugins, caching, and using a content delivery network like Cloudflare.

1. @craigcampbell03
Craig
Campbell
1
Hi there! I’m Craig,based in Glasgow, Scotland. I’ve been in the
SEO industry 16 years, starting out as a freelancer in my bedroom
to building up my own digital agency.
Craig Campbell, SEO
Trainer & Consultant

2. @craigcampbell03
Training and Events
2
BrightonSEO
SMXL Milan
SEMRush
Other Similar Events

3. The most common mistakes and how to fix them
TECHNICAL SEO
enjoy!
#searchleeds @craigcampbell03

4. @craigcampbell03
Auditing Tools
SEMRush
4
SEMRush
Website Auditing
PDF Reports
Send to Trello

5. Using SEMRush
Basic
Audit

6. simplicity is a multipurpose powerpoint
template. Minimalistic design makes the
customization extremely easy.
simplicity.
enjoy!

7. @craigcampbell03
Auditing Tools
SEMRush
7
No SSL
67% Crawlability
2246 Errors
2302 Warnings

8. simplicity template
explore the world of simplicity

9. simplicity template
explore the world of simplicity

10. simplicity template
explore the world of simplicity

11. ExtrasBasic Fixes
Improved on page SEO, image tagging, missing
meta data, internal links, and much more.
Remove any errors and problems which will
allow Google to crawl your website better.
Implement any other fixes that the SEMRush
audit flags up.
Delegate tasks to your team using Trello.
Site Speed
Page load
Time to First Byte

12. Data & Testing
SEMRush done a test on over
150,000 random websites, desktop
and mobile.
82% Had Issues
82% of these sites had issues, like
Coca Cola in the previous
example.
44% Critical Issues
44% of the sites analysed had at
least one critical issue with the
website.
SEMRush Blog May 8th 2018
Elena Terenteva

13. Site Speed
Google doesn’t like slow
websites .
Clients also don’t like slow
websites.
Resolve these issues.

14. @craigcampbell03
Site Speed Tools
14
Free to use and used by many
others in the industry.
GT Metrix
Free and paid versions of
Pingdom are available.
Pingdom
Nice tool, free to use and gives
you plenty of speed tips.
WebPageTest.org

15. Page Load
Speed

16. • Videos
• Images
• Javascript
• CSS
Trim Down
Page Size

17. @craigcampbell03
Tools to use
17
o JSMin ( Javascript )
o YUI Compressor ( also does CSS )
o Closure Compiler
o Gzip/Deflate Compression
o Wordpress Plugins
o Hire a developer?
Your Site

18. @craigcampbell03
Wordpress
Plugins
18
Wp Fastest
Cache
SMush BJ Lazy
Loadl
Speed
Booster
Pack

19. Boost Server
Performance

20. SEMRush’s analysis out of the 150,000
websites was that 43% of the sites had
more than 1 critical issue.
One reason for slow load speed can be a
large HTML page size.
Only 1% of the 43% of websites with
critical issues are due to large HTML
pages.
So the other 42% come from server
issues.

21. @craigcampbell03
Common Server
Issues
21
Crap Hosting
Cheap crap hosting can cause your website to
load slow, get a dedicated server if you can.
No Browser Caching
No browser caching means your website loads
every single time for each visitor.
25% with no caching
From the study SEMRush done, 25% of those
42% of sites with server issues have no
browser caching.
High Traffic Websites
Websites that are getting high traffic can slow
down if you are on a small website server.
Excessive Plugin Use
Wordpress users overloading websites with
plugins can also cause a problem.
Too Many Redirects
Using too many redirects again is a common
problem.

22. Personally for any website I own that
generates revenue, I would look at
dedicated hosting. More expensive but for
speed and many other reasons I would
recommend you do the same.
Craig Campbell

23. Cloudflare
Another tip would be to use Cloudflare or similar CDN,
this can also improve site speed & it has a number of
other benefits too. It helps speed up websites and
security.

24. @craigcampbell03
Additional Cloudflare
Benefits
24
Http/2 Protocol
Newly introduced HTTP/2 protocol are two
times faster than HTTP/1.1.
Free SSL
This can never be a bad thing getting
something for Free.
Image Optimisation
Polish helps optimise your images for faster
loading speeds.
Load Balancing
Cloudflare serves your website from the
closest server based on the users location.
DDoS Protection
DDoS protection is important, having your
website protected from these attacks is vital.
Security
Protect your website from online threats with
our enterprise-grade Website Application
Firewall (WAF).

25. TTFB
Time to First Byte?
When someone clicks on your website, the browser
will request Bytes from your server.
TTFB is the amount of time it takes for the browser to
get the first byte from your web server.

26. simplicity.

27. simplicity.
simplicity is a multipurpose
powerpoint template.
Advance, clean and
professional. Minimalistic
design makes the
customization extremely easy.
enjoy!

28. @craigcampbell03
Reasons for slower
TTFB
28
RAM usage
Ram usage can also cause slow
TTFB.
Network Issues
Issues with your network may
cause problems.
Database
Your database setup can also
pose problems in this area.
Lots of traffic
If you have lots of web traffic it
can slow down TTFB
Shared Server
Cheap shared servers can
cause a problem.

29. @craigcampbell03
Ways to Improve
TTFB
29
Update
Plugins
Keeping plugins and your theme
up to date also helps.
Loading smaller files also helps
improve website speed.
Load Small
FilesWp Fastest Cache or similar
caching plugins will help.
Caching

30. Examples
Some examples of the
difference some of these
changes make.

32. we’re a design studio
focused on PowerPoint
templates.
we like to deliver clean and
fresh hand-crafted
presentations
that help to promote your
business. we make them with
great passion. And now we
present the simplicity!
Enjoy!
simplicity.
by smart

33. we’re a design studio
focused on PowerPoint
templates.
we like to deliver clean and
fresh hand-crafted
presentations
that help to promote your
business. we make them with
great passion. And now we
present the simplicity!
Enjoy!
simplicity.
by smart

34. craig@craigcampbellseo.co.uk
Twitter: @craigcampbell03
Thank You
#searchleeds @craigcampbell03