1.
Technical and Performance
SEO Tune Up
Carolyn Shelby, SEO Director, tronc
#SEJSummit
@cshel

2.
Carolyn Shelby
Director, SEO at tronc,Inc.
Organic, technical, enterprise, and news
20+ years experience
#SEJSummit
@cshel

3.
#SEJSummit
@cshel
Speed is the goal.
Remember Power to
Weight Ratio
Efficient delivery is
the key to speed.
Keep things simple.
Defined, refined
goals. Elegant code.

4.
A 1-second delay in page load time
yields:
– 11% fewer page views
– 16% decrease in customer
satisfaction
– 7% loss in conversions
(source: Aberdeen Group)

5.
KEEP IT SIMPLE

6.
How Much is Too Much?
• How many audiences?
• How many tasks?
• How much reporting?
• What are you tracking?
• How many images?
• How many social icons?
• How many ads to serve?
– From where?

7.
Complexity has
costs
• More data to push
• More time to retrieve data
from 3rd party
• Increased load times
• Increased dev time
• Greater chance of conflicts
• Greater difficulty
maintaining and repairing

8.
SEO Improvements through Simplifying
• Get rid of code that no longer serves a useful purpose
• Reduce the number of 3rd party sources (calls)
• (this includes tracking pixels)
• Reduce the bloat in your code, in your CSS, in your scripts.
• DO NOT CALL or LOAD THINGS THAT AREN’T NEEDED

9.
It’s okay to say no!

10.
KEEP IT EFFICIENT

11.
Speed through Efficient Delivery
• Minimize latency
• Minimize file sizes
• Only deliver those things
necessary for the user
experience.
• Prioritize above-the-fold
content.

12.
Speed Traps
• DNS response time
• Latency between the DB
and the file server
• Failure or lag in loading a
tracking pixel or some
other 3rd party service
• Not optimizing your
image file sizes
• Not optimizing your CSS
delivery
• Too many plugins
• Too many http redirects

13.
MAKE IT FAST

14.
Conversations to have…
• Fonts based on ease/speed of load vs what the designer
used in the photoshopped mock up?
• Content to suppress on the mobile site? (Using detection
to deliver only the pieces necessary to the UX)
• How many different tracking tools do you need? How
many customer analytics/behavior monitoring beacons?

15.
Tools for Page Speed and Load Times
• Google PageSpeed Insights
– Follow guidance for both mobile and desktop
• Yslow (yslow.org)
• Many SEO tools pull in PageSpeed and Yslow into
their auditing tools.

16.
#SEJSummit
@cshel
Twitter @cshel
Linkedin linkedin.com/in/cshel
Google+ +CarolynShelby

17.
#SEJSummit
@cshel
Speed is the goal.
Remember Power to
Weight Ratio
Efficient delivery is
the key to speed.
Keep things simple.
Defined, refined
goals. Elegant code.