Budget Accountants - Website Report

Introduction

The following report provides a comprehensive overview of the technical performance and SEO status of the website budgetaccountants.co.uk. The primary focus is on identifying key areas where improvements can have a significant impact on website performance, user experience, and conversion rates. By addressing these issues, the website can enhance its speed, search engine visibility, and overall user engagement.

10 Key Findings

1. Image Optimisation: Serving images in next-gen formats such as WebP and AVIF can lead to significant data savings and faster page load times. Potential savings include up to 202 KiB by optimizing image formats and sizes.

2. CSS and JavaScript Optimization: Reducing unused CSS and JavaScript can improve loading speeds, with potential savings of 138 KiB and 188 KiB, respectively. Deferring non-essential scripts and styles also contributes to better user experience.

3. Critical Performance Metrics: The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is currently at 1.4 seconds, indicating room for optimization to enhance perceived load times and user satisfaction.

4. Caching and Image Sizing: Implementing efficient cache policies and properly sizing images can further reduce load times, with expected savings of 297 KiB and better performance on repeat visits.

5. Render-Blocking Resources: Eliminating render-blocking resources can speed up the first paint of the page, with potential savings of 360 ms, enhancing both performance and user experience.

6. Technical SEO Improvements: Addressing issues like broken links, missing meta descriptions, and short title tags can improve search visibility and user engagement. Specifically, fixing 5 broken links and adding 4 missing meta descriptions are key actions.

7. Keyword Strategy: The keyword “budget accountant” ranks well, but there is an opportunity to improve the visibility of “low cost accountants,” currently ranked at position 27. This requires targeted on-page SEO and content strategy enhancements.

8. Technology Stack Enhancements: Upgrading to the latest WordPress version and regularly auditing plugins can enhance security and performance. Additionally, implementing a CDN can optimise content delivery speed.

9. Mobile Optimization: Further enhancing the mobile user experience through progressive web app (PWA) techniques can significantly improve user engagement on mobile devices.

10. Security Measures: Introducing additional security plugins or measures can protect against cyber threats and ensure a safe browsing experience, leveraging the existing Let’s Encrypt SSL certification.

By focusing on these key findings, budgetaccountants.co.uk can improve its technical performance and SEO effectiveness, ultimately leading to better user satisfaction and conversion rates. Regular monitoring and strategic adjustments will be essential to maintaining and enhancing these improvements over time.

Summary

The website’s performance evaluation identifies several key areas for improvement. The primary focus should be on optimizing images, CSS, and JavaScript to enhance load times and user experience. By addressing these issues, the site can improve its speed metrics, such as Largest Contentful Paint and Time to Interactive, which are critical for user engagement and overall performance.

Key Recommendations

Serve Images in Next-Gen Formats

Images are a significant part of web content and can substantially impact page load times. Using modern formats like WebP and AVIF can reduce image sizes by providing better compression than traditional formats like JPEG and PNG.

• • Potential Savings: 202 KiB

Reduce Unused CSS

Review and eliminate unused CSS rules to minimise the amount of data that needs to be loaded. Deferring non-essential styles until after the initial page load can also improve performance.

• • Potential Savings: 138 KiB

Reduce Unused JavaScript

Similar to CSS, unused JavaScript should be identified and removed. Scripts not required immediately can be deferred or loaded asynchronously to enhance page speed.

• • Potential Savings: 188 KiB

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is a critical performance metric that measures the time it takes for the largest visible content element to load. Optimizing this can significantly improve perceived load times.

• • Current LCP Time: 1.4 s
  • LCP Element Load Time: 1,410 ms

Efficient Cache Policy

Implementing a long cache lifetime for static assets ensures faster page loads on repeat visits. Ensure that resources are appropriately cached to reduce load times.

• • Resources Affected: 23

Properly Size Images

Ensure images are served at appropriate sizes to avoid unnecessary data usage and improve loading speed. This is particularly important for responsive design.

• • Potential Savings: 297 KiB

Avoid Serving Legacy JavaScript

Modern browsers do not require legacy JavaScript polyfills and transforms. Using a modern script deployment strategy can reduce the amount of unnecessary code sent to users.

• • Potential Savings: 6 KiB

Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources

Resources that block rendering should be optimized. Inline critical CSS/JS and defer non-critical resources to speed up the first paint of the page.

• • Potential Savings: 360 ms

Efficiently Encode Images

Ensure all images are optimally encoded to reduce load times and data consumption.

• • Potential Savings: 25 KiB

Minify CSS

Minifying CSS reduces file sizes, improving load times by decreasing the amount of data transmitted.

• • Potential Savings: 2 KiB

Other Performance Metrics

• • First Contentful Paint: 0.8 s
  • Speed Index: 1.8 s
  • Time to Interactive: 1.8 s

Address Deprecated APIs

Identify and replace any deprecated APIs to ensure future compatibility and performance.

• Warning Count: 1

By implementing these recommendations, the website can achieve faster loading times, improve user experience, and potentially increase user engagement and satisfaction.

Technical SEO Report for budgetaccountants.co.uk

Overall Feedback Summary

The technical SEO audit of budgetaccountants.co.uk reveals a generally well-optimised website with a few areas needing improvement. The site benefits from a valid SSL certificate, use of HTTPS, and a lack of duplicate content issues. However, there are a few critical issues, including broken links and missing meta descriptions, which should be addressed to enhance the site’s SEO performance. Below is a detailed analysis of the issues found, their impacts, and recommended fixes.

Issues Identified

1. Broken Links

• • Impact: Broken links can negatively impact user experience and hinder search engine crawlers from indexing important pages, leading to reduced search visibility.
  • Fixes: Identify and fix the 5 broken links by updating them with correct URLs or removing them if they are no longer relevant.

2. Broken Resources

• • Impact: One broken resource can cause incomplete page loading, affecting user experience and potentially leading to higher bounce rates.
  • Fixes: Locate and fix the broken resource to ensure that all page elements load correctly.

3. Missing Meta Descriptions

• • Impact: Missing meta descriptions (4 instances) can lead to reduced click-through rates from search engine results, as users rely on these to gauge page relevance.
  • Fixes: Create unique, concise, and keyword-rich meta descriptions for these pages to improve their search appearance.

4. Short Title Tags

• • Impact: Short title tags (3 instances) can fail to convey the full relevance and topic of a page, potentially limiting its ranking potential.
  • Fixes: Revise short title tags to include relevant keywords and provide a clear description of the page content.

5. Low Content Rate

• • Impact: Pages with low content rates (10 instances) may not provide sufficient information to users or crawlers, affecting their utility and ranking.
  • Fixes: Enhance the content on these pages with additional relevant information and keywords.

6. Missing Image Alt Attributes

• • Impact: Missing alt attributes (8 instances) can affect the site’s accessibility and image searchability.
  • Fixes: Add descriptive alt attributes to images to improve accessibility and potential for appearing in image search results.

7. Missing Image Titles

• • Impact: Without image titles (10 instances), there is a missed opportunity for additional contextual information for users and search engines.
  • Fixes: Add informative titles to images to supplement alt attributes.

8. 4xx Errors

• • Impact: A single 4xx error indicates a page not found, which can negatively affect user experience and crawling efficiency.
  • Fixes: Resolve the 404 error by correcting the URL or redirecting it to a valid page.

9. Render-Blocking Resources

• • Impact: Two instances of render-blocking resources can slow down page loading times, negatively impacting user experience and SEO.
  • Fixes: Defer or asynchronously load these resources to improve page load times.

Additional Observations

• Canonicalisation: The absence of a canonicalisation test indicates potential issues with duplicate content being indexed. Implement proper canonical tags to guide search engines.
• SSL Certificate: The SSL certificate is valid and properly implemented, ensuring a secure browsing experience for users.
• HTTPS Usage: The site is fully using HTTPS, which is positive for both security and SEO visibility.
• URL Structure: The URLs follow SEO-friendly practices, which aids in better indexing and user comprehension.

Conclusion

Overall, budgetaccountants.co.uk is performing well from a technical SEO perspective but requires attention to specific areas like broken links, missing metadata, and content optimisation. Addressing these issues will likely enhance the site’s search engine performance and user experience. Regular monitoring and audits are recommended to maintain and improve SEO health.

Summary

The website employs a comprehensive technology stack centred around WordPress, enhanced with various plugins, analytics, and tracking tools. The stack includes elements for performance optimisation, audience measurement, social interaction, and more. While the current setup is robust, there are potential improvements that could enhance the site’s performance, security, and user experience.

Current Technology Stack

Analytics and Tracking

• • Google Analytics 4: Utilised for advanced audience measurement and tracking.
  • Google Tag Manager: Facilitates tag management without altering site code.
  • Microsoft Clarity: Provides insights into user interaction with the website.

Widgets and Plugins

• • WhatsApp Chat (Ninja Team): Enables direct customer interaction via WhatsApp.
  • WP Socializer: Adds social bookmarking and sharing buttons.
  • Yoast SEO Plugin: Enhances search engine optimisation efforts.
  • Draftpress HFCM and 99Robots HFCM: Manage header and footer code snippets.

Fonts and Icons

• • Google Font API: Integrates web fonts.
  • Font Awesome: Provides a toolkit for iconic fonts and CSS styling.

Content Management System

• • WordPress 5.5: The primary CMS platform for content management.
  • Divi Theme: A flexible WordPress theme by Elegant Themes.

JavaScript Libraries

• • jQuery 3.7.1: Aids in simplifying JavaScript operations.
  • jQuery Waypoints and Intersection Observer: Enhance user interaction by triggering functions on scroll.

Mobile Optimization

• • Viewport Meta and Mobile Compatibility: Ensure the website is optimised for mobile devices.
  • Apple Mobile Web Clips Icon: Supports iOS devices with a specific icon.

Security and Hosting

• • Let’s Encrypt SSL: Provides SSL certification for secure data transmission.
  • UKDedicated Hosting: Offers UK-based server hosting and related services.
  • LiteSpeed Web Server: High-performance web server for efficient content delivery.

Syndication and Social Media

• RSS and Pingback Support: Enables syndication and backlink notifications.
• Social Media Links: Integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Recommendations for Improvements

1. Update WordPress: Consider upgrading to the latest WordPress version for improved security and features.
2. Regular Plugin Audits: Continuously audit and update plugins to mitigate security vulnerabilities.
3. SEO Enhancements: Leverage the latest SEO strategies, possibly exploring additional or updated plugins.
4. Mobile Optimization: Further enhance mobile user experience by adopting progressive web app (PWA) techniques.
5. Content Delivery Network (CDN): Implement or expand CDN usage to optimise content delivery speed across various regions.
6. Security Measures: Introduce additional security plugins or measures to further protect against cyber threats.
7. Performance Monitoring: Regularly monitor site performance, particularly focusing on load times and server responsiveness.

Conclusion

While the current technology stack is well-rounded, implementing the above improvements can significantly boost the website’s performance, security, and overall user experience. Regular updates and monitoring are vital to maintaining a competitive and secure online presence.

SEO Analysis Summary

The analysis of the SEO data reveals both strengths and weaknesses in the current strategy. The key strength is the top-ranking position for the keyword “budget accountant,” which holds the highest search volume among the analysed terms. However, there is room for improvement, particularly in enhancing the visibility of keywords ranking beyond the first page. The overall competition for the analysed keywords is moderate, which presents an opportunity to improve rankings with targeted SEO strategies.

Keyword Rankings

• • Number of Ranked Keywords: 2
  • Position 1 Keywords: 1
  • Position 2-3 Keywords: 0
  • Position 4-10 Keywords: 0
  • Position 11-20 Keywords: 0
  • Position 21-50 Keywords: 1
  • Position 50+ Keywords: 0

The keyword “budget accountant” is performing well, securing the top position. However, “low cost accountants” is ranked 27, indicating potential for optimisation to enhance visibility.

Search Volume and Competition

• • Highest Search Volume Keyword: “budget accountant” with 70 searches
  • Average Competition: 0.35

The competition level is moderate, with “low cost accountants” showing a slightly higher competition score. This suggests that while the keyword has potential, more effort may be needed to improve its ranking.

Estimated Traffic Value (ETV)

• Total ETV: 21.427

The estimated traffic value is primarily driven by the “budget accountant” keyword, reflecting its strong ranking position.

Strategy Recommendations

1. Optimise for Low-Ranking Keywords: Focus on improving the ranking of “low cost accountants” by enhancing on-page SEO elements such as meta tags, headings, and content relevance.

2. Content Development: Develop high-quality content that targets related long-tail keywords to capture additional traffic and reduce competition.

3. Backlink Acquisition: Increase efforts in acquiring high-quality backlinks to improve domain authority and support keyword ranking improvements.

4. Competitor Analysis: Conduct a detailed analysis of competitors who rank higher for “low cost accountants” to identify strategies that can be adapted.

5. Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor keyword performance and adjust strategies as necessary to maintain and improve rankings.

By focusing on these areas, there is potential to further enhance the site’s visibility and capture a greater share of search traffic.