Sandler - Website Report

#### Introduction

The comprehensive analysis of “sandler.com” has uncovered several key areas for improvement across performance, SEO, and technology utilisation. By addressing these issues, the website can enhance its user experience, search engine visibility, and overall performance, leading to increased conversions and potential revenue growth.

#### Key Findings

1. Performance Optimisation: Significant opportunities exist to enhance site speed by optimising images, reducing JavaScript execution time, and managing large layout shifts. Implementing these changes can drastically improve load times and user experience.

2. SEO Improvements: The absence of a sitemap and canonical issues are critical obstacles to effective indexing and visibility. Creating an XML sitemap and implementing canonical tags will improve SEO effectiveness.

3. Broken Links and Resources: The site contains 90 broken links and 5 broken resources, which can harm user experience and SEO ranking. Conducting a thorough review to fix these issues is essential.

4. Duplicate Content: There are 7 instances of duplicate content, which can confuse search engines and affect rankings. Implementing canonical tags and ensuring content uniqueness is recommended.

5. JavaScript and CSS Minification: Potential savings of 161 KiB in JavaScript and 185 KiB in CSS can be achieved through minification, enhancing load speed and reducing resource sizes.

6. Link Security: Addressing links from HTTPS to HTTP is necessary to prevent security warnings and maintain user trust.

7. Keyword Strategy: The site ranks strongly for several keywords, with 10 in the top position. However, improving visibility for keywords ranked between positions 11-20 can capture additional market share.

8. Technology Stack Enhancements: Updating outdated JavaScript libraries and regularly updating WordPress and its plugins will improve performance and security.

9. Content Optimisation: Enhancing content quality, particularly for keywords ranked lower, can improve rankings and user engagement.

10. Backlink Strategy: Acquiring high-quality backlinks for keywords ranked between positions 11-50 will boost visibility and rankings.

By implementing these targeted recommendations, “sandler.com” can significantly enhance its performance, SEO, and technology utilisation, resulting in improved user experience and higher conversion rates. Regular audits and updates are advised to maintain and build upon these optimisations.

Summary

The website has several opportunities for performance improvement, particularly in areas related to image optimization, JavaScript execution, and layout stability. Key performance metrics show that the site takes a significant amount of time to become fully interactive, with excessive main-thread work and large resource payloads contributing to delays. By addressing these issues, the website can achieve faster load times, improved user experience, and better search engine optimisation.

Key Performance Metrics

• • First Contentful Paint (FCP): 1.0 seconds
  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 1.9 seconds
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0.346
  • Time to Interactive (TTI): 6.1 seconds
  • Total Blocking Time (TBT): 1,270 milliseconds
  • Speed Index: 5.0 seconds

Key Observations and Recommendations

Avoid Large Layout Shifts

• • Observation: There are 14 significant layout shifts detected.
  • Recommendation: Use fixed dimensions for images and ads, and preload important web fonts to ensure content remains stable during loading.

Serve Images in Next-Gen Formats

• • Observation: Potential savings of 180 KiB by using modern image formats.
  • Recommendation: Convert images to WebP or AVIF formats for improved compression and faster loading times.

Ensure Descriptive Link Text

• • Observation: One link lacks descriptive text.
  • Recommendation: Ensure all links have descriptive text to improve accessibility and SEO.

Reduce Impact of Third-Party Code

• • Observation: Third-party code blocked the main thread for 1,390 milliseconds.
  • Recommendation: Limit the number of third-party scripts and defer loading them to reduce their impact on loading times.

Optimize Images

• • Observation: Potential savings of 564 KiB by resizing and 52 KiB by optimizing images.
  • Recommendation: Use responsive images and optimize them for faster load times and reduced data usage.

Modernize JavaScript Delivery

• • Observation: Serving legacy JavaScript resulted in potential savings of 27 KiB.
  • Recommendation: Implement modern JavaScript techniques by using module/nomodule for browser compatibility and reduced payload.

Defer Offscreen Images

• • Observation: Potential savings of 389 KiB by deferring offscreen images.
  • Recommendation: Implement lazy loading for images not immediately visible to improve load performance.

Improve Security with HTTPS

• • Observation: One insecure request observed.
  • Recommendation: Ensure all resources are loaded over HTTPS to protect user data and enhance security.

Minimize JavaScript and CSS

• • Observation: Potential savings of 161 KiB by minifying JavaScript and 185 KiB by minifying CSS.
  • Recommendation: Minify and compress JavaScript and CSS to reduce the size of resources being loaded.

Reduce JavaScript Execution Time

• • Observation: JavaScript execution time is 3.7 seconds.
  • Recommendation: Optimize JavaScript by reducing unused scripts and deferring non-critical scripts to improve performance.

Enable Text Compression

• • Observation: Potential savings of 22 KiB on text-based resources.
  • Recommendation: Use compression techniques like gzip or brotli to reduce the size of text resources.

Efficiently Manage Cache Policies

• Observation: 26 resources with inefficient cache policies.
• Recommendation: Set long cache expiration times for static resources to improve load times on repeat visits.

By implementing these recommendations, the website can significantly improve its performance, providing a better user experience and achieving higher rankings in search results.

Executive Summary

The technical SEO audit for the domain “sandler.com” has identified several key areas for improvement. Despite a solid on-page score of 92.52, there are issues that need addressing to enhance overall site performance and search engine visibility. Notably, there are a significant number of broken links and resources, duplicate content issues, and some problems with title tags. Most notably, the absence of a sitemap and canonical issues can impact the site’s SEO effectiveness. Below is a detailed analysis of the findings and recommended actions.

Crawl Overview

• • Crawl Progress: Finished
  • Pages Crawled: 100 of 100
  • Crawl Stop Reason: Limit Exceeded
  • No Errors Detected During Crawl

Domain Information

• • Domain Name: sandler.com
  • Server: Cloudflare
  • SSL Certificate: Valid (Issuer: WE1, Expires: 02 March 2025)
  • HTTP/2: Enabled
  • Robots.txt: Present
  • Sitemap: Not Found

Key SEO Issues & Recommendations

1. Broken Links and Resources

• • Impact: Broken links (90) and resources (5) can degrade user experience and harm SEO ranking.
  • Recommendation: Conduct a comprehensive review to identify and fix or remove broken links and resources. Use 301 redirects for any important broken links that cannot be fixed.

2. Duplicate Content Issues

• • Impact: Duplicate content (7 occurrences) can confuse search engines and lead to ranking penalties.
  • Recommendation: Implement canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of duplicate pages. Ensure content uniqueness across the site.

3. Title Tag Issues

• • Impact: Titles that are too long (21) or too short (2) can affect click-through rates and SEO rankings.
  • Recommendation: Optimize title tags to be descriptive yet concise, ideally between 50-60 characters, and incorporate relevant keywords.

4. Missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions

• • Impact: Duplicate descriptions (4) can cause search engines to overlook pages or display non-optimal snippets in search results.
  • Recommendation: Write unique meta descriptions for all pages, ensuring they are compelling and include relevant keywords.

5. Missing Alt Text for Images

• • Impact: Missing alt text (18) affects accessibility and can reduce image discoverability in search engines.
  • Recommendation: Add descriptive alt text to all images to improve accessibility and SEO.

6. Absence of Sitemap

• • Impact: Without a sitemap, search engines may not effectively index all pages.
  • Recommendation: Create and submit an XML sitemap to search engines to improve crawl efficiency and coverage.

7. Canonicalization Issues

• • Impact: Canonicalization test failed, which can lead to duplicate content issues.
  • Recommendation: Implement proper canonical tags to ensure search engines index the correct version of each page.

8. Low Content Rate

• • Impact: Low content rate (87) may lead to poor user engagement and lower search rankings.
  • Recommendation: Enhance page content to provide more value to users, ensuring it is relevant, informative, and well-structured.

9. HTTPS to HTTP Links

• Impact: Links from HTTPS to HTTP (3) can present security warnings and affect user trust.
• Recommendation: Update all links to HTTPS to ensure secure browsing and maintain user trust.

Overall Recommendations

Implementing the above recommendations can significantly improve the technical SEO standing of “sandler.com.” Prioritising the fixing of broken links, addressing duplicate content, optimising title tags, and ensuring all technical elements such as canonical tags and sitemaps are correctly set up will enhance the site’s visibility and user experience. Regular audits and updates are advised to maintain and improve upon these optimisations.

Summary

The website utilises a robust and widely-used technology stack, primarily built on WordPress, which is supported by various plugins for enhanced functionality. The stack includes essential tools for SEO, security, and marketing automation. However, there are potential areas for improvement, including performance optimisation and updating certain technologies to newer versions or alternatives.

Technology Stack Assessment

Content Management System (CMS)

• • WordPress: The site is powered by WordPress, a versatile and user-friendly CMS. This choice supports extensive customisation and scalability.

Add-ons and Plugins

• • AddToAny Share Buttons: Facilitates easy content sharing across social media platforms.
  • Draftpress HFCM: Used for managing header, footer, and custom code snippets.
  • Gravity Forms: Provides advanced form-building capabilities.
  • WPMU DEV Smush: Utilised for image optimisation, essential for improving page load speeds.
  • Yoast SEO: A comprehensive SEO tool that assists in optimising content for search engines.

Servers and Databases

• • Cloudflare: Used as a Content Delivery Network (CDN), offering improved site speed and security.
  • MySQL: A reliable relational database management system supporting WordPress.

Analytics and Marketing

• • Google Tag Manager: Enables efficient management of marketing tags without altering the website code directly.
  • HubSpot: Assists in marketing automation, offering tools for email marketing, CRM, and analytics.

Web Development

• • JavaScript Libraries: Utilises jQuery, jQuery Migrate, Modernizr, and Select2 for various interactive features and compatibility checks.
  • PHP: The primary programming language for WordPress, ensuring dynamic content management.

Privacy and Security

• • OneTrust: Implements cookie compliance, necessary for GDPR adherence.
  • reCAPTCHA: Provides security against spam and abuse, essential for form protection.

Recommendations for Improvement

1. Performance Optimisation:

• • Evaluate the use of JavaScript libraries like jQuery and jQuery Migrate. Consider updating or replacing them with more modern, lightweight alternatives to reduce load times.
  • Monitor and optimise the use of Gravity Forms to ensure it does not impact site speed, especially if handling a large number of form submissions.

2. Security Enhancements:

• • Regularly update WordPress, plugins, and themes to their latest versions to protect against vulnerabilities.
  • Consider implementing additional security measures such as a Web Application Firewall (WAF) in conjunction with Cloudflare.

3. SEO and Marketing:

• • Continuously audit and update SEO practices using Yoast SEO to align with the latest search engine algorithms.
  • Leverage HubSpot’s marketing automation capabilities to enhance customer engagement and lead conversion.

4. Scalability and Future-proofing:

• Explore the use of additional caching mechanisms or services to further enhance the site’s speed and responsiveness.
• Consider transitioning to a more modern database management system if future scalability becomes a concern, although MySQL is currently sufficient.

By addressing these recommendations, the website can improve its performance, security, and user engagement, ensuring a robust presence in the digital landscape.

Summary

The analysis reveals a strong performance in SEO rankings, with several keywords achieving top positions. The website has 10 keywords ranking at position 1, and 12 keywords between positions 2 and 3, demonstrating a solid presence in search results. However, there is room for improvement, particularly in enhancing the visibility of the 110 keywords currently ranked between positions 11 and 20. The estimated traffic value (ETV) is impressive at 2057.82, indicating significant potential revenue. The competition for the keywords is generally low, suggesting opportunities to further dominate the rankings with strategic optimisation efforts.

Detailed Analysis

Rankings

• • Position 1 Keywords: The website ranks in the top position for 10 keywords. These include high-value keywords such as “sales methodology sandler,” “sales training sandler,” and “sandler training,” each contributing significantly to the site’s visibility and traffic.
  • Position 2-3 Keywords: With 12 keywords in this range, there is a notable opportunity to push these to the top position. Noteworthy keywords include “client expectations” and “major account.”
  • Position 4-10 Keywords: There are 46 keywords ranked within the top 10 positions. These keywords, like “sales mastery” and “types of workplace communication,” are crucial for capturing further market share.
  • Position 11-20 Keywords: There are 110 keywords in this range. Improving the content and backlinks related to these keywords could significantly enhance their rankings.
  • Position 21-50 Keywords: A bulk of keywords (465) fall within these positions. These require targeted SEO strategies to improve their rankings.
  • Position 50+ Keywords: The majority of the keywords (528) are ranked beyond position 50, indicating a need for comprehensive SEO overhaul for these terms.

Keywords

• • Top Ranked Keyword: “Sandler training” is the top-performing keyword with the highest search volume of 260, highlighting the brand’s strong recognition in this niche.
  • Keywords with CPC > $1: There are 61 keywords with a cost-per-click (CPC) value greater than $1, indicating their commercial viability and importance for paid campaigns.

Backlinks

• • Backlink Strategy: While the data does not explicitly cover backlinks, it is crucial to focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks for the keywords ranked between positions 11-50 to improve their visibility.

Strategies

• Content Optimisation: Enhancing content relevance and quality for the keywords ranked in lower positions can lead to improved rankings. Focus on creating comprehensive content that addresses user intent.
• Technical SEO: Conduct technical audits to ensure there are no issues hindering the site’s performance. This includes checking for broken links, optimising loading speed, and ensuring mobile-friendliness.
• Competitor Analysis: Analyse competitors ranking higher for similar keywords to identify gaps and opportunities in strategy.
• Local SEO: For keywords related to specific locations, such as “sales training London,” optimising for local search terms could enhance visibility.

Conclusion

The website demonstrates strong potential in SEO with a significant number of keywords ranking in top positions. However, to capitalise on this, there is a need for strategic efforts focusing on improving content, acquiring quality backlinks, and optimising technical aspects. By addressing these areas, the site could see substantial improvements in search rankings and traffic value.