Wordpress SEO Expert

Improve your Google ranking with 25-year experienced SEO professional Peter Mahoney

Do you provide a list of what you’ve done?

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Thanks for that. So the AMP you mention, which I know nothing about, do you install plugins?

And regarding any amendments you make, do you provide a list so I know what has happened?

And do you write targeted descriptions etc? Do you research and ensure they are valid for my brand/content and good for the visitors and ranking?

also I noticed the extra add on for site to load faster, are you able to improve mobile loading speed?

the site is now on a fast server on site ground and I use divi as the theme builder. auto optimise is installed and divi features are on for speed.

btw: yoast is installed

Thanks for coming back to me!

” And regarding any amendments you make, do you provide a list so I know what has happened?”
Mostly. I explain what I did and why, but in general terms. By that I mean I don’t provide a list of every single change to the SEO configurations (I typically make more than 400 in the course of my work) but I will say things like:

Your homepage’s title and other tags were re-written, both to pick up more key terms, but also to conform to the maximum size restrictions to make sure search engines read them ok.

In fact I rewrote these for all your pages.

That sort of thing.

“And do you write targeted descriptions etc? Do you research and ensure they are valid for my brand/content and good for the visitors and ranking?”
Yes, very much so.

“also I noticed the extra add on for site to load faster, are you able to improve mobile loading speed?”
Mobile speed, as in loading time, yes. I don’t worry much about % scores on 3rd party testing sites though – they’re results often aren’t possible/applicable to WordPress anyway. But importantly when Google measures your site for speed, to see if it should get an SEO boost for being fast – they look at the actual loading time in seconds anyway. NOT the % page speed list of possible suggestions.

I hope that all helps!

 

Cheers,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Fairly common after work questions

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HI Peter

Thanks for doing all that work and I have noticed that when checking the website on a mobile there is no favicon and can you add our logo to be the favicon in the mobile version.

I installed a metor plugin I think a month ago and it seemed to speed up the site but the homepage seems to take a while before it loads fully and is there anything you can do for that?

I have a webmasters account with google where I verified the website and submitted a sitemap and will I download the sitemap and submit to my google account?

How long will the change you have made take to show in google rankings?

Do you think any of the changes could harm any of the current rankings such as, “Roofers”?

Let me know what your price would be for this extra work?

Also noticed the site is down the ranking from where it used to be and for example we were on page 6 for roofer Glasgow search and now we are on page 9?

Thanks Ian – hopefully you saw my write-up of the work completed which answers a few of your queries. 🙂

To the rest of them:

NO FAVICON
 There wasn’t one when I first visited the site – let alone worked on it. So this pre-dates my work. If you’re interested in bespoke work to the site I do have packages available for that – let me know.

SITEMAP
That’s not how those work with Search Console. (Which used to be called Webmaster Tools). I not only submitted the sitemap to be re-scanned, but set up a ‘ping’, so whenever you add a new post or page Google,Bing etc. will be notified.

HOW LONG
Typically 3-7 days, as per my write-up.

CAN CHANGES HURT
No. The existing SEO setup you had was actually very poor, so it was great to be able to improve all that for you.

WHAT’S THE PRICE FOR EXTRA WORK
Ah! Sorry, I’m replying as I go through each thing. So yes, I do offer WordPress support packages, and you can read about those here:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/ongoing-wordpress-support/

IS THE SITE RANKING BADLY NOW
“Also noticed the site is down the ranking from where it used to be and for example we were on page 6 for roofer search and now we are on page 9?”

Google hasn’t even scanned the site since my work – so any changes you’re seeing aren’t related to it at all. Obviously things will improve once they do.

Out of interest, how do you check your ranking on Google? Do you use a proper system like Google Search Console? Or do you just search for yourself?

Cheers,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

WordPress speed & CLS for SEO. Oh yeah, and can you use this audit I paid for?

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We have been looking at your WordPress SEO gig and just wanted to ask some more questions.

We have set up our site and the google console, everything was running smoothly but in the last few days we now have some errors showing in the console.

The current errors showing are:

Mobile – LCP issues longer than 4s
CLS issue: more than 0.25 (mobile)

CLS issue: more than 0.25 (desktop)

If we were to go for any of your packages is this something that you would be able to sort for us? if so can you let us know how many errors you can do as well.

We recently had a site audit performed by someone from Fiverr which had some errors on – if we were to send that to you would you be able to help with that as well?

Thanks for contacting me. I’ll go through each of your SEO questions in turn.

1) SPEED
I wouldn’t be helping in the way you seem to want, no. I do have a speed add-on available with the SEO, but it’s 100% based around making your site load faster, in seconds. I explain why that’s important in more detail here:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/problems-with-google-pagespeed-insights/

But the key thing is they’re just giving recommendations – they’re not always possible to resolve (especially on WordPress!).

Also they don’t use those % scores when ranking your site, they look at the real loading time in seconds.

2) CLS
You should get this fixed, but a lot of the time it requires a re-write of your theme. Hopefully it’s something simple though – in about 70% of cases this can be fixed by just turning Lazy Load Images off on your site.

3) WEBSITE SEO AUDIT
Chances are that site audit you paid for was actually just automated generated in about 10 seconds using one of the major software packages that claim to do that. I hope you didn’t pay too much for it! I see people doing this all the time.

Those automatic audits aren’t very good to be honest. They’re riddled with problems, which makes sense when you think about it. All they’re doing is looking at each page and checking for matching strings of code they want to see – totally ignoring site wide SEO, the fact there are usually several ways to approach the same SEO task (they usually just look for one), etc.

They’re certainly no match for a professional with 23 years experience looking at it all manually for you!

 

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for SEO & Speed

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Right, this is an interesting one. It’s technical, but has a very simple main recommendation (in large text, below).

Google has started to include something they’re calling CLS in their ranking metrics.

Essentially it means ‘how long before elements loading on the site stop moving around’, and their target is just 0.25 seconds.

If things move around as your page loads for longer than that it’ll get a warning in their system. (This isn’t general loading time, just a very specific part of how a site loads.)

Think about when a website loads, the first thing it does is load the layout – where the menu is, where images will go, text, etc. That’s the elements they’re talking about.

It’s fine for a image to take longer to load, as long as the space it will take is already reserved for it when it DOES load. To be honest most of this happens so quickly you can’t even see it.

But there is one very common thing lots of sites have turned on that means layout changes happen long after a page is loaded – and that’s “lazy load” for images.

Lazy Load was a great technique when it became popular a decade ago. It meant images didn’t load on a page until the browser needed to se them. If an image was at the bottom of a page, and the user wouldn’t see it in the browser until they scrolled down, it waited until it needed to load it to do so.

But when that happens, it moves elements on the page around accordingly to make space for the image – and therefore will always fail the CLS test Google does for all sites and pages.

So ironically something that used to be recommended to help a page load faster is now a problem for passing loading time tests!

Personally I’ve not used Lazy load for years (in most cases it was unclear if the speed enhancement it brought was actually better than the extra Javascript it needed to work) – but now my recommendation to all website owners is clear:

If you use Lazy Load, turn it off.

I am a small electrical company with poor SEO

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I am a small electrical company with a poor online presence.

I have a WordPress website which I am looking to renovate along side some SEO and PPC. Additionally I need to look at social media as a platform to show case information and projects.

I am looking for long term business relationships with continues growth. We want a proactive partner who can explain when and how to scale these campaigns to offer similar returns of investment.

You look credible and i wanted to reach out.

I’ve had a look at the current SEO setup and there’s definitely room for improvement. 🙂

Currently (for example) the homepage description code says:
“Looking for an honest, reliable, professional Electrician in the London or Surrey area? Visit our website for more information.”

There are a few rules that doesn’t conform to. You have two commas which is okay, albeit the maximum. There’s a question in there which is considered a no-no.

But most importantly, the only three words in there that actually get searched for are:

  • Electrician
  • London
  • Surrey

and only one of those relates to your actual service!

So I can absolutely help with your SEO.

You talked about renovating the site – if you mean you want a new design made that is something I can help with – but it would involve making a new site from scratch. (Obviously I do extensive SEO work, but I don’t make bespoke layout or design changes to existing sites I’m afraid.)

I also don’t work with PPC or social media. I used to, but year’s ago decided to hone my offering to the service that overwhelmingly delivers clients the best return on their investment – search engine optimisation.

Just a bit more on my SEO campaign offering. You can read more about it here:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/ongoing-wordpress-seo-campaign/

I do usually recommend clients buy and work with me on the initial full expert WordPress SEO overhaul first though:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/complete-wordpress-seo-overhaul/

So they can be sure they enjoy working with me.

I hope that’s all helpful!

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

AMP & Speed for WordPress SEO

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Hi Peter

Could I ask for a bit of advice…is there anything you know we can do to improve mobile speed fairly easily? A client of ours has noted a few reports which seem to flag up the site being slow (or poor) on mobile?

I think you may have installed the AMP plugin on other sites, is that the sort of thing I should be doing?
https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/amp/

I will also be switching this site over to be hosted on WPEngine which I hope will help.

WPEngine is better than most for speed.

The ultimate hosting solution for speed though is to use SpinupWP on a UK-based Digital Ocean droplet. That’s where I host my clients and it flies.

AMP is definitely a good idea – but does require some testing. You want to have it turned on for as many types of posts (pages, posts, portfolio, etc.) as possible – but very often that will cause display issues on those data types. So it takes a bit of testing and finessing.

Speed wise I recommend (and can deploy for you) the WP Rocket plugin.

Bear in mind though those speed tests can be a test problematic where they give % scores. Here’s some more information on that:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/problems-with-google-pagespeed-insights/

Cheers!

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

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