Technical SEO Study: Website Speed / Content Delivery Network (CDN) / Content Management System (CMS) = Why Is My Website Slow?
Technical SEO Study with Favour Obasi-Ike: Website Speed / Content Delivery Network (CDN) / Content Management System (CMS) = Why Is My Website Slow?| Get exclusive SEO newsletters in your inbox.
Technical SEO is a major common issue for websites causing them to start loading slowly. We discuss that slow speeds are often caused by poor hosting platforms lacking sufficient bandwidth and uncompressed media, particularly images and videos.
Crucially, we emphasize the importance of acquiring and maintaining intellectual property ownership, including the domain and C panel (Control Panel) access, to prevent developers from holding site information hostage.
Additionally, the conversation highlights technical aspects like utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN), compressing files using tools like compressor.io, and employing proper image file types and alt text for improved search engine optimization.
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Answer Key
1. What is "Technical SEO"? Technical SEO, or "technical search engine (everywhere) optimization," refers to the technical methods used to ensure a brand or business shows up on web servers and desired websites, typically in the form of a link. It involves optimizing the underlying infrastructure of a website to improve its visibility and performance in search results.
2. Identify and explain the two primary factors discussed that cause a website to load slowly. The two primary factors are the hosting platform and the presence of numerous uncompressed images. A poor hosting platform may have insufficient bandwidth or be an overloaded shared server, while large, uncompressed image files significantly increase the amount of data a user must download, slowing the entire loading process.
3. What is a "high bounce rate," and how does it relate to a website's performance? A high bounce rate occurs when a visitor comes to a website and leaves quickly without interacting further. This is often caused by slow loading times, as users lack the patience to wait for content; another website might provide the same information three seconds faster, which is enough to make a user leave.
4. Define what a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is and name the two types of servers that comprise its network. A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a system that stands between a website's hosting (the origin) and the end-user. It caches and compresses website files, like images, across multiple geographic locations to deliver them to users more quickly. The two types of servers within a CDN are the origin server, where the website's original content is stored, and the edge server, which is geographically closer to the end-user and delivers the cached content.
5. Why is it crucial for a business owner to have direct ownership of their website's hosting server? Direct ownership of the hosting server ensures control over one's intellectual property and prevents being held "hostage" by a developer. If a business is on someone else's overloaded shared server, performance issues on one site can affect all sites (a "domino effect"). Owning the server provides direct access to the control panel, backups, and the website's blueprint, which is vital for management and troubleshooting.
6. Explain the role of "alt text" and how it contributes to a website's visibility and accessibility. Alt text, or alternative text, is a description added to an image's code. It provides context to search engines like Google and AI indexers, making the images searchable and improving the site's overall SEO. Furthermore, alt text is critical for accessibility, as it allows screen reading software to describe the image to visually impaired users.
7. What is a "cPanel," and what critical functions can be performed by accessing it? "cPanel" stands for Control Panel. It is the administrative dashboard for a website's hosting server. Accessing the cPanel is critical because it allows a user to get backup data, access the actual blueprint of the website, and see technical details like the file sizes of stored images.
8. Describe the significant negative impact that uncompressed images can have on a website, using the specific numerical example from the discussion. Uncompressed images drastically increase a website's loading time because of their large file size. The example given was an online store with 50 products, each with two image variations. If each uncompressed image is 5 megabytes, the total data added to the site's front-loading speed would be 500 megabytes, whereas compressing those same images could reduce the total size to just 50 megabytes (10% of the original) without losing quality.
9. What are the two recommended methods for incorporating video content on a website without negatively affecting its load speed? We strongly advises against directly uploading video files (e.g., MP4s). Instead, the two recommended methods are: 1) converting the video into a GIF and uploading the much smaller GIF file, or 2) embedding the video from a third-party platform like YouTube, which ensures the video is streamed from YouTube's servers and not the website's own server.
10. Name at least three free tools mentioned that can be used to analyze a website's performance and health. Three of these are GTmetrix, Google Page Speed Insights, and Siteliner. Other mentioned tools include Compressor.io and iLoveIMG.com for image compression and iLovePDF.com for documents.
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