SMARTech energy - Website Report

#### Summary of Key Aspects Impacting Performance and Conversions

This comprehensive analysis evaluates key aspects of website performance, technical SEO, keyword strategy, and technology stack. The insights reveal both strengths and areas for improvement, with recommendations aimed at enhancing performance, security, and user experience. Below is a summary of the top 10 key findings that could have the most significant impact on performance and conversions:

1. Page Speed Optimisation: The site exhibits strong loading speed metrics, but there is potential to further optimise by reducing unused CSS and properly sizing images. These enhancements can significantly improve loading times and user satisfaction.

2. HTTPS Implementation: Transitioning the site to HTTPS could fortify data security and boost user trust, which is increasingly critical for both SEO and user experience.

3. Technical SEO Improvements: Addressing duplicate content and broken resources can improve search engine indexing and user experience, contributing to higher search rankings and engagement.

4. Keyword Strategy Enhancement: Focusing on mid to low-performing keywords by refining content and leveraging long-tail keywords can drive them into top-ranking positions, increasing traffic and visibility.

5. Backlink Acquisition: Strengthening the backlink profile can enhance search engine authority, helping to elevate lower-ranking keywords and improve overall SEO performance.

6. Server and Database Optimisation: Implementing caching strategies and optimising the MySQL database can reduce server load and improve page load times, contributing to a seamless user experience.

7. Security Enhancements: Introducing a web application firewall and ensuring regular updates and backups can protect against threats and data loss, maintaining site integrity and user trust.

8. WordPress and Plugin Management: Regular audits of WordPress themes and plugins can eliminate unnecessary code and vulnerabilities, enhancing speed and security.

9. Content Delivery Network (CDN) Implementation: Utilising a CDN can improve content delivery speed and scalability, particularly for a global audience, by reducing latency and server strain.

10. SEO-Friendly URL and Meta Optimisation: Ensuring URLs are concise and descriptive, alongside enhancing meta descriptions and title tags, can improve search visibility and click-through rates.

By implementing these strategic recommendations, the website can significantly improve its performance, security, and user experience, leading to enhanced conversions and business growth.

Summary

The website demonstrates strong performance metrics, particularly in terms of loading speed, with impressive scores for First Contentful Paint (0.7s) and Speed Index (1.0s). However, there are several areas for improvement, including reducing unused CSS, properly sizing images, and addressing security concerns by implementing HTTPS. By focusing on these optimisations, the website can improve its efficiency and provide a better user experience.

Performance Analysis

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

• • Score: 1.2 seconds
  • Analysis: The LCP score indicates that the largest text or image element is being rendered quickly, which is positive for user experience.

Speed Index

• • Score: 1.0 seconds
  • Analysis: The Speed Index score suggests that the page’s visual content is being populated rapidly, providing a seamless experience for users.

First Contentful Paint (FCP)

• • Score: 0.7 seconds
  • Analysis: The FCP score confirms that initial content is being painted promptly, which is essential for engaging users.

Areas for Improvement

Avoid an Excessive DOM Size

• • Current Elements: 866
  • Recommendation: A large Document Object Model (DOM) can slow down rendering. Optimise the HTML structure by removing unnecessary elements and simplifying the hierarchy to enhance performance.

HTTPS Implementation

• • Findings: 1 insecure request found
  • Recommendation: Transition the website to HTTPS to secure data transmission and enhance user trust. This also helps in leveraging modern web capabilities like HTTP/2.

Properly Size Images

• • Potential Savings: 21 KiB
  • Recommendation: Optimize image sizes to match display dimensions, which will reduce loading times and conserve bandwidth.

Reduce Unused CSS

• • Potential Savings: 369 KiB
  • Recommendation: Minimise unused CSS to decrease the load time. Consider removing or deferring non-critical CSS to improve rendering performance.

Avoid Multiple Page Redirects

• Potential Savings: 190 ms
• Recommendation: Reduce the number of redirects to decrease load times. Ensure that all links are direct and necessary redirects are optimised.

Conclusion

While the website performs well in terms of initial loading metrics, there are significant opportunities to optimise and secure the site further. By addressing the identified areas, particularly with HTTPS implementation, image optimisation, and CSS reduction, the site’s overall performance and user experience can be enhanced substantially.

Overall Feedback Summary

The technical SEO audit for smartech-energy.co.uk indicates a strong foundation with a few areas needing attention to enhance performance and search visibility. The site has a high on-page SEO score of 93.44, and critical technical elements like SSL, canonicalisation, and 404 error handling are well-managed. However, improvements can be made in addressing duplicate content, broken resources, and optimising metadata and image attributes.

Technical SEO Issues and Recommendations

Duplicate Content

• • Issue: There are 11 instances of duplicate content across the site.
  • Impact: Duplicate content can confuse search engines and lead to indexing issues, potentially impacting rankings.
  • Fix: Implement canonical tags to indicate the preferred versions of pages. Review content strategy to ensure uniqueness across pages.

Broken Resources

• • Issue: 82 broken resource links were detected.
  • Impact: Broken resources can lead to poor user experience and may negatively affect SEO if search engines encounter issues rendering pages.
  • Fix: Identify and replace or remove broken resources. Ensure all external scripts, stylesheets, and images are correctly linked.

Missing Meta Descriptions

• • Issue: One page is missing a meta description.
  • Impact: Meta descriptions are important for click-through rates from search engine results.
  • Fix: Add a relevant, engaging meta description to the affected page to improve visibility and user engagement.

Title Tags

• • Issue: Seven pages have title tags that are too long.
  • Impact: Long titles may get truncated in search results, reducing their effectiveness.
  • Fix: Shorten title tags to 50-60 characters to ensure full visibility in search results, focusing on primary keywords.

Low Content Rate

• • Issue: 80 pages have a low content rate.
  • Impact: Pages with insufficient content may not perform well in search engine rankings.
  • Fix: Enhance the content on these pages by adding valuable, relevant information to meet user needs and improve SEO.

Missing Alt Text

• • Issue: 21 images are missing alt text.
  • Impact: Alt text is crucial for accessibility and helps search engines understand the content of images.
  • Fix: Add descriptive alt text to all images to improve accessibility and SEO.

SEO-Friendly URLs

• • Issue: 22 URLs do not meet SEO-friendly criteria.
  • Impact: Non-descriptive URLs can affect usability and SEO.
  • Fix: Ensure URLs are concise, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. Avoid using special characters and long strings of numbers.

Redirects

• • Issue: Several pages are linked to redirects, with 18 instances identified.
  • Impact: Redirects can slow down the site and may lead to a poor user experience.
  • Fix: Update internal links to point directly to the final URL to streamline navigation and improve page load times.

Additional Recommendations

• HTTPS to HTTP Links: Address the eight instances of insecure links by updating them to use HTTPS.
• Render-Blocking Resources: Address the render-blocking resource to improve page load times and user experience.
• Content Encoding: Ensure content encoding is enabled to improve page speed and performance.

By addressing these issues, smartech-energy.co.uk can further improve its technical SEO health, leading to better search engine performance and user experience.

Summary

The website is built on a technology stack comprising Nginx as both the web server and reverse proxy, MySQL for database management, and WordPress for content management and blogging. The media content is supported by YouTube, and PHP is the primary programming language used. While the current stack is reliable, there are opportunities to enhance performance, security, and scalability. Recommendations include optimising the server configuration, considering alternative database options, and implementing robust security practices.

Detailed Assessment

Servers

• • Web Servers and Reverse Proxies: The website employs Nginx as both the web server and reverse proxy. Nginx is well-regarded for its high performance and ability to handle numerous concurrent connections efficiently. It is suitable for serving static content quickly and acting as a load balancer.
  • Databases: MySQL is used for database management. It is a widely used, reliable relational database system, particularly for applications like WordPress.

Content Management

• • CMS and Blogs: WordPress is used for content management and blogging. It is a popular CMS known for its ease of use, extensive plugin ecosystem, and customisation capabilities.

Media

• • Video Players: The website uses YouTube for video content, which is a robust choice for embedding videos, given its vast infrastructure and streaming capabilities.

Web Development

• • Programming Languages: PHP is utilised as the server-side programming language. PHP is the native language for WordPress, making it compatible and efficient for this setup.

Recommendations for Improvements

1. Server Optimisation:

• • Cache Configuration: Implementing caching strategies, such as FastCGI caching with Nginx or a WordPress caching plugin, can significantly reduce server load and improve page load times.
  • HTTP/2 and TLS: Ensure Nginx is configured to support HTTP/2 and that the latest version of TLS is enabled to improve security and performance.

2. Database Enhancements:

• • Optimisation: Regularly optimise and index the MySQL database to improve query performance.
  • Consider Alternative Databases: Depending on the website’s scaling needs, exploring other database solutions like MariaDB or PostgreSQL might offer performance and feature benefits.

3. Security Improvements:

• • Firewall and DDoS Protection: Implement a web application firewall (WAF) to protect against common threats and consider DDoS protection services.
  • Regular Updates and Backups: Ensure all components, especially WordPress plugins and PHP versions, are up-to-date. Implement regular backups to guard against data loss.

4. WordPress Optimisation:

• • Plugin Management: Review installed plugins for necessity and performance impact. Deactivate or remove plugins that are not essential to reduce potential security vulnerabilities and improve speed.
  • Theme Audits: Ensure the WordPress theme is optimised for performance and does not include unnecessary code that could slow down the website.

5. Scalability Considerations:

• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Implement a CDN to offload bandwidth from the origin server, accelerate content delivery, and improve load times for a global audience.
• Load Balancing: As traffic grows, consider implementing load balancing strategies to distribute traffic across multiple servers effectively.

By addressing these areas, the website can enhance its performance, security, and readiness for future growth.

Summary

The SEO analysis reveals key strengths and weaknesses in the current strategy by evaluating rankings, keywords, and backlinks. The data indicates a strong performance for specific high-ranking keywords, but there is substantial room for improvement, particularly for keywords beyond the top 10 positions. The analysis will delve into keyword rankings and performance metrics, offering strategic recommendations to enhance visibility and traffic.

Keyword Rankings

High-Performing Keywords

• • Position 1 Keywords: There are 2 keywords ranked in the top position, namely “energy monitoring systems” and “smartech energy.” These keywords have relatively high search volumes of 210 and 90, respectively, with the top keyword contributing significantly to the estimated traffic value.
  • Position 2-3 Keywords: With 2 keywords ranked between positions 2 and 3, the keyword “energy monitoring system” leads in this category, suggesting strong visibility but with potential to climb to the top position.

Mid to Low Performing Keywords

• • Position 4-10 Keywords: There are 6 keywords within this range. While these do attract some traffic, optimising these keywords could push them into top positions, enhancing overall performance.
  • Position 11-20 Keywords: A total of 24 keywords fall into this bracket. These keywords have the potential to significantly increase traffic if optimised correctly to break into the top 10.
  • Position 21-50 Keywords: With 144 keywords in this range, these represent a substantial opportunity for improvement. Enhanced strategies could elevate these to more competitive positions.
  • Position 50+ Keywords: The majority, 237 keywords, are ranked beyond position 50, indicating a need for comprehensive strategy revision and optimisation.

Keyword Metrics

• Estimated Traffic Value (ETV): The total estimated traffic value stands at 642.80, indicating the potential monetary value of organic traffic driven by the current keyword rankings.
• Average Competition: The average competition rating is low, suggesting that with strategic focus, there is a substantial opportunity to improve rankings without facing significant competitive pressure.
• Search Volume Insights: The keyword with the highest search volume is “energy monitoring systems” at 210, which is also the top-ranked keyword, highlighting its importance in the current strategy.
• Keywords with CPC > $1: There are 52 keywords with a cost-per-click greater than $1, indicating areas where paid search could complement organic efforts.

Backlink Analysis

Though specific backlink data is not provided, backlinks are crucial for improving search engine rankings. A detailed analysis focusing on acquiring high-quality backlinks can support the elevation of lower-ranking keywords into more competitive positions.

Strategic Recommendations

1. Optimise High-Performing Keywords: Focus on maintaining and strengthening the top-ranking positions by updating content, improving on-page SEO, and ensuring high relevance.

2. Target Mid-Range Keywords: Implement targeted strategies to push keywords ranked between positions 4 to 20 into higher positions. This could include improving content quality, enhancing user engagement, and leveraging social media promotion.

3. Revise Strategy for Low-Performing Keywords: For keywords ranked beyond position 20, consider revamping content, exploring backlink opportunities, and using long-tail keyword variations to improve visibility.

4. Enhance Content and UX: Improve the overall user experience by ensuring fast load times, mobile-friendly design, and engaging content that meets user intent.

5. Leverage Paid Search: For keywords with a high CPC, consider running targeted PPC campaigns to capture additional traffic and complement organic efforts.

This analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the current SEO landscape, offering actionable insights to bolster online visibility and traffic through strategic improvements.