Do you field dozens of requests from your team to add “just one more beacon” or “one more tracking pixel” to your site for yet another random piece of software that you probably don’t need? Every single extra call, extra ping, and extra script decreases the speed and performance of your site. Carolyn’s session will cover the importance technical SEO and speed/performance tuning and how it can help you build a mean, lean SEO machine.

1. Technical and Performance
SEO Tune Up
Carolyn Shelby, SEO Director, tronc
#SEJSummit
@cshel

2. Carolyn Shelby
Director, SEO at tronc,Inc.
Organic, technical, enterprise, and news
20+ years experience
#SEJSummit
@cshel

3. #SEJSummit
@cshel
Speed is the goal.
Remember Power to
Weight Ratio
Efficient delivery is
the key to speed.
Keep things simple.
Defined, refined
goals. Elegant code.

4. A 1-second delay in page load time
yields:
– 11% fewer page views
– 16% decrease in customer
satisfaction
– 7% loss in conversions
(source: Aberdeen Group)

5. KEEP IT SIMPLE

6. How Much is Too Much?
• How many audiences?
• How many tasks?
• How much reporting?
• What are you tracking?
• How many images?
• How many social icons?
• How many ads to serve?
– From where?

7. Complexity has
costs
• More data to push
• More time to retrieve data
from 3rd party
• Increased load times
• Increased dev time
• Greater chance of conflicts
• Greater difficulty
maintaining and repairing

8. SEO Improvements through Simplifying
• Get rid of code that no longer serves a useful purpose
• Reduce the number of 3rd party sources (calls)
• (this includes tracking pixels)
• Reduce the bloat in your code, in your CSS, in your scripts.
• DO NOT CALL or LOAD THINGS THAT AREN’T NEEDED

9. It’s okay to say no!

10. KEEP IT EFFICIENT

11. Speed through Efficient Delivery
• Minimize latency
• Minimize file sizes
• Only deliver those things
necessary for the user
experience.
• Prioritize above-the-fold
content.

12. Speed Traps
• DNS response time
• Latency between the DB
and the file server
• Failure or lag in loading a
tracking pixel or some
other 3rd party service
• Not optimizing your
image file sizes
• Not optimizing your CSS
delivery
• Too many plugins
• Too many http redirects

13. MAKE IT FAST

15. Conversations to have…
• Fonts based on ease/speed of load vs what the designer
used in the photoshopped mock up?
• Content to suppress on the mobile site? (Using detection
to deliver only the pieces necessary to the UX)
• How many different tracking tools do you need? How
many customer analytics/behavior monitoring beacons?

16. Tools for Page Speed and Load Times
• Google PageSpeed Insights
– Follow guidance for both mobile and desktop
• Yslow (yslow.org)
• Many SEO tools pull in PageSpeed and Yslow into
their auditing tools.

19. #SEJSummit
@cshel
Twitter @cshel
Linkedin linkedin.com/in/cshel
Google+ +CarolynShelby

20. #SEJSummit
@cshel
Speed is the goal.
Remember Power to
Weight Ratio
Efficient delivery is
the key to speed.
Keep things simple.
Defined, refined
goals. Elegant code.