EDITS.WS

Author: Edwin Toonen

  • The first E in E-E-A-T, or the importance of Experience

    Google’s Search Quality Raters evaluate whether its search ranking systems provide helpful, relevant information. They evaluate the quality and relevance of search results produced by Google to help improve the algorithms and user experience. To do so, Google uses the E-E-A-T system, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The E for experience is relatively new and helps assess content quality. This article will discuss the Experience factor and how it fits into the updated search quality rater guidelines.

    Table of contents

    Reminder: What is E-E-A-T?

    E-E-A-T is an acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a concept that Google introduced through its Search Quality Raters Guidelines (pdf file) to help evaluate the quality of websites and web pages and to judge how these should be ranked in search engine results pages (SERPs).

    Read our guide on what is E-E-A-T to get the lowdown, but here’s a quick breakdown of what each term means:

    • Experience: When evaluating the content, Google considers the writer’s first-hand or (life) experience relating to the topic.
    • Expertise: Refers to the level of knowledge and skill a content creator or website has in a particular area or subject matter.
    • Authoritativeness: Refers to how reputable and respected the content creator or website is within its niche or industry.
    • Trustworthiness: Refers to the overall reliability and integrity of the content creator or website. This includes aspects such as transparency, accuracy, and ethical behavior.

    Google considers E-E-A-T a critical factor in their ranking systems, especially for search queries related to health, finance, and other areas where the accuracy and trustworthiness of information are crucial — the so-called YMYL sites. This system is used to evaluate the content quality and who’s behind the content. Websites with high experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are more likely to rank well in Google’s search results for these particular searches.

    What is YMYL?

    YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” and refers to web pages or content that can impact a person’s physical, emotional, or financial well-being, and thus require a higher level of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

    What does Experience mean in E-E-A-T?

    Experience is now a part of Google’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness system for rating the quality and relevance of content on search engine results pages (SERPs). This move was announced in the latest version of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), released on December 15, 2022.

    Experience refers to knowledge or skill gained through exposure to a particular activity or event. It is the practical application of knowledge or skills gained over time. Experience can be gained through personal involvement or positive or negative observation. For example, someone who has worked in a particular field for many years has much experience.

    Google added Experience to assess results better, believing people want to read first-hand experiences when making important decisions. Pages related to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics are most impacted by Experience. It is crucial to know when sharing experiences or leaving the information to experts is appropriate.

    What’s the difference between experience and expertise?

    Experience and expertise are terms often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings. Let’s take a closer look at the two.

    In Google’s words:

    “Experience: Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of personal experience. For example, which would you trust: a product review from someone who has personally used the product or a “review” by someone who has not?”

    Conversely, expertise refers to a high level of skill or knowledge in a particular subject or field. It results from a combination of education, training, and experience. Expertise is typically associated with a deep understanding of a particular subject or field that allows for the ability to make judgments, solve problems, and give advice.

    Again, in Google’s words:

    “Expertise: Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary knowledge or skill for the topic. Different topics require different levels and types of expertise to be trustworthy. For example, which would you trust: home electrical rewiring advice from a skilled electrician or from an antique homes enthusiast who has no knowledge of electrical wiring?”

    In summary, experience is knowledge or skill gained through exposure to a particular activity or event. At the same time, expertise is a high level of skill or knowledge in a particular subject or field.

    An example of experience vs. expertise in E-E-A-T

    Here’s an example, consider the case of a cancer survivor. As someone who lived with cancer, this person is well-equipped to offer advice on coping strategies and share insights that may benefit others facing similar challenges.

    However, it’s important to recognize that this person does not necessarily possess formal medical expertise in cancer treatment. While both a cancer survivor and a trained doctor may be capable of producing valuable content on the topic, the two will likely be evaluated differently based on their respective levels of experience and expertise.

    Experience and expertise are two concepts, but they can complement each other. Experience can lead to the development of expertise over time, but expertise requires more than just experience. Becoming an expert in a particular subject or field requires education, training, and experience. But remember that you don’t always need formal qualifications to showcase your industry-relevant experience in your content.

    Experience, expertise, and authoritativeness can have some overlap for certain types of web pages and topics. Depending on the purpose and topic of the page, different combinations of E-E-A may be more relevant, so it’s important to consider what would make the content creator reliable for that particular context.

    Who, how, and why?

    To ensure your content is aligned with what search engines reward, consider evaluating it based on the “Who, How, and Why” factors. “Who” refers to the creator of the content, and it’s crucial to make it clear to visitors who authored it. Adding bylines and providing background information about the author can help with this. “How” refers to how the content was produced, and sharing details about the production process, such as the number of products tested in a review, can build trust with readers. Finally, “Why” refers to the purpose of creating the content, which should primarily be to help people. If the primary purpose is to manipulate search rankings, this violates Google’s spam policies.

    Generative AI makes it harder to evaluate content

    With the rise of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Google Bard, content creation has become more accessible. These technologies can generate human-like content with remarkable accuracy, making it challenging to distinguish generative AI content from content created by real people.

    However, while AI-generated content tools are faster and more efficient than people, they lack the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness people can provide. These technologies do not possess the same empathy and personal connection that genuine authors can create within their content.

    Additionally, AI-generated content is less authentic, lacks originality, may contain errors or inconsistencies, and may lack inclusivity. This can negatively affect website owners, leading to a loss of credibility, and decreased organic traffic and sales.

    In February 2023, Google published a post to guide content creators on how it thinks about AI-generated content for Search. In it is this piece:

    “Our advice for creators considering AI-generation. As explained, however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.

    Evaluating your content in this way, whether you’re using AI-generated content or not, will help you stay on course with what our systems seek to reward.

    Generative AI lacks these qualities — it isn’t an expert on a topic and doesn’t have (life) experience. You do! So please make the most of it and get or prove those E-E-A-T factors.

    More on this in Google’s guide to creating helpful content for readers.

    How to demonstrate experience in E-E-A-T

    In today’s content-driven world, demonstrating your experience is increasingly crucial. However, displaying it in a unique, compelling way can be challenging. Here are some tips to get you started.

    To effectively optimize for experience, you need to distinguish between expertise and experience in E-E-A-T, knowing when to showcase each. While expertise relates to your knowledge, experience is closely linked to your direct involvement with a particular subject. For example, if you’re seeking information on vascular surgery, you’ll turn to an authoritative source, such as a vascular surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. Conversely, if you’re struggling with weight issues, you might find reading about other people’s experiences helpful.

    Another way to optimize for experience is by sharing evidence of it. For example, describe your experience reviewing an ultralight-weight sleeping pad for multi-day mountain hikes. This could include details on how well the pad insulated against the cold, if it made crinkly sounds that woke up your partner in the tent, and how small it packed away in your backpack. Be transparent about how you or your writer have garnered your experience. You can describe your direct encounters with a product or service. You can create unique and helpful content that separates you by leveraging your expertise.

    Featuring insights from industry experts can also be an effective way to optimize for experience. This involves contacting other content creators or influencers for their input, adding credibility to your blog, and spotlighting your commentary.

    Finally, be honest about the experience and authoritativeness of your authors. Don’t forget to include author bios for yourself and other contributors. This demonstrates that you all have the experience and expertise to provide advice and optimize your content for experience, making it more appealing to readers and search engines.

    Build up your About Us and Author pages

    Your About Us and Author pages are some of the most important pages on your site. It’s where people expect to find information about who is behind this website. It’s a great place to share all those details in one easy-to-find location to show off your experience for E-E-A-T. Here are some things you can add to your About Us and Author pages to get you started.

    6 tips for authors and companies

    1. Highlight the knowledge and expertise of your team by sharing their qualifications, credentials, and experience, including resumes, bios and certifications, to showcase your site’s authority in your field. Display any industry memberships, awards, or other types of recognition to demonstrate credibility further.
    2. Showcase examples of past success and influence to build authority, including case studies, testimonials, publications, public speaking events, and conferences. Linking to high-quality external sites on relevant subjects and media mentions can boost your site’s credibility.
    3. Build trust with potential clients or customers by sharing your company’s story, values, and mission. Being transparent about your process and policies can also help visitors trust you more.
    4. Provide in-depth descriptions of your team members, services, and products to establish your site as a trustworthy source of information in your industry. Use testimonials and samples to showcase your unique selling proposition and differentiate your business from competitors.
    5. Keep your About Us page updated regularly to reflect any changes in your team, services, or company. Display your mission statement prominently on the page and share current news and updates to show that you are an active and engaged participant in your industry. Make sure this information is easily accessible and presented.

    6. Add structured data! Schema.org is a structured data markup vocabulary that helps you add extra information to your pages, helping search engines understand them. Adding structured data to your About Us page lets you communicate details about your business, its products and services, and your team. Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data. Yoast SEO Premium even has extended support for building up your author profiles. Structured data is a valuable tool to improve your About Us page content quality and help Google comprehend it better.
    Investopedia has in-depth author profiles where readers can validate the expertise and experience of the authors

    Share your experience for better E-E-A-T

    This article introduces the Experience part of E-E-A-T, while also describing the differences and similarities with Expertise. Both play a big role in determining if you are the right person to publish this content. Do you have what it takes to help people along their journey — especially in YMYL topics?

    E-E-A-T is an abstract concept with no score attached to it that you can improve for. You can do a lot to improve the quality of your content and your content producers, but there is no single thing to pinpoint as essential. Everything is important, and every bit helps.

    Read more: What is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)? »

    The post The first E in E-E-A-T, or the importance of Experience appeared first on Yoast.

  • What are breadcrumbs? Why are they important for SEO?

    Breadcrumbs are an essential part of almost every good website. These little navigational aids don’t just tell people where they are on your site, but they also help Google work out how your site is structured. That’s why adding these helpful little pointers makes a lot of sense. Let’s take a look at how breadcrumb navigation works.

    Table of contents

    What are breadcrumbs?

    A breadcrumb is a small text path, often located at the top of a page, indicating where the user is on the site. On yoast.com, the path to our Keyword research guide is Home > SEO blog > Content SEO > Keyword Research > Keyword research for SEO: the ultimate guide. This trail immediately shows you where you are. Every step of that path is clickable, returning to the homepage.

    breadcrumb path on yoast.com, with proper sections for tags and content
    An example of a breadcrumb path on Yoast.com

    But why is this navigational help called a breadcrumb? When Hansel and Gretel went into the woods, Hansel dropped pieces of bread onto the ground so they could find their way home if they got lost. These crumbs eventually became the model for the ones we see on websites.

    breadcrumbs in the google search results, showing the path for an article on yoast.com
    You can see the breadcrumb clearly in Google

    They also appear in Google search results, and you can take advantage of this if you use Yoast SEO or add the correct form of structured data to your site. Breadcrumbs in search results give users an easy-to-understand overview of where the page sits on your site.

    Yoast SEO automatically adds the necessary structured data — a BreadcrumbList — in JSON-LD format. Just flip the switch in the settings, and you’ll see the relevant lines appear in your source code — although, depending on your theme, you may need to add a small piece of code to your theme. Find out more about our breadcrumb structured data in our documentation. You can use the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block to add them to individual posts or pages quickly.

    Remember that Google uses the structured data on your site to understand its structure and contents fully. So Google uses breadcrumbs both for crawling and rich results.

    location of the Yoast breadcrumbs block in the WordPress block library
    You can find the Yoast breadcrumbs block in the WordPress block library

    Different types of breadcrumbs

    You may have noticed that there are different types of breadcrumbs. These are the three most common ones:

    Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs

    These are the most common, and it’s how we use them on our site. They tell you where you are in a site structure and how many steps it takes to return to the homepage. Something like Home > Blog > Category > Post name.

    Best Buy gives you a good idea of where you are in the store

    Attribute-based breadcrumbs

    Attribute-based breadcrumbs are seen most commonly when a user has searched on an e-commerce site. The trail comprises product attributes – for example, Home > Product category > Gender > Size > Color.

    Office Depot shows every selection in the breadcrumbs

    History-based breadcrumbs

    History-based breadcrumbs do precisely what they say on the tin; they are ordered according to what you have done on the site. Think of these as an alternative to your internet history bar, so you get something like this: Home > Previous page > Previous page > Previous page > Current page. It’s also possible to combine these as Macy’s does in the screenshot below.

    breadcrumbs history
    Some follow you around

    Advantages of using breadcrumbs

    There are several advantages to using these helpful little pointers on your site. Let’s take a quick look at them:

    1. Google loves them

    Your visitors like breadcrumbs, but Google does too. They give Google another way of figuring out what your website is about and how it’s structured. Google uses them as a way to crawl your content. But, as covered earlier, Google may also use them in the search results, making your results much more enticing to users. To increase the chances of your them appearing in Google, you need to add structured data like Yoast SEO. Google Search categorizes information from a web page in search results using proper markup within the page’s body.

    2. They enhance the user experience

    People hate being lost. When confronted with a new location, people often search for recognizable objects or landmarks – the same is true of websites. You need to keep visitors happy and reduce friction as much as possible. Breadcrumbs can help your user experience since they are a common interface element that instantly shows people a way out. You don’t need to click the back button!

    3. They lower bounce rates

    Hardly anyone enters a site via the homepage — It’s all about organic search. That means any part of your site could be an entry point. You must develop a way to guide these visitors to other parts of your site if the selected page doesn’t meet their needs. Breadcrumbs can lower bounce rates because you offer visitors an alternative way to browse your site. Don’t you think sending visitors to your homepage is better than returning to Google?

    How to add breadcrumbs

    There are several ways of adding breadcrumbs to your site. Firstly, if you use WordPress, you can use one of the many plugins or Yoast SEO. If you use a different CMS, the process will be different. It is also possible to add them to your code by hand. If you also want them to appear in Google results, you need to use structured data in a way that Google understands. You can find more information on this in Google’s developer documentation. For SEO, Google doesn’t care where you add them — as long as you add them if that makes sense. Visitors will prefer them in a logical spot, though.

    Yoast SEO has breadcrumb support built-in

    Yoast SEO offers an easy way to add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site. It will add everything necessary to prepare them for your site, not just for Google. Some themes come with support for Yoast SEO breadcrumbs baked in. In that case, you only have to activate them and set them up how you like. In case your theme doesn’t support our breadcrumbs yet, you need to add the following piece of code to your theme where you want them to appear:

    <?php
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
  yoast_breadcrumb( '</p><p id="breadcrumbs">','</p><p>' );
}
?>

    This code can often be placed inside the single.php or page.php files just above the page’s title. Some themes want it at the end of the header.php file. It’s not a good idea to add it to functions.php since this could cause problems.

    After adding the code, you can go to the advanced settings of Yoast SEO and switch on breadcrumb support. You can also control how their structure will look and what prefixes will be used. Find out more in our document on implementing breadcrumbs with Yoast SEO.

    shows the location of the Breadcrumbs settings in Yoast SEO
    You can find the settings for breadcrumbs in Yoast SEO > Advanced > Breadcrumbs

    Breadcrumbs with a WordPress block

    You can use the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block to add breadcrumbs to individual posts and pages using the block editor. This is helpful if you don’t want to touch code or if you only want to add to a specific page. Adding them is incredibly easy — hit the big + icon to add a block. Then, find the Yoast SEO breadcrumbs block by entering the name in the search bar or scrolling down to the Yoast section. Alternatively, you can type /yoast breadcrumbs in an empty paragraph.

    A breadcrumb path added via the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block

    Conclusion

    Despite using breadcrumbs, Hansel and Gretel still got lost in the woods. Don’t let that happen to your visitors! Breadcrumbs provide an easy-to-grasp way for visitors to navigate your site, and they instantly understand how your site structure works. Google loves them for the same reason. So use Yoast SEO to add them to your site easily.

    Read more: Site structure: the ultimate guide »

    The post What are breadcrumbs? Why are they important for SEO? appeared first on Yoast.

  • Yoast SEO 20.5: Improvements and security fixes

    We just released Yoast SEO 20.5, which has many enhancements and (security) fixes! Our team has been working hard to implement these changes to enhance your experience and help make your SEO journey smoother. In this post, we’ll tell you all about the latest release.

    Improvements in Yoast SEO 20.5

    One of the main enhancements in this release is the updated Google SERP preview. We’ve updated our mobile and desktop snippet previews to align with Google’s current styling. This is important because you can now check how enticing your snippets look. It also helps you to see if you’ve optimized them properly for the current Google search results pages.

    The updated preview mirrors Google’s current design again

    We’ve updated our database indexing system. This could contain orphaned items due to posts, terms, or users being deleted while Yoast SEO was deactivated. Every time a plugin is activated, we run a cleanup action. This helps to ensure the database table is as clean and efficient as possible.

    We’ve also improved the recognition of keyphrases starting with a period, such as “.net developer,” in the keyphrase in title assessment. This ensures that Yoast SEO can accurately read and assess your content, even when punctuation marks are involved.

    We’ve addressed several bugs in this release. One of those led to a fatal error when upgrading Yoast SEO while also having Local SEO active. We’ve also improved how we tidy up our database records when users are deleted. We’ve also dropped compatibility with outdated PHP versions, ensuring you use the most up-to-date and secure software for your website.

    Finally, we’ve made some modifications to the first-time configuration to highlight the availability of a free webinar to get the most out of Yoast SEO. This webinar is there to help new Yoast SEO users find their way around the plugin and get started on their SEO journey. They’ll have the chance to watch a dedicated walk through video and have a live Q&A session with some of our experts!

    Security fixes

    In Yoast SEO 20.5, we’ve also improved the security of our plugins. This update addresses several security vulnerabilities identified and reported by the WordPress security service Patchstack and our security/development team. We take security very seriously and are committed to ensuring our products are secure for all users.

    With this update, we have addressed and fixed these issues. We recommend that all users update their plugins to this latest version as soon as possible to stay protected from any potential security threats.

    Big thanks to Patchstack for promptly identifying and reporting this issue. We also thank our senior developers, Paolo Scala, Leonidas Milosis, and Enrico Battocchi, for finding and resolving these issues. Our users’ security is our top priority, and we will continue working tirelessly to ensure our product remains safe and secure.

    We strive to be comprehensive in our security measures, and we acknowledge that we sometimes might miss some issues. This is where we rely on you, our users and the security community to assist us by reporting any security concerns found to us directly. We have a security program with guidelines for submission and rewards for cooperation. We encourage everyone to help us uphold the integrity of our products and keep our community secure.

    Yoast SEO 20.5: Update now!

    Yoast SEO 20.5 is available today. In this release, we made several improvements and brought our Google to the latest UX changes from the SERPs. We’ve also fixed some security-related issues to make the plugin more secure.

    That’s it for this release. Happy updating!

    The post Yoast SEO 20.5: Improvements and security fixes appeared first on Yoast.

  • Yoast SEO 20.3: Better highlighter and Portuguese language support

    Today, we’re making Yoast SEO 20.3 available to the world. This release comes with a long list of enhancements, bug fixes, and other improvements designed to help you improve your SEO experience.

    Improved highlighting in analyses

    One of the most significant updates in this release is an improved highlighting feature. Yoast SEO helps you quickly locate where you need to make your edits to improve the readability of your content by highlighting the pieces in your text.

    In this release, we’ve made the highlighter better. We can now highlight content in captions of audio, embed, gallery, image, table, and video blocks in WordPress. You can also use it to highlight content in Yoast SEO FAQ and How-to blocks.

    The highlighter helps you locate the places where you’ve used your keyword, like in this caption

    Portuguese language enhancements

    We’ve made important improvements to our Portuguese assessments in the release, like the passive voice and transition words assessments.

    Yoast SEO’s passive voice assessment helps you create clearer and more concise content. Passive voice can weaken sentences. It can make them harder to understand, so this assessment checks your text for instances of passive voice. By reducing the use of passive voice in your writing, you can improve your content’s overall quality and readability. The assessment is available in multiple languages.

    The transition words assessment in Yoast SEO helps improve the coherence and readability of your writing. Transition words are essential to connect ideas and help readers understand the flow of your content. By analyzing your text for the use of transition words, the assessment can suggest improvements to your writing. We’ll highlight instances where transition words could be added or replaced.

    In Yoast SEO 20.2, we’ve improved these two assessments for the Portuguese language. The passive voice assessment now has better detection of participles. Plus, we’ve added new transition words to the transition words assessment, thanks to the contributions of Mathias Ribeiro.

    Bug fixes and enhancements

    Regarding bug fixes, we’ve addressed several issues in this release. For example, shortcodes in the Block editor will no longer be treated as words in the content analysis. Additionally, editing text in the Classic editor while the highlighting feature is enabled will no longer make the text unfocused, and self-closing break tags </br> will now be removed when analyzing content.

    Other improvements in this release include avoiding PHP warnings due to a wrong variable type. Also, we removed the beta badge for the inclusive language assessment.

    Yoast SEO Premium redirect manager

    Yoast SEO Premium also gets a round of enhancements this time. For one, we’ve made the links in the redirect manager clickable. It’s now easier to check if these are functioning properly. The redirect manager in Yoast SEO Premium is a valuable tool for ensuring that your website visitors always find what they need. It helps prevent 404 errors and maintain a well-structured website, improving search engine rankings and user experience.

    Update to Yoast SEO 20.3

    At Yoast, we’re always working hard to improve our line of SEO plugins. Each release brings improvements and enhancements that make it easier to manage your site or improve its SEO. Yoast SEO 20.3 has a long list of fixes and improvements, from highlighting content to enhanced support for the Portuguese language.

    The post Yoast SEO 20.3: Better highlighter and Portuguese language support appeared first on Yoast.

  • HTTP status codes and what they mean for SEO

    HTTP status codes, like 404, 301, and 500, might not mean much to a regular visitor, but they are incredibly important for SEO. Not only that, search engine spiders, like Googlebot, use these to determine the health of a site. These status codes offer a way of seeing what happens between the browser and the server. Several of these codes indicate an error, for instance, that the requested content can’t be found, while others simply suggest a successful delivery of the requested material. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at the most important HTTP header codes and what they mean for SEO.

    What are HTTP status codes, and why do you see them?

    An HTTP status code is a three-digit message the server sends when a request made by a browser can or cannot be fulfilled. According to the official W3C specs, there are dozens of status codes, many of which you’re unlikely to come across. If you need a handy overview of status codes, including their code references, you can find one on HTTPstatuses.com.

    To fully understand these codes, you must know how a browser gets a web page. Every website visit starts by typing in the URL of a site or entering a search term in a search engine. The browser requests the site’s IP address for the associated web page. The server responds with a status code embedded in the HTTP header, telling the browser the result of the request. When everything is fine, an HTTP 200 header code is sent back to the browser in conjunction with the website’s content.

    However, it is also possible that there’s something wrong with the requested content or server. It could be that the page is not found, which gives back a 404 error page, or there might be a temporary, technical issue with the server, resulting in a 500 Internal Server Error. These HTTP status codes are an important tool for evaluating the health of the site and its server. If a site regularly sends improper HTTP header codes to a search engine indexing its contents, it might cause problems that will hurt its rankings.

    Here’s part of the HTTP header for a web page, with a 200 OK message:

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:44:24 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: public, max-age=604800, s-maxage=604800, stale-while-revalidate=120, stale-if-error=14400

    Different ranges

    There are five ranges of HTTP status codes, defining different aspects of the transaction process between the client and the server. Below you’ll find the five ranges and their main goal:

    • 1xx – Informational
    • 2xx – Success
    • 3xx – Redirection
    • 4xx – Client error
    • 5xx – Server error

    If you ever try to brew coffee in a teapot, your teapot will probably send you the status message 418: I’m a teapot.

    Most important HTTP status codes for SEO

    As we’ve said, the list of codes is long, but a few are especially important for SEOs and anyone working on their own site. We’ll do a quick rundown of these below:

    200: OK / Success

    This is how it probably should be; a client asks the server for content and the server replies with a 200 success message and the content the client needs. The server and the client are happy — and the visitor, of course. All messages in 2xx mean some sort of success.

    301: Moved Permanently

    A 301 HTTP header is used when the requested URL is permanently moved to a new location. As you are working on your site, you will often use this, because you regularly need to make a 301 redirect to direct an old URL to a new one. If you don’t, users will see a 404 error page if they try to open the old URL and that’s not something you want. Using a 301 will make sure that the link value of the old URL transfers to the new URL.

    Read more: How to create a 301 redirect in WordPress »

    302: Found

    A 302 means that the target destination has been found, but it lives in a different location. However, it is a rather ambiguous status code because it doesn’t tell if this is a temporary situation. Use a 302 redirect only if you want to temporarily redirect a URL to a different source and are sure you will use the same URL again.

    Since you tell search engines that the URL will be used again, none of the link value is transferred to the new URL, so you shouldn’t use a 302 when moving your domain or making big changes to your site structure, for instance. Also, when you leave 302 redirects in place for a long time, search engines can treat these 302 redirects as 301 redirects.

    304: Not Modified

    A 304 redirect is a type of HTTP response code that indicates that the requested resource has not been modified since the last time it was accessed by the client. It means that the server does not need to send the resource again but instead tells the client to use a cached version. The 304 response code is a way to save crawl budget for large websites. This is because Google’s crawler won’t recrawl unchanged pages and can instead focus on crawling new and updated pages.

    307: Temporary Redirect

    The 307 code replaces the 302 in HTTP1.1 and could be seen as the only ‘true’ redirect. You can use a 307 redirect if you need to temporarily redirect a URL to a new one while keeping the original request method intact. A 307 looks a lot like a 302, except that it tells specifically that the URL has a temporary new location. The request can change over time, so the client has to keep using the original URL when making new requests.

    403: Forbidden

    A 403 tells the browser that the requested content is forbidden for the user. If they don’t have the correct login credentials, this content stays forbidden for that user.

    404: Not Found

    As one of the most visible status codes, the 404 HTTP header code is also one of the most important. When a server returns a 404 error, you know the content has not been found and is probably deleted. Try not to bother visitors with these messages, so fix these errors when you can. Use a redirect to send visitors from the old URL to a new article or page with related content.

    Monitor these 404 messages in Google Search Console and keep them to the lowest amount possible. A lot of 404 errors might be seen by Google as a sign of bad maintenance. Which in return might influence your overall rankings. If your page is broken and should be gone from your site, a 410 sends a clearer signal to Google.

    Keep reading: 404 error pages: check and fix »

    410: Gone

    The result from a 410 status code is the same as a 404 since the content has not been found. However, with a 410, you tell search engines that you deleted the requested content. Thus, it’s much more specific than a 404. In a way, you order search engines to remove the URL from the index. Before permanently deleting something from your site, ask yourself if there is an equivalent of the page somewhere. If so, make a redirect. If not, maybe you shouldn’t delete it and just improve it.

    Read on: How to properly delete a page from your site (404 or 410?) »

    The 451 HTTP status code shows that the requested content was deleted for legal reasons. If you received a takedown request or a judge ordered you to take specific content offline, you should use this code to tell search engines what happened to the page.

    Keep on reading: HTTP 451: Content unavailable for legal reasons »

    500: Internal Server Error

    A 500 error is a generic message saying the server encountered an unexpected condition. This prevented it from fulfilling the request without determining what caused it. These errors could come from anywhere. Maybe your web host is doing something funny, or a script on your site is malfunctioning. Check your server’s logs to see where things go wrong.

    503: Service Unavailable

    A 503 HTTP status code is a server-side error that indicates that the server is temporarily unable to handle the request. This could be due to overloading, maintenance, or other issues on the server. A 503 status code can affect SEO if it lasts long, as it may signal to search engines that the site is unreliable or unavailable. To avoid negative SEO impacts, a 503 status code should be used only for short-term situations and provide crawlers with a clear message about when the site will return online. You can use the Retry-After value to ask crawlers to try again after a certain amount of time.

    Read more: 503: Handling site maintenance correctly for SEO »

    Working with HTTP status codes

    HTTP status codes are a big part of the lives of SEOs and that of search engine spiders. You’ll encounter them daily, and it’s key to understanding what the different status codes mean. For instance, if you delete a page from your site, you must know the difference between serving a 301 and a 410. They serve different goals and, therefore, have different results.

    To understand the kinds of status codes your site generates, you should log into your Google Search Console. In the Indexing section, you’ll find the crawl errors Googlebot found over a certain time. These crawl errors must be fixed before your site can be indexed correctly.

    Google Search Console lists errors it found on

    Manage redirects with Yoast SEO Premium

    We get it; working with these things is time-consuming and boring. However, creating redirects has never been easier if you use Yoast SEO Premium. Whenever you delete or move a post or page, the Redirect Manager in Yoast SEO asks you whether you want to redirect it. Just pick the correct option, and you’re good to go.

    That’s all, folks

    Make yourself familiar with these codes because you’ll see them pop up often. Knowing which redirects to use is an important skill that you’ll have to count on often when optimizing your site. One look at the crawl errors in Google Search Console should be enough to show you how much is going on under the hood.

    Keep reading: Which redirect should I use? »

    The post HTTP status codes and what they mean for SEO appeared first on Yoast.

  • Yoast SEO 20.2: Improving our database system

    In Yoast SEO 20.2, we’ve improved our innovative indexables technology. We’ve developed a faster and more reliable way of indexing your site’s data. In turn, we make better use of this data to improve your site’s SEO. Plus, this technology helps us do our best to make the web greener and lays the groundwork for exciting future possibilities.

    An improved indexing system

    You might be wondering, “What exactly are indexables?” Well, think of them as a way to help search engines find and understand the content on your website. An indexable is any resource a search engine can index via a URL.

    When a search engine “indexes” your website, it creates a map of all the pages it knows about. The indexables framework allows Yoast SEO to make a similar map of your site, interact with it and manage important SEO-related information.

    But what makes indexables so special? Essentially, they allow Yoast SEO to better handle different types of content on your website beyond just traditional pages. This includes things like categories, archives, media files and far beyond that. This can greatly help larger sites with many different content types. Plus, it helps us build features on top of it!

    And the best part? The indexables technology means better performance and more efficient use of resources. It’s a step towards making the web a little bit greener, as it reduces the amount of processing power needed to manage SEO metadata.

    So, how does this work?

    When you create a website, you like stuff to be easily accessible online. Indexables help Yoast SEO understand your website, so it can help search engines like Google understand your website better. Yoast SEO stores information about your website in a unique database table that we use to uncover and use your data — and speed up your database.

    To put indexables to work, you need to optimize your website’s SEO data. You can do this when you set up Yoast SEO or at a later date. When you optimize your SEO data, Yoast SEO will store information about your website’s pages in a unique table. This can take some time, especially for large websites, but you only need to do it once. After the initial optimization, Yoast SEO will automatically update the indexables table whenever you change something on your website.

    Today, we’re launching improvements to this system for Yoast SEO and WooCommerce SEO.

    You can run the indexables SEO optimization from the first-time configuration screen or in the tools section of Yoast SEO

    Going green with Yoast SEO

    Our enhanced database system is one of the many improvements we’ve made to make a difference on the web. Thanks to this technology, we’ve improved the loading times of millions of websites. Features like our crawl optimization options help you determine what search engines should and shouldn’t crawl — keeping them in check and making them waste fewer resources.

    When your website loads faster, it reduces the time and energy required to load and display each page. Less resources, such as electricity and data, are needed to load your website. This increased efficiency can positively impact the environment by reducing the energy required to power and cool the servers that host your website.

    Additionally, optimizing your SEO data and improving the crawlability of your website makes it more efficient and easier for search engines and visitors to navigate.

    Update to Yoast SEO 20.2

    Yoast SEO 20.2 comes with an update to our indexable database system. With this release, we’re laying the groundwork for some interesting new developments. Plus, we’ve improved the system’s performance, helping to achieve a better web — and a greener planet! — for all.

    The post Yoast SEO 20.2: Improving our database system appeared first on Yoast.

  • Check validity of structured data in Google Search Console

    Google Search Console is an essential tool for website owners. This tool shows you how your site appears in Google’s search results. It also shows you what to improve to maximize your listings in the results. One of the many cool features of Search Console is the structured data analyses found in the Enhancement reports. Let’s dive into that!

    What is Google Search Console?

    Google Search Console is like the Swiss army knife for site owners. You’ll get incredible insights into your site’s performance and inner workings at a glance. Not only that, it shows issues and helps you fix those issues by giving guidance. Google even sends you emails when it finds new issues.

    Need help getting started? Please read our Beginner’s guide to Google Search Console.

    What is structured data?

    In this post, our main focal point is structured data, so we’ll jump to the Enhancements report section of Google Search Console. Clicking on the various structured data reports — identified by the layer icon — will show you an overview of the pages with some structured data attached.

    Structured data is all the extra information you give search engines to help them understand what a page is about. For instance, as the writer of this article, I am both a Person and an Author. I work for Yoast, this is my short bio, and you can find me on social media. Yoast SEO also lets you add extra details to your profile, like your accolades and expertise. All this supports the things search engines know about me and where to find me on the web.

    If I add this data to the source code of this page, search engines can use that data to do incredible things. For instance, you can enhance your search listings with reviews, ratings, prices, and availability if you sell products. These might all become visible in the search results.

    screenshot of the author part of a schema piece from yoast.com
    Author structured data as generated by Yoast SEO

    How does Yoast SEO handle structured data?

    Yoast SEO has a very sophisticated Schema structured data implementation. Yoast SEO doesn’t just add structured data to separate parts of your site but ties everything together to create a connected graph.

    In addition, Yoast SEO has a robust, adequately documented Schema.org structured data framework, including a Schema API that developers can use to connect their structured data to ours, creating an extensive network of structured data. On the Integrations page of Yoast SEO, you’ll see which WordPress plugins integrate with it.

    screenshot showing site representation in the Yoast SEO setttings
    Helping search engines understand your site with Yoast SEO

    The SEO plugin handles most of the structured data for you; you don’t need to do anything for it. Well, not that much, anyway. You only have to select whether your site represents someone or an organization and add an image or a logo. This way, Yoast SEO knows what structured data to generate for this particular site.

    Yoast SEO generates structured data for your site and individual articles. Using the Schema settings, you can mark your Contact pages as a ContactPage or your Checkout page as a CheckoutPage. Learn how to set the Page or Article type in your Schema settings. Also, with our add-ons, it is possible to have structured data generated for locations, products, videos and news items.

    screenshot of the schema settings with allow you set the type per page
    Using the Yoast SEO Schema tab you can determine what your content represents on a per page basis

    As we said, one of the things that makes the Yoast structured data framework unique is that all this code is interconnected. That means that search engines can see and make connections between every part of your site and its contents. All this helps make your content findable and readable for search engines.

    What is the Enhancements report all about?

    The Enhancements tab in Search Console is a place to collect all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. You’ll find a list of items in the Enhancements tab, from breadcrumbs to videos. In addition, you can find information on your product’s structured data in the Shopping tab. All these tabs show how many valid enhancements your site has or how many have errors or warnings. The list only shows what Schema structured data Google found on your site.

    Clicking on an item, you’ll get details about the kind of errors and warnings and which URLs these are found. There’s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And that’s just the start of it.

    The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder your performance in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search.

    For instance, if you have described your FAQs on your site with valid FAQ schema, these might appear highlighted in the search results. You can try to give search engines as much information about your site as possible — it helps them make the right connections.

    screenshot showing the structured data enhancements report in google search console
    You can find the list of structured data Enhancement reports on the left-hand side

    What can we find there?

    A lot! For every different type of enhancement, Google built a dashboard showing you how your site or page is doing. These insights help you to see how you are doing quickly and find areas to improve. The visual aspect helps make the data more concrete and easier to absorb, plus you can quickly locate the issues and on which pages these occur.

    The report shows errors and warnings

    Of course, you’d like to see structured data succeed in one go, but you’ll probably run into issues at some point. Following the guidelines and adding the required properties will be fine once you fix the issues. However, there are cases where Google asks for more input, the so-called recommended properties. Adding these will make your structured data item go from orange to green. So it boils down to this:

    Errors are problems, warnings are potential enhancements to improve the results.

    A warning is a chance to do better

    For example, some how-to posts on our site use the Yoast SEO How-To structured data blocks for WordPress. These blocks automatically generate valid how-to structured data that leads to rich results. We haven’t built in support for the recommended supply and tool types, so we see Search Console generate a warning. Our how-to, however, is still valid, and we have a rich result to prove it.

    screenshot showing valid result for structured data test in search console
    In this case, valid with warnings still leads to rich results

    Errors mean not eligible for rich results

    If you have errors in your structured data, you’ll not be eligible for rich results. That doesn’t mean, however, that your page won’t rank well. These are separate things. Having valid structured data might make you a better fit, though.

    There are many reasons why your structured data implementation may need fixing. Sometimes, you forget to add necessary stuff correctly; sometimes, it’s an issue with code quality. For whatever reason, pages with structured data issues will not get rich results in the search results pages. So you’ll need to work on that.

    Clicking on a page with an error opens a modal with the structured data highlighted. From here, you can copy the code to start fixing it. Once you do that, mark this issue fixed, so Google knows you’ve worked on the problem. If the problem persists, the issue will come back to Google Search Console.

    screenshot showing a structured data error on a page in search console
    Search Console highlights the line where the error appears

    You can also hit Inspect in the bottom right corner to retrieve the page from the index to see what else is happening on that page. From there, you can run the live URL to do further testing.

    If Search Console can’t read your structured data due to programming errors or determine which type it’s supposed to describe, it’ll send these messages to the Unparsable structured data report. Run your code in the Schema Markup Validator, fix the errors and see if they disappear.

    Eligibility for rich results

    Green is good! These items have properly structured data attached, which might lead to a rich result. Red is an error and something you should fix if you want the whole, rich result experience. Warnings are orange and allow you to improve or extend your structured data to get the whole experience. However, it is up to you if you want to fix it. Sometimes, fixing a small thing is easier said than done.

    screenshot showing valid result in the google rich results test
    This page is eligible for articles, how-to, breadcrumbs, logos, video and sitelinks rich results

    A handy little addition to Search Console is the trend line. This helps you determine a trend in the number of items validated and error changes.

    screenshot showing trend line in errors
    Trend lines help you uncover trends in errors or validations

    Retrieve post from index to evaluate/fix

    As Search Console gives you insights into how your pages perform in Google, it would be cool to get an idea of how Google sees those pages. Luckily, you can! There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is pasting your URL in the big search bar at the top of the Search Console interface.

    screenshot showing a post getting retrieved from the google index
    Comparing indexed and live pages can lead to interesting insights

    This gives you an overview of everything index related to this URL, including how Google crawled the page. See below. You can even compare the indexed URL to the live URL by hitting Live Test URL button in the up-right corner. These should be the same, but sometimes there are errors on your live page that have yet to reach the index. From here, you can perform all kinds of tests and checks.

    screenshot showing the test live url in the top right corner of the URL inspection interface
    Sometimes, the indexed page doesn’t have errors while the live page does

    Which types are available in Google Search Console?

    Google is quickly expanding the content types we see in Search Console. There are enhancements for things like books, reviews, app listings, events, courses, movies, recipes, and many more. You can see the complete list of supported structured data in Google’s structured data documentation or an overview of the different types of rich results in the search gallery. Below is a sampling.

    Remember, when implementing, try to follow the rules, or you might not get any results. Badly implemented structured data doesn’t do you any good.

    Adding breadcrumb structured data to your site helps Google determine how your navigation works and how a specific page fits in the site hierarchy. Yoast SEO automatically generates this for your pages. You only have to add some code to your WordPress theme to activate the feature. After that, enable the breadcrumbs in Yoast SEO and set the breadcrumbs to your liking. After a while, check your Search Console to see if there are any errors in your implementation.

    Events

    Marking up your events with event structured data helps them stand out in search results. Event markup is available for every type of event. You can add dates, locations, images, performs and more to maximize your listings. In Search Console, you’ll see if your events are properly marked up with the essential items and the recommended properties that help to enhance your listing.

    FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

    One handy piece of structured data is the FAQ, which marks up frequently asked questions pages. By implementing this, you might get a nice eye-catching dropdown in the search results. Building a valid FAQ listing is peanuts, thanks to the structured data content blocks in Yoast SEO. Pick the FAQ block, fill in the fields, and ready. Here’s how to build a structured data-powered FAQ page using Yoast SEO. Search Console will show you if your listing is valid. After that, you can check it in the Rich Results Tester to see what it will look like.

    How-to

    Next up is another handy structured data powered rich result: the how-to. You can add how-to structured data to content that describes how to do something in a couple of steps. Like the FAQ above, Yoast SEO has structured data content blocks to help you build a valid how-to. Pick the block, fill the fields, add images and publish. It’s that easy! Learn how to add HowTo Schema to your how-to article. Again, in Search Console, you’ll see if your how-tos are valid or can be improved. The free Yoast SEO How-to content block helps you add it in you WordPress posts.

    Job Postings

    Job Postings are another interesting addition. Google runs a job site that loves to present its listings in a structured way. Adding job posting structured data to your available jobs helps them enrich your job postings, which in turn leads to better visibility for your jobs. As with the previous enhancements, Search Console gives you an idea of how your listings are doing and gives you tips to further improve them.

    Logos

    Adding markup to your logo helps search engines validate your logo to use the correct one in search. Google likes to use these files in things like the Knowledge Graph-powered knowledge panels on the right-hand side of your screen. Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data to your logo so search engines can pick it up properly.

    Products

    Products are the lifeblood of many sites. Structured data can help showcase products in search. By adding relevant data, you might get highlighted in search with reviews, ratings, prices, availability, and much more. Like all the other reports here, Search Console shows you which products are valid for rich results and which aren’t. Plus, you get tips on what you should fix to get them.

    If you’re using Yoast SEO, our WooCommerce SEO add-on offers an easy way to add structured data for your products. It automatically arranges everything for you and even adds your product structured data to the rest of Yoast SEOs structured data, building a complete and interconnected overview for search engines.

    You know the search bar you see for some sites in the search results? That’s a sitelinks searchbox. This allows users to directly search on a site, without opening the site first. Yoast SEO automatically adds all the structured data necessary for sitelinks searchboxes for your site, but it’s up to Google to decide who gets one and who doesn’t. In Search Console, you’ll see which URLs on your site might get a searchbox.

    Video

    The Enhancement reports is also has a Video video section. You’ll find more information about how Google sees your embedded videos here. Also, Google also implemented a special search feature in the Search Appearance part of the Performance tab so you can see how many times your videos showed up in search and how many people clicked on them. The Yoast Video SEO add-on automatically adds the necessary code and ties everything neatly together. Here’s more information on how to get Google’s video reporting with the Yoast Video SEO plugin.

    Keep an eye on your structured data in Google Search Console

    As we mentioned several times: Google Search Console is a goldmine. It should be your go-to tool to see how your site is doing in the search engine. There’s a lot to see and do. The Enhancement reports, for instance, show you if your structured data implementation is valid for rich results. These reports help you fix errors and warnings to get the most out of your structured data.

    Need more structured data? Read our Ultimate guide to structured data with Schema.org.

    The post Check validity of structured data in Google Search Console appeared first on Yoast.

  • Google PageSpeed Insights helps make your site faster

    As someone working on SEO, you must understand the importance of site speed. You must realize that fast sites equal happy users and happy search engines. PageSpeed Insights is an invaluable tool from Google that can help you optimize your website. It enables you to improve your rankings by giving you everything you need to boost the performance of your website. This guide will provide an overview of PageSpeed Insights. We’ll discuss what it is, how it works, and how you can optimize your website.

    Table of contents

    What is PageSpeed Insights?

    PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool offered by Google. It provides valuable insights into the performance and speed of your pages. The tool evaluates website performance and page experience based on several key metrics, including loading speed, resource utilization, images, and other media optimization. PSI works at a page level, so a good score for a page does not automatically equal a good score for your entire site.

    The tool provides a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the “fastest” and most “performant” web page. Note that getting a score of 100 is not something you need to aim for by any means. But your pages should pass the general Core Web Vitals Assessment. Remember those words; you’ll hear them often — more on this topic further down this article.

    The PageSpeed Insights page after running a test for cnn.com

    PageSpeed Insights provides data on how quickly your page loads, how many resources it uses, and how many requests it makes when loading. Then it also offers suggestions on how to make your pages better. With the help of this tool, you can identify areas of improvement. Use that knowledge to make the necessary changes to improve your website’s rankings.

    In addition, PageSpeed Insights also checks your page on SEO and accessibility aspects and other best practices. In this article, we’ll focus on site speed and performance checks.

    To understand PSI and how it fits into the page speed part of SEO, please read the following articles:

    How does PageSpeed Insights work?

    PageSpeed Insights runs tests and analyzes the HTML, JavaScript, and other resources that make up your website. The tool then provides a detailed report highlighting areas where the page the test was run on can be optimized. These suggestions include specific recommendations for improving your website’s speed and performance. The tool evaluates how your site functions on desktop and mobile devices, ensuring you optimize your website for all users.

    An insight into PageSpeed Insight

    Here’s a little bit more insight into how the test process works:

    • URL analysis: The first step in the PSI process is examining the URL being tested. This URL can be any online content with a valid URL, such as a product page, blog post, or other web-based material. Remember that a PSI test is specific to this URL and doesn’t automatically translate to your overall website performance.
    • Retrieving page content: Once the URL is submitted, PageSpeed Insights will retrieve the page’s content, including the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and all other elements necessary to render the page.
    • Performance evaluation: After the page content is retrieved, PSI will conduct several tests to assess the page’s speed and efficiency. These tests analyze factors like page size and structure, resource quantity and size, and page load time.
    • Optimization recommendations: Based on the results of the performance tests, PageSpeed Insights provides suggestions for optimizing the page to improve it. These recommendations include reducing image size, simplifying CSS and JavaScript, enabling browser caching, and reducing the number of requests made to the server.
    • Scores: PSI will assign a score to the page based on its how it does. The score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores representing better performance. It calculates the score based on the test results and optimization recommendations.

    It’s worth noting that PageSpeed Insights only assesses how a single page on your website performs. It does not take appearance or functionality into account. However, enhancing this often positively impacts how people perceive your site.

    Google frequently updates PSI to provide the most current information and accurate results. By utilizing PageSpeed Insights, you can gain a deeper understanding of page performance. It helps you improve the user experience and increase your website’s overall speed and efficiency.

    PSI metrics: lab data vs. field data

    PageSpeed Insights offers a combination of laboratory and real-world data to help you comprehend and enhance your site’s functionality. The lab data represents a simulation of the website’s performance in a managed setting. The field data portrays actual metrics collected from real users visiting the website.

    The lab data is obtained by conducting automated tests on the website through a standard testing environment. The tests assess load time, resource utilization, rendering speed, and more. Lab data provides a foundation for performance. It helps you spot problems impacting user experiences, like slow-loading recourses or unoptimized images. One of the weaknesses of lab data is that it’s for a specific point in time, and external factors like the weather, network stress, whether there’s a football game on, etc., can all affect real user experience. Your website needs to anticipate that.

    The field data, on the other hand, delivers a more precise representation of how users encounter the website in the real world. This data is collected by monitoring users’ browsers and comes from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). Field data offers valuable perspectives on user interaction with the website, such as which pages are slow or visually unstable. It also considers how factors like network connectivity and device type impact user experience.

    Both laboratory and field data have advantages and limitations, making it crucial to use both to understand a website truly. Lab data provides a baseline and helps identify problems, while field data offers a more authentic view of user experience. By merging both data types, you can make informed choices on optimizing your website and enhancing the user experience.

    Getting started with PageSpeed Insights

    Starting with PageSpeed Insights is very easy. You can just enter the URL of the page you want to test into the tool and click the blue Analyze button. The tool will then run a series of tests on your page and generate a report. The report will provide a score for that specific URL’s performance and recommendations for improvement.

    PSI only works at a page level. It looks at the one URL you enter to analyze — it is not a tool for side-wide analysis. Therefore, it’s good to test various pages of your site, as your homepage will perform differently from a blog post or a product page on your ecommerce site. Together, you’ll get a good sense of your site’s overall performance and where the bottlenecks are.

    Enter your URL in the text field and hit the Analyze button

    Getting the recommendation is easy, but implementing or fixing the issues is another story. The issues are prioritized, with the most pressing issues at the top. It also lists the opportunities it sees that help boost the scores of your page. The colored bar shows how many seconds you could save by implementing the improvements. Here, the red bars have the biggest impact on how your page performs.

    Take action on the recommendations provided by the tool to improve your website’s performance. With PSI, you can start improving your website right away.

    Key metrics evaluated by PageSpeed Insights

    Some time ago, Google introduced the Page Experience algorithm update. With it came the Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics that measure the real-world user experience of a website. The Core Web Vitals include LCP, FID, and CLS. These metrics are crucial to determining how well a page scores on the test. This test aims to replicate a user’s experience loading and using a website.

    Improving the Core Web Vitals of your website is essential for optimizing your website for both user experience and search engine rankings. You can ensure that your website loads quickly by improving your LCP, FID, CLS, and other key metrics. It provides users with a positive experience that will keep them on your website longer.

    Some key metrics detailed

    PageSpeed Insights evaluates the Page Experience of a site based on several key metrics, including:

    • First Contentful Paint (FCP): This metric measures the time it takes for the first content on a page to become visible to the user. A fast FCP helps ensure that users don’t have to wait long to see something on the screen after landing a page.
    • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the time it takes for the largest content element on a page to become fully visible to the user. A fast LCP is crucial for a good user experience, as it indicates when the page will likely be fully loaded and ready to use.
    • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric measures the stability of a page during loading and user interaction. A low CLS score indicates that the page’s content does not shift around as it loads, providing a better user experience. The CLS forms 25% of the ranking weight.
    • Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This metric measures how a page responds to user interaction by updating the screen. A fast INP helps provide a smooth user experience, ensuring that the page reacts quickly to user inputs.
    • First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures the time a page responds to the first user interaction, such as clicking a button or entering text. A fast FID helps to ensure that the page reacts quickly to user inputs, providing a better user experience.
    • Time to First Byte (TTFB): This metric measures the duration from when a browser requests a page until the first byte of data from the server arrives at the client. TTFB is a crucial metric for website performance and user experience as it indicates any bottlenecks in the server-side processing or if the server is taking too long to generate the content.
    • Total Blocking Time (TBT): This metric calculates the time during which a website’s primary content is prevented from being displayed to users. This metric is significant as it reflects the period during which users cannot interact with the website or access its content, affecting the user experience. The TBT determines 30% of the ranking score.
    The most recent scoring weights provided by Lighthouse for PageSpeed Insights

    PageSpeed Insights also has a Speed Index

    In addition to the Core Web Vitals and these additional metrics, PageSpeed Insights also considers other factors when calculating scores. The Speed Index is a metric that gauges the perceived loading speed of a website. It offers a rating based on the speed at which the website’s content becomes visible during the loading process, from start to finish.

    The Speed Index is a crucial metric to be aware of and monitor, as it demonstrates how quickly users can view and interact with the website’s content. A website that loads quickly can increase user engagement, reduce bounce rates, and improve conversions. Thus, monitoring the Speed Index score and taking action to improve it, if needed, is important to you.

    PSI also makes the loading process insightful with screenshots of your site

    The scores in PageSpeed Insights provide a general indication of how well your page does. You should not see this as the only factor determining the overall user experience. By addressing the issues identified by PageSpeed Insights, you can improve performance and provide a better user experience.

    The overview screen with Web Vitals scores

    Opening the results screen, you see six colored bars of The Core Web Vitals Assessment. PageSpeed Insights provides a snapshot of how well a site performs based on three important metrics, the Core Web Vitals and three experimental metrics. These metrics evaluate crucial aspects of the user experience, including loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

    The Core Web Vitals Assessment section

    In the Core Web Vitals Assessment section, you’ll find an easy-to-understand evaluation of how the website performs for each of these metrics based on data. Further down the page, you’ll find suggestions for enhancing the website for each metric to improve the user experience.

    In the diagnose performance issues section, you’ll find a graphic representation of the loading process of your page. It also features scores for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.

    Keep an eye on these Core Web Vitals, and make a fast, responsive, and visually stable website. All of this is crucial for attracting and retaining users.

    The Diagnostics screen lists improvements

    The Diagnostics section in PageSpeed Insights provides in-depth insights and advice for enhancing your website. There is a lot to find here, but let’s look at a popular one as an example. One of its suggestions is to Reduce the impact of third-party code.

    PSI shows which scripts block the loading of your page

    Third-party code refers to scripts and widgets hosted on external servers and embedded into a website. These can significantly affect a site’s performance by slowing page load times and utilizing resources.

    PageSpeed Insights helps you pinpoint the third-party scripts affecting your website’s speed. You can find this in the Reduce the impact of third-party code suggestion. It displays information about each third-party script’s size, type, and effect and recommends reducing its impact.

    For instance, the tool may advise minimizing non-critical third-party scripts or optimizing script loading through lazy or asynchronous loading methods. Also, hosting third-party scripts on a content delivery network (CDN) to improve loading speed by reducing latency.

    Following PageSpeed Insights’ suggestions in the Diagnostics section helps you minimize the impact of these issues.

    How to improve your PageSpeed Insights score

    Improving the performance of your site helps improve your PageSpeed Insights score. Below you’ll find a sampling of things you can do to make your site faster. We discuss this topic in more detail in our post on page speed.

    • Minimize the size of resources: The size of the resources on your website, such as images and other media, can significantly impact your website’s speed and performance. Minimizing the size of these resources can help reduce the time it takes for your website to load.
    • Optimize images: Optimizing images is one of the most effective ways to make your site faster. You can optimize images by compressing them, reducing their size, and converting them to a more optimized format.
    • Choose a better web host: The quality of your web host plays a critical role in the speed and reliability of your website. A good web host should provide fast and stable server resources, network connectivity, and a server location close to your target audience (with a CDN).
    • Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN can help distribute your website’s resources across multiple servers, reducing the load on your server and making your website perform better.
    • Minimize plugins: Plugins can slow down your website and negatively impact how it performs. Minimizing plugins and choosing lightweight, high-quality plugins can help improve your website’s speed and performance.
    • Use lazy loading: Lazy loading is a technique that only loads images and other resources when needed rather than loading them all at once. This can help reduce the time it takes for your website to load.

    By following these tips, you can improve your PageSpeed Insights score. The result is a faster, performant website that provides a better user experience and ranks higher in search results.

    Conclusion

    PageSpeed Insights is an invaluable tool for everyone working on the SEO of their sites. The tool provides valuable insights into how your website performs and how fast it loads. Make sure that you understand the key metrics evaluated by PageSpeed Insights. After that, optimize your website accordingly. This way, you can improve the performance, resulting in a better user experience. In turn, that might lead to higher rankings in search engines!

    The post Google PageSpeed Insights helps make your site faster appeared first on Yoast.

  • Yoast SEO 20.1: Mastodon and inclusive language improvements

    After successfully introducing a new settings interface in Yoast SEO 20.0, we have more exciting news! We have built an integration with Mastodon, the decentralized and open-source social network. Yoast SEO Premium users can now verify the link in their Mastodon profile with this integration. We’re also adding your profile to the structured data we generate for your site. Plus, we’re improving our inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO 20.1.

    Mastodon is picking up steam

    Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, many people have moved to the popular open-source alternative, Mastodon.

    Mastodon is part of the fediverse (a combination of the words federated and universe). Unlike Twitter, it’s a decentralized network of communities and platforms, powered by open-source communication software. This provides an alternative to centralized social media, giving users more control over their privacy and data. It also provides more options for people to join communities based on common interests and values.

    Introducing a Mastodon integration to Yoast SEO 20.1

    The Mastodon integration in Yoast SEO Premium does two things:

    1. It helps you verify the link to your site in your Mastodon profile
    2. It adds your Mastodon profile to the sameAs structured data we output for your site

    The integration allows users to verify the links on their Mastodon profile quickly and easily. Simply switch on the Mastodon integration, add the URL of your profile in Yoast SEO, and add a link to your site on Mastodon itself. After that, refresh your Mastodon page, which should show a green verified link in your profile.

    Enter the link to your Mastodon profile on the Site representation section of Yoast SEO

    The Schema structured data for Mastodon works automatically. After adding your Mastodon profile in the Yoast SEO settings, we add that link to the structured data graph we generate for your site. We use the same sameAs links for other platforms. This makes it easy for search engines to identify all the other platforms you are active on.

    This integration is part of our ongoing commitment to making content creation and distribution as seamless as possible for our users. Our values align with Mastodon’s focus on the open web, user privacy, free speech, and community building. So we’re excited to offer this integration to our users. Try it now!

    Also, an Easy Digital Downloads integration

    In addition to the Mastodon integration, we’ve added an integration for the popular Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) WordPress plugin. We improved Easy Digital Download’s Schema output for this integration and tied it into the Yoast SEO schema graph. This makes the combination much more robust. You can activate it in the Integrations section of Yoast SEO.

    More add-ons integrating with the Yoast SEO Schema API

    Improvements to the inclusive language analysis

    Over the past months, we’ve worked hard on making our inclusive language analysis as helpful as possible. In Yoast SEO 20.1, we are releasing an improved version of our inclusive language analysis. This latest addition to our collection of SEO tools emphasizes the importance of using language that is inclusive, respectful, and free of bias.

    Language is one of the most powerful tools for creating a more inclusive world. With the inclusive language analysis, we want to empower our users to make a positive impact through their writing.

    Creating content that resonates with all audiences is essential in today’s rapidly changing and diverse digital landscape. The inclusive language analysis provides real-time feedback on the language used in your content and offers suggestions to help you create more inclusive content.

    If you haven’t started using the new and improved inclusive language analysis, try it out now! Help create a more inclusive and respectful digital community for all.

    Upgrade now to Yoast SEO 20.1

    Two weeks ago, we successfully launched the new settings interface in Yoast SEO 20.0. Reactions have been really positive! Roger Montti of Search Engine Journal said, “I’ve been practicing SEO for almost 25 years, and this version of Yoast is the easiest-to-use SEO plugin I’ve used to date.”

    After releasing that first piece of the puzzle, we are excited to present you with more shortly. But for now, we’re introducing Yoast SEO 20.1 with a new Mastodon integration and improvements to the inclusive language analyses.

    Happy updating!

    The post Yoast SEO 20.1: Mastodon and inclusive language improvements appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to speed up your WordPress website: 12 tips to start optimizing website for speed

    We’ve said this time and time again: a fast website is necessary for SEO. In a sea of similarly good (or not-so-good) results, Google will favor fast pages that can deliver a good user experience to searchers. If your goal is to attain higher rankings and drive organic traffic from Google, you need to speed up your WordPress website. In this post, we’ll discuss tips to help you improve your website performance to get that spot in the search results!

    Table of contents

    Fast websites perform better on Google

    Fast websites tend to outperform slow ones on Google because of one good reason – good user experience, and this aligns with Google’s mission. Google wants to deliver the best results and the best experience for their users. Hence, they want to show users web pages that will answer their search queries and provide a good experience. That’s also why page experience is now a ranking factor in Google.

    This makes perfect sense when you put it in context. We’ve all had moments where we click on a link only to hit the back button because it takes so long for the page to load. And when we leave a page (or bounce off a page) like that, we’re way less likely to visit the website again because we know there are better, faster pages to browse. So website performance not only affects user experience but also greatly shapes how visitors judge the quality of your business.

    That’s why speeding up your WordPress website is beneficial in many ways. A fast site makes your users happy, they’ll engage and buy more on your site. Ultimately, that’ll make you happy. Apart from that, It also makes search engines happy because it’s easier for them to crawl and index your site, thus reducing the resources and electricity they need to spend on those processes.

    Don’t I need to focus on Core Web Vitals for SEO?

    Yes, we hear you! It’s true that Core Web Vitals is an important part of the page experience ranking factor, and passing Core Web Vitals is essential for higher rankings. Metrics in Core Web Vitals directly measure your page speed, so improving your Core Web Vital scores may result in higher rankings, provided that you have good content already.

    While metrics in Core Web Vitals measure the performance of a page, they don’t tell the whole story about your website performance. And Core Web Vitals only measure performance on a page level. So on a site level, you may have pages that pass Core Web Vitals and slower ones in the mix.

    By making various improvements to your website performance, you can ensure that your visitors will get the most out of your website regardless of the page they land on. Besides, adopting website optimization best practices also directly benefits your Core Web Vitals and helps to reduce the time spent optimizing pages for speed. 

    This post is about general guidelines and best practices that will help you speed up your WordPress website. But if you specifically care about getting better CWV scores, check out 5 tips to improve your Core Web Vitals. You will also find a few similar pieces of advice in this post.

    How to speed up your WordPress website

    Now, WordPress is a simple platform at a first glance, but it’s quite complex under the hood. There are lots of different moving parts, with lots of databases to pull data from when you need to show a page to a user. And when you add lots of pages, media content and install lots of plugins and widgets, your site performance might start to drop. 

    Fortunately, WordPress is very versatile so there are many things you can do to optimize your performance. Let’s go over some of the tips to help you speed up your site.

    1. Choose a great hosting provider and a good hosting plan

    Let’s start from the top, having a good hosting provider is crucial for ensuring your website performance. That’s because all your files and databases are stored on their server, which will be called upon when a user requests a page.

    We have a dedicated guide on choosing the right host for your WordPress site. Check it out if you want a more comprehensive read. But we’ll mention some important points in this section.

    A good host will have fast and stable servers. Stable means they have good “uptime”, which essentially means their server is always up and running, ensuring that your website is always accessible. On the other hand, a “fast” server refers to the specification of the computers/machine on which your website lives. 

    Good hosting providers also offer scalability to handle traffic spikes. A good host will have the resources to accommodate the increased load and ensure that your website remains up and running. 

    Next to that, customer support quality is another important factor to consider when choosing a host. A good host should provide technical support, which can be invaluable when you encounter any issues with your website. A knowledgeable support team can also help you resolve problems quickly, so you can get back to business as usual.

    Another thing to consider is the server location relative to your users. If the server is fast, but it’s located far away from your users, then they might still experience slow-loading pages.

    If you’re looking for the best fit when it comes to hostings, we’ve vetted some top-notch hosting companies to help you out.

    2. Update your PHP to a newer version

    Updating your PHP to a new version is a simple thing to do that often gets overlooked. PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is a popular open-source server-side scripting language widely used for creating dynamic and interactive websites. By using PHP, web developers can build robust, feature-rich websites that can dynamically change based on user interactions, database information, and more

    Updating your PHP to the newest version will greatly increase your website performance. You will get:

    • Improved performance, resulting in faster processing time and reduced resource usage.
    • Better memory management, which can reduce the amount of memory needed to run your WordPress site, resulting in faster page load times.
    • Faster request processing, as new versions of PHP are able to process requests more quickly, leading to faster page load times.
    • Some newer versions of PHP also have improved caching capabilities, allowing for faster page load times and reduced server resource usage.

    You can check out endoflife.date to see which PHP version is in development and which version isn’t supported anymore.

    Since it’s a server-side scripting language, many hosting providers offer PHP support as part of their hosting packages. If you’re looking to update your PHP, check with your host to see if they can help you with that.

    It is important to note that updating PHP can cause compatibility issues with your WordPress plugins and themes. A compatibility issue can cause the website to break, so it is important to make a backup before updating and to test the website after updating to make sure everything works as expected.

    3. Update your WordPress version is an easy fix

    Advice as old as time! But it does work so we can’t go without mentioning it. You can gain a nice speed boost just by updating your WordPress website to a newer version. You get the latest performance improvements and lots of other optimizations. What’s not to like about that!

    WordPress 6.1, for instance, got a bunch of performance improvements under the hood, such as better database performance and better handling of media delivery. On the front end, this results in faster load time for both new and returning visitors.

    Additionally, updating to a new WordPress version allows you to run a newer version of PHP, which also gives you all the more performance improvements.

    To be cautious, one piece of advice we have is to test an update on a staging environment before you update your live website. See if the update causes issues, check if there are any plugin conflicts, and make sure everything works as intended. You can check the WordPress.org forum or Twitter to see if the update causes issues for others.

    4. Implement a caching solution

    Caching is an important part of the performance equation. It’s a simple solution that can speed up your WordPress website and make your pages load faster, especially for returning visitors.

    Caching refers to the process of storing frequently accessed data in a temporary storage area. Rather than being fetched from the server each time the data is requested, it can be quickly retrieved from the cache when needed.  

    This helps to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the server and your visitor’s browser, resulting in faster page load times and improved overall website performance. So every time a visitor access a recently-viewed page, the page will be served from the cache instead of having to request all the elements like HTML and images from various databases.

    You can rely on caching plugins to do the work for you. For the most part, they’re quite easy to use. Be careful when installing multiple caching or optimization plugins though. They can get in each other’s way, and slow down your site!

    Some of our recommendations for caching plugins:

    • WP Rocket – Very powerful, and one of the best options to make your site faster. Designed to be simple. No free option.
    • W3 Total Cache – Extremely powerful, and extremely flexible. Designed to be comprehensive. Hundreds of checkboxes and options.
    • NitroPack – Full page caching with some really clever, cutting-edge performance optimization techniques. Tons of impressive bells and whistles, though the pricing model scales with pageviews.
    • WP-Optimize – A good middle ground, with basic full-page caching, and some sophisticated database + media optimization tools.
    • WP Super Cache – A basic solution that offers full page caching, but lacks other/advanced optimization techniques.

    These plugin suggestions are derived from our top WordPress plugin recommendations post. There are a lot of good resources to help you build a better WordPress website on that page, so do check it out!

    5. Use a lightweight theme

    The theme you use greatly impacts how fast your pages load for users. Although WordPress offers a huge selection of themes to play around with, not all themes are created equally.

    Some themes are better coded than others. Themes with inefficient or poorly optimized code can slow down page load times and cause you headaches along the way.

    Some themes are much leaner than others. You might be drawn to themes with lots of bells and whistles, but be careful. Themes with many images, scripts, and other assets can increase the size of a page and make it slower to load. Sometimes, all you need is simplicity!

    For the most part, our advice is to pick a fast and lean theme that’s well-reviewed by the community. They’re your best bet in a sea of choices. Always check the ratings and reviews to see if you’re making the right choice. Even though you can change theme later on, it’s better to just stick with one for a while. That’ll save you troubles that may arise from switching themes.

    Apart from themes, many people like to use a page builder to design websites. It’s a great tool for beginners and experienced WordPress users alike. We have the same advice as with theme, that is to choose a popular and well-reviewed one. Some page builders are much lighter and more optimized for speed than others. Elementor, for instance, has done a bunch of work recently to speed up their builder.

    6. Deactivate and remove unused plugins

    WordPress is a wonderful platform thanks to its plugins and widgets, making it possible to extend a website in many ways. But it can be tempting to install a plugin for every little functionality that you want.

    Although plugins can make your life easier, using too many of them is bad for your performance. Since there are more functionalities to load, they make your page load slower.

    Really take a look at your plugin collection and asses which ones you need and which you don’t. And instead of using a plugin for every small functionality, use more versatile ones that can do multiple things you need.

    For the ones that you don’t need, don’t forget to deactivate and delete them from your site. That’ll remove the additional codes they add to your website. This is an easy fix that may be ignored by some. Besides, unused plugins can cause conflicts with other plugins, themes, and core WordPress functionality. By removing them, you reduce the risk of compatibility issues, which can improve the stability and performance of your site.

    7. Optimize your images: a quick fix to speed up your pages

    We’ve said this many times, heavy images are detrimental to your page speed. Although eye-catching, high-definition images are a joy to look at, they make your pages much heavier. This means there are more things to process and load, resulting in a slower load time. For instance, having a large, unoptimized hero image above the fold will definitely lead to a low LCP score in Core Web Vitals.

    You don’t actually need those high-resolution images. They only need to be sharp enough for everyone to easily make out what’s in them. There’s also a point of diminishing return where higher resolution doesn’t translate to better picture quality. The key is to find a sweet spot between resolution and quality.

    Before uploading images to your website, make sure to compress them to reduce the file size. This is especially important if you’re displaying many images on your website or if you’re running an ecommerce website with lots of product images.

    We recommend Compress JPEG & PNG images or Optimole to compress, optimize and manage your images. Squoosh.app is another great tool that we use to compress the social image of our posts, which is shown when our posts are shared on social media.

    Want to go in-depth into image optimization? Check out our comprehensive image SEO guide!

    8. Optimize your media delivery

    The way you serve media content to end users can greatly impact your page speed, too. It’s crucial that you optimize and make tweaks to how your website delivers media content.

    Lazy-loading is a popular technique that a lot of websites implement. It tells your user’s browser to load images only when they are needed, rather than loading them all at once when a page loads. Luckily WordPress does this natively so you can use that feature right out of the box. In addition, WordPress 6.1 also received a nice media delivery improvement, which is great for websites with lots of images. But even with all these features available, it’s still best to only add images when they are necessary.

    As for videos, they can be useful in driving search traffic to your website. But we strongly advise you not to host videos directly on your server. They are heavy and can take up a lot of your server storage. Self-hosted videos will also make pages load slower, which is not what you want for SEO.

    A better choice is to host videos on a video hosting platform like Youtube or Wistia and embed a link on your page. Next to that, make sure to use a process to show a preview image, and only load the video on interaction.

    We also have a solution for optimizing videos for SEO – our Yoast Video SEO plugin! It adds the necessary structured data to videos on your website so Google can show them in rich snippets. The plugin will also supercharge your videos so they load more efficiently. If videos are an important part of your website and your SEO strategy, you need to use Yoast Video SEO!

    9. Use a content delivery network

    Content delivery networks (CDNs) won’t let you down when it comes to speeding up your WordPress website. It is incredibly important if you serve overseas users or those who live far away from your original web server.

    A CDN is an interconnected network of servers working together to deliver content to your end users. They make copies of your static content like images or HTML files and distribute them on all the servers within the network. So instead of serving images or HTML files directly from your original servers, those files will be sent from the server closets to your users.

    On the left: traffic to your site lands on a single server. On the right, a CDN sends visitors to the server nearest to their location. Image: Wikipedia

    As we explain in our guide to CDNs, the same ‘do your own research’ principles apply here, too. You’ll need to find the best mix of performance, features, and price.

    We’re huge fans of Cloudflare at Yoast (which we use to power all sorts of our own ecosystems), but it may not be the perfect fit for you.

    When you’re choosing a CDN for WordPress, it’s worth making sure that they have a good plugin integration, so that page and resource caches are automatically updated or purged as you write or update your content (like the Cloudflare WordPress plugin).

    10. Use fewer external scripts and optimize your JavasScript

    A note before we go further: this section is a bit more advanced compared to the other advice in this post. It’s best not to tamper with any JavaScript if you’re new to website building, or if you don’t have any development experience. Instead, play it safe and ask an experienced developer to help you out with JavaScript tweaks and optimizations.

    With that said, JavaScript is a wonderful language and allows us to do a lot of things on websites. It makes websites more dynamic and enjoyable for end users to use.

    When you see animations on a website, like when you click a button and something pops up, that’s most likely thanks to JavaScript. For website owners, it allows them to add analytics tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar and do cool things like A/B testing or personalization. 

    But using too much JavaScript and external scripts makes a page load much slower. Loading external scripts can slow down the performance of your website, as the browser has to make additional requests to retrieve the scripts. We often see this on web pages with many external ads, which can be frustrating at times. By minimizing the number of external scripts, you can reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded and improve page load times.

    Too much JavaScript can also affect your crawl budget. That’s because Google needs to render these files while indexing, which takes up resources. The more resources Google needs to spend on processing those files, the less they have to come back and crawl other pages on your site.

    There are many ways to reduce the amount of JavaScript you use, which greatly depends on your website and the type of scripts. Start by finding out what’s loading. Then you can decide to not load it, or change how it loads to make it load more efficiently by implementing defer or async loading. 

    Avoid loading stuff from external domains, like Google Fonts or resources from CDNs, and load local copies instead. Also, ask yourself if you can get the same result by using a different method than using a script. For example, you can use CSS instead of a script for animation.

    11. Reduce files size

    We mentioned that you can compress your images to reduce their file size. You can do the same with your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, too.

    Although the number of bytes and kilobytes you shaved off these files doesn’t sound like much, they can add up. One way to reduce file size is to reduce the redundant spacing or lines in your code. You can also combine multiple files into a single file, compress it and still serve that file without breaking your site.

    Tampering with codes never sounds like a great idea, especially if you’re not a developer. But thankfully we have plugins to help us out. You can check out:

    • Autoptimize, which has some really clever JavaScript, CSS, and HTML optimization.
    • WP Minify, which also allows you to combine and compress JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files.

    12. Reduce HTTP requests to your server

    Every time a user clicks on a link to visit your website, their browser has to make multiple HTTP requests to your web server asking for various files and data. The server has to process these requests and send back all the necessary files so the browser can render them and show the page to the user.

    Reducing the amount of HTTP requests here basically means reducing the number of files the server has to retrieve and send to your user’s browser. That will help with decreasing the amount of data transferred and decreasing the load on your server, as well as making it easier for the browser to render and construct a page.

    If you’ve already implemented all the tips we mentioned above, then you’re already removing quite a bit of unnecessary HTTP requests. That involves using fewer plugins and scripts, including fewer media files, implementing a caching solution, and using a CDN to serve static content.

    Wrapping up

    Congratulations on making this far into the post! We hope this post will be useful in helping you speed up your WordPress website. We know there’s a lot of information here, so do take some time to process and digest it.

    By implementing the techniques and best practices we suggest, you’ll be on your way to building a fast and snappy website! Don’t forget to document the changes you make and evaluate the impact on your website’s search presence, organic traffic, as well as overall website performance.

    When every millisecond can make the difference between a visitor buying or leaving, there’s always more room for performance optimization. We regularly review the setup and configuration of our hosting, CDN, plugins, and theme – and so should you.

    Got a great recommendation for speeding up WordPress or other site speed tools? Let us know in the comments!

    More resources to help you speed up your WordPress website

    These articles and documentation can provide more information on website speed optimization. Have a read!

    Last but not least, an incredible source of information: Jono’s slide deck on site speed from a talk at SMXL Milan.

    Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

    The post How to speed up your WordPress website: 12 tips to start optimizing website for speed appeared first on Yoast.