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Google PageSpeed Insights: Updated for 2020

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darkstar media pagespeed scoreBack in 2015, I wrote an article about the benefits of using Google Google PageSpeed Insights to speed up your website for a faster user experience and better search engine rankings. Many of the tips I provided then are still relevant and I encourage you to try them out on your website. I do want to add a few more tips that have helped me get 100% on our desktop page speed score and 97% on our mobile page speed score. The score Google provides is not always consistent and has some variety, so if you notice this while trying to fix your website, don’t worry about it. As long as you can get yourself up to 80-90%, you are doing well.

In my 2015 Google PageSpeed article, I shared the following tips and fixes:

  • Leveraging browser caching
  • Minifying CSS
  • Minifying JavaScript
  • Eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content

The following 3 items will also help with these common Google PageSpeed warnings and recommendations.

Autoptimize (WordPress Plugin)

This WordPress plugin helps with the 3 items above: minifying CSS, minifying JavaScript, and eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content. It will also minify your HTML code and has a handy little empty cache button in the WordPress toolbar for when you are developing or making changes.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer (WordPress Plugin)

This plugin helps to optimize your images up to 90% and provides a significant page speed boost. Just go to the plugins website and sign up for a free account.

For caching and minifying, I now only use the 2 plugins above; I have stopped using W3 total Cache and any other plugin for these tasks. I would warn against having too many plugins, especially ones that do the same or similar tasks, as you don’t want any conflicts. I am also just using the free versions of these plugins. I have not tested the paid version as I have been happy with their default settings.

Cloudflare

It is hard to know where to begin with Cloudflare as they offer so many services. The service that is relevant to this article is, their caching. To use this, you route your domain name (URL) nameservers through Cloudflare. They keep a cached copy of your website with load balanced servers, and when a user wants to visit your website, Cloudflare provides them the fastest version from the closest server. If you don’t understand all of that, don’t worry; it can be summarized as “It makes your site faster for the end user”. It was the final step that got my 90% score on Google PageSpeed Insights up to 100%. The added bonus of this service is that it also adds a layer of security to your website by hiding your web hosting company.

 

With a little bit of WordPress knowledge, you can easily implement these tips. If you would like help, Darkstar Media would be happy to speed up your website for you. Just call us at 416.450.5439 and ask for Justin.

 

The post Google PageSpeed Insights: Updated for 2020 appeared first on Darkstar Media.

Should I have my Intern/Nephew/Receptionist Develop my Website?

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my cat websiteThe short answer to that question is maybe. I only say maybe because perhaps your intern, nephew, or receptionist is a qualified web developer with years of experience. If on the other hand they are not, then my answer is a very firm no!

Let me tell you a quick story about an experience that happened to me a few weeks ago: a client of mine decided he needed to upgrade his website; his receptionist volunteered to do it and assured him that they had done it before and it was easy. I can see the appeal of this because of the cost savings and they most likely had a good working relationship.

The problems were these:

  • His employee did not understand my security plugins so disabled them as they caused extra steps.
  • They did not understand SEO and created brand new pages with no titles and descriptions.
  • They downloaded and installed a free theme without researching it.
  • This theme also very much looked like a template theme and had no branding.

So you can imagine what happened. They got hacked, and then of course the client called me.

I understand that WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace have some great marketing and are always telling you that anyone can do it. It is quick and easy and you will save a lot of money. If you want a website to show off photos of your cat to your aunt, that is a great option (or use social media). But if you want a branded website that shows off the benefits of your company it is best to call a website professional (like myself https://www.darkstarmedia.net). We understand SEO, User Experience Design, Social Media, Security, Branding and Marketing and can build you a professional website that can help grow your business. In the long run you save money by not having to clean up a hacked website or building the website twice, never mind the potential to lose business during the hack.

The post Should I have my Intern/Nephew/Receptionist Develop my Website? appeared first on Darkstar Media.

Setting up your eCommerce website

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Now is the time to set up an eCommerce store for your business. Whether it is for shipping your goods, curbside pick-up, or both.

One of the quickest ways to get this accomplished is to create a WordPress website using the WooCommerce plugin. This also happens to be what we specialize in. We have experience in many other eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and custom build eCommerce websites, yet I would recommend WordPress/WooCommerce for speed of setting up.

With WordPress you can easily design a custom theme that fits your brand. WooCommerce is well supported by the WordPress community which is important if you need to do any customizations for your online store which are not included in the base package of the plugin.

How to make a WordPress eCommerce website?

  • Hire an experienced web developer
  • Purchase a domain name
  • Purchase a web hosting package
  • Install WordPress (some web hosting companies do it automatically for you)
  • Pick a theme (your websites look and feel)
  • Install WooCommerce or another eCommerce plugin (This manages products, orders, and payments)
  • Make sure you have a payment provider (Paypal, Moneris, etc.)
  • Add your products and company information to the website
  • Start promoting your website

That is the bare bones version of setting up your store. Other items to consider are styling the website to fit your brand, making sure the website is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), testing that the site is easy to navigate and the shopping process is smooth (UX / UI), and setting up some online marketing. If you followed all the steps above, including step 1 (Hire an experienced web developer), your web developer will have the skills to help with these additional tasks.

If you have questions and would like to speak to an expert, please reach out and call us at 416.450.5439.

Top WordPress Plugins in 2020

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Three years ago I wrote a blog titled “WordPress Developers Top 12 Plug-in List“, and while looking through it I realized that I only use two of them anymore, thats how quickly WordPress evolves. Many of the changes have to do with page speed, managing custom content, and some of the plugins I used 3 years ago have had their functionality built into WordPress. The two that stayed on the list are: iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security), and WordPress SEO by Yoast. I’ll provide a link to the plugins website so you can get the official description, and I’ll describe below why I personally like them.

So what are the best WordPress Plugins?

1. Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) – website
This plugin is handy for extending any sort of post, page or custom post with extra fields. For example you may have a custom post for upcoming events and for each event you will have a starting time, address and cost. Rather than trying to code those 3 fields with CSS and HTML in every single post for a consistent look, you simply make them as their own fillable fields in the post editor and make a page template for the post type to display them. No coding skills required for the content manager.
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2. Autoptimize – website
A great tool for speeding up your website, it will minify all HTML, CSS and Javascript and load it all at the bottom of the page, only loading the code that is necessary for a quick page load and a great user experience. Much more effective than any optimization/caching plugin I’ve tried.
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3. Classic Editor – website
This opinion may be controversial, I find the new WYSIWTG content editors to very cumbersome, but more importantly those content editors slow your website down to a crawl. Most sites that use them fail with Google Page Speed Insights because they put in some much unnecessary code. The sites end up being slow and clunky. WP Bakery Builder, and Gutenberg are the modern equivalent to Microsoft Frontpage – do yourself a favour and avoid at all costs.
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4. Contact Form 7 – website
This is a very simple and clean tool for adding any sort of contact or lead generating form. It has extensions for exporting the form content that was submitted as well as emailing it directly. Easy to use and configure.
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5. Custom Sidebars – website
Sidebars are starting to fall out of favour with some of the newer responsive designs. Yet they can be really handy for adding calls to action or additional menus. This plugin extends the built in WordPress widgets and allows you to create custom sidebars for whole sections or specific pages.
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6. iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) – website
This plugin is a must have, I generally turn on all the security features to help keep hackers out. My favourite feature is the ability to create a custom URL for your WordPress dashboard. Many exploits come from users running bots to tests 1000s of passwords in seconds to break into your dashboard, so this hides the dashboard from most hackers and instantly blacklists anyone who is lucky enough to find it after the second of third bad login attempt.
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7. Polylang Pro – website
This plugin is for displaying and managing your content in multiple languages. Really easy to use and with most plugins and themes the language pack is included, which Polylang uses without any sort of configuration. For any tricky words that are untranslated deep within a theme or plugin, Polylang gives you a tool to provide your own translation.
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9. WCK – Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Creator – website
I use this plugin with every WordPress website I build, this is great for making Carousel / Banner / Slideshow functions, Callouts, or any sort of repeatable or list content. If your website has any sort of content that doesn’t fit within the built in pages / posts functionality, this tool is a must have. It does also include custom fields, yet I still use Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and pair these plugins together as ACF has better custom field tools.

10. WooCommerce – website
I have built many eCommerce websites over the years using many different tools as well as building many from scratch. As soon as I tried WooCommerce I fell in love with it. All the shopping cart features are built in and configured already. It has many extensions for selling custom products that don’t fit the standard mould and pairs well with Polylang and Advanced Custom Fields.
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11. WP All Import – ACF Add-On – website
When building websites, you sometimes need to import content from outside sources such as converting a Drupal website to WordPress, or importing a spreadsheet of locations. This plugin allows you to import a CSV file and instantly map the content into custom fields for a custom post type, no data entry required.
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12. Yoast (SEO) – website
A very simple and easy to use tool to make sure you have the proper page titles and meta descriptions on your pages and posts. I like the colour coded bar which lets you know if you have too much or not enough words in your titles or descriptions. It does have some more advanced tools, I find I never use them, the free version works as needed.
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ShortPixel Image Optimizer used to be in this list, I have recently taken if off as it has proven to be unreliable.

I hope you find this list is helpful. This list was created in 2020, it will be interesting to see if I still use these tools in another 3 years. I should mention that some of these plugins have a cost, I did not get compensated in any way to promote them. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me at 416.450.5439.

16 Effective SEO Tips for a Successful Website

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Back in 2013, I wrote an article titled “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist”, and while it was correct at the time, it is now a bit dated and I thought it was a time for an update. Google is always changing their algorithm and it is hard to keep up; some tips are tried and true and others are a bit more advanced, requiring a web developer or SEO specialist to stay on top of them. I wrote this article in 2 sections: basic SEO tips and advanced SEO techniques.

What are the Basic SEO tips?

  1. Meta Title and Description: Make sure both of these are filled out on every page using relevant keywords without keyword stuffing.
  2. Alt and Title Tags: All images need to have a descriptive alt tag and all links need a descriptive title tag. This is also very friendly to users with accessibility issues, as accessibility reading software use these tags to describe the links and images.
  3. Google Search Console: Formally known as Webmaster tools, this is a service provided by Google that helps to index your website as well as ensure the content is up to date and not infected. It has many other features that I encourage you to read up on.
  4. Content: Have at least 600 words on every webpage.
  5. More Content: Keep updating your website on a regular basis with new blog posts, announcements, and updated page content.
  6. Heading Tags: H1, H2, etc. Make sure these are filled out with relevant keywords that describe your webpage. Search Engines put more weight on words in headings than words in paragraph content.
  7. Social Networks: Maintain social networks that link back and forth to your website and use this to help build your reputation.
  8. Linking: Have lots of links within your content that link to other pages on your website. Make it easy for users to find the information they need.

What are some Advanced SEO Techniques?

  1. Page Naming: Your web pages should have relevant descriptive keywords in the page names (e.g. advanced-seo-techniques.html). Be sure they don’t get longer than 70 characters, which includes any subfolders in the file path.
  2. AMP: AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. These are stripped down copies of your webpages that phones and tablets use (less or optimized images, scripts,  videos, etc.). These allow users on mobile devices to save data and provide a quick page loading speed.
  3. Featured Snippets: These are small headings and paragraphs answering specific questions that search engine users may have. As an example, try to google a celebrity name in the form of a question, such as “Who is X?” and a featured snippet about that celebrity will likely appear at the top of your search results. You can use these snippets to give away tips and draw people to your website with helpful information.
  4. Keyword Research: Using either Google Ads or a variety of other tools, find out which search terms are most relevant to your website/business and are searched the most frequently. You could even just Google your competition and see what words they are using. Don’t be spammy though; the words have to make sense for your webpage.
  5. Focus Keywords: For each of your webpages, try to have a different focus keyword and make sure it is used in the page title, H1 and H2 headings, meta description, page name, content and image ALT tags. Again, don’t be spammy and make sure it is relevant.
  6. Page Speed: Google Page Speed Insights is a great tool to see how fast your webpage loads, as it provides both a mobile and desktop score. You need your pages to load fast so that potential users don’t bounce away when waiting for the page to load.
  7. Structured Data: This is coding and organizing your content in a way that makes sense for search engines. There are different tags to use for events, products, recipes, etc.
  8. Sentiment: This suggestion is venturing towards lead generation and calls to action, yet there is evidence to suggest that sentiment expressed in your title and description tags gets read by search engines and has value towards your featured snippets and possibly your search ranking.

I hope you find these tips helpful. As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 416.450.5439.

Website Launching Checklist

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So, your website is finally complete. At this point, the links have been tested and an editor has read and re-read the copy. QA people have tried to break the website for quality control, and you have tested your website on all browsers and devices. After all your hard work, you are excited to share your website with the world and ready to start promoting.

When we get caught up in the excitement of launching a website, the last few but key steps can get ignored and this can leave a new website vulnerable to hacking or cause a poor user experience because of slow loading times.

Prompted by my own experience, I have created a quick checklist to go through before I release a new website. I create many WordPress sites, so I have included some WordPress specific website launching tweaks.

What is our website launching checklist?

  1. Route the name servers through Cloudflare.
  2. If it is WordPress site, install Autoptimize.
  3. Add caching code to htaccess file.
  4. Run the website through Google Page Speed Insights. Tweak as needed.
  5. If a WordPress site, uncheck “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.
  6. If a WordPress site, install and configure security plugins such as iThemes security.
  7. Add website to Google Analytics.
  8. Add website to Google Search Console and submit sitemap.

Route the nameservers through Cloudflare.

This hides your websites server from potential hackers and speeds up your website with its caching and minifying tools. More info on Cloudflare here.

If a WordPress site, install Autoptimize.

This plugin will minify your code and speed up your website. More info on Autoptimize here.

Add caching code to htaccess file.

When running your website through Google Page Speed Insights (next step) you will frequently get this suggestion to help speed up your website. Caching your pages and code helps to make your website load much faster.

Run the website through Google Page Speed Insights. Tweak as needed.

Google Page Speed Insights is a useful tool that can help with page loading time and user experience. Test your own site out with this useful Page Speed reader. Notice that there is both a mobile and desktop score. Check both scores.

If it is a WordPress site, be sure to uncheck “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.

This is a simple thing that often gets overlooked when launching a WordPress website. When on the WordPress dashboard, you can find this option under Settings – Reading.

If it is a WordPress site, install and configure security plugins such as iThemes security.

There are many security plugins out there for WordPress. iThemes is a favourite for many reasons. iThemes hides the WordPress backend, bans hackers trying to login, and sends file change warnings to you and the daily security digest. WordPress is open source and constantly under attack. Whatever plugin you prefer to use for security, make sure to use it correctly and update it as necessary.

For non-WordPress sites, speak to your developer to make sure everything is locked down. I would advise against using web hosting companies such as GoDaddy, HostGator or Bluehost. They are constantly under attack (DDOS) and vulnerable to getting hacked. Their support staff can only answer the limited questions that they have been trained to answer (they do not have IT people answer the phones).

Add website to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics will track all your website traffic and provide you with reports. This will help you to see where users drop off, which devices are most used, what areas of the world your users come from and many other detailed statistics pertaining to your targets.

Add website to Google Search Console and submit sitemap.

Google Search Console will monitor the health of your website. It will let you know where you have broken links, inform you when if get hacked, and track the most common search phrases used to find you. By submitting your site map (all the pages in your website), Google Search Engine can easily crawl through and index your website faster, instead of just finding your site organically.

Custom Built Online Yoga Studio Website

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As the reality of living with Covid sets in, some of our businesses are forced to evolve in order to survive with our new safety and isolation guidelines. Hatch Yoga https://www.hatchyoga.com, a local Mississauga Yoga Studio did just that and hired us to transform their physical yoga studio into an online yoga studio.

We set up the website using WordPress, Woocommerce and Vimeo. Customers access the website with a monthly subscription service that we configured through Woocommerce.

Custom Built Online Yoga Studio search videosThis online yoga studio website is quite flexible, in addition to access to the online yoga classes, it also offers private yoga lessons, an eight week mindfulness course, sells physical props and offers a few in person classes that take place outside with social distancing.

Darkstar Media developed the custom WordPress theme which includes a comprehensive yoga class search tool (Search by teacher, style, duration, level, antomical focus and language), configured the eCommerce platform, planned the user experience, worked out the video logistics, and installed and configured all the WordPress plugins.

Let us know if we can help bring your business online by calling 416.450.5439.


eCommerce WordPress site launched using Woocommerce

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We are pleased to announce the launch of a new eCommerce WordPress website beekindorganics.ca. We used Woocommerce to handle the product management and shopping cart features. We also integrated the site with the Square plugin to handle the online transactions.

Darkstar Media custom developed the Bootstrap WordPress themeSEO optimized the website (including all the products), and configured Woocommerce. A smooth User Experience and ease of navigation was one of our main objectives as well as page speed general website optimization.

 

Headless CMS built with Next.js, React.js and WordPress

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I am happy to announce a new service offering, Headless CMS (content management system) Development, as well as a new website to showcase this technology:

https://www.justinblayney.com/

I have just completed a Headless CMS website that uses WordPress as the content management system and utilizes Next.js as the front end display. This allows for the site to be hosted on a node server and adds an additional security layer between the user and your data.

Another advantage is that the same codebase that created the website can be modified to create an IOS or Android app, all of which could share the same database.

The technologies used in the creation of this website include Next.js, React.js, Bootstrap, Github, SCSS, GraphQL and WordPress for content. I also used Cloudinary CDN to host my images, Vercel node servers for hosting the React Codebase and Cloudflare to add more security and speed to my website.

If you would like to know more, please call: 416.450.5439. Be sure to tell me what you think of the website (and buy my art 🙂 ) !





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