Is Wordpress bad for SEO? - Edmonton Web
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Hello,
I have a site called www.edmontonweb.ca
It is running on Wordpress. I have installed Yoast and a component to enable database caching and decrease ttfb. So far the website is performing well, but not on the first page of Google yet. Through webmaster tools, the site is showing fairly bad scores through the Google speed test.
In your experience, are there disadvantages to running Wordpress from an seo standpoint?
Is there a specific hosting service that you would recommend to improve the performance of this site?
Thanks,
Anton -
Wordpress can be a great advantage on a SEO standpoint if it used well and not filled with plugins that can slow it down. Plus, if you have a large DB, it is recommended to tweak the code according to your needs.
As for your Website, I run it through Speed Test and it got a 65/100 score.
The main issues are:
- Compression: You are not compressing the content you output.
- Minification: Your JS and CSS files are not minified.
- Scaled images, you are serving images that are far larger than the space you are showing them, therefore you are transferring more data than needed.
- A few more.
To start solving the speed, I'd suggest you sign up for the free version of CloudFlare. They will automatically compress, minify and act as a CDN for any static content (in the configuration, put aggressive catching).
Once you have that set (it takes 10 minutes tops, plus the DNS propagation) try running the test again and it should give you a score around 80+.
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Thanks for the quick response,
I have read an article online that suggested that Cloudflare was bad for seo (it had a negative impact on that individuals rankings). Before reading it, I was planning to use Cloud Flare, but the article scared me off. Have you heard on anything like this.
As a result, I have been searching for an alternate CDN (like MaxCND)
Do you think CloudFlare would fix most of the issues you listed?
Thanks,
Anton
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I haven't heard of any site affected SEO-wise because of the use of CloudFlare. All the cases I read online are actually related to other issues.
Unlike MaxCDN (and I use both) is that CloudFlare automatically minifies and compresses content while other CDNs just cache your content on their servers to serve it faster based on the user location. CloudFlare does exactly the same while minifying and compressing PLUS you get a basic DDoS protection (and best of all, FREE).
Give them a try, all you have to do from your end is changing your Nameservers, and if you see any negative impact, you can always roll back by only switching again your nameservers to their originals.
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In your experience, are there disadvantages to running Wordpress from an seo standpoint?
Wordpress is great as a content management system. I have it on two blogs and they perform well.
How it performs from an SEO standpoint is not a fuction of Wordpress, but instead a function of how the website was planned and configured.
Optimal performance depends upon how the index, post and category pages are keyword targeted, optimized and linked in the persistent navigation. If I set up a site and you set up a site the difference in our performance could be enormous simply because we made different decisions on how to title the posts, present that title in <title><h1>, name the category pages, link them together and integrate the posts within the site. </p> <p>It is kinda like a nice gun. Me against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Oakley">Annie Oakley</a>. Who is gonna win? We used the same gun, but she aims better and shots straighter. </p> <p>But... the bottom line on performance will be in how good the content is, who is the audience, how provocative the topics are and how well the site is promoted. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p></title>
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I have looked at his site quite a bit. I believe that the disadvantage to WordPress is that you have a database. However if you use a managed WordPress hosting provider like GetFlywheel instead of blue host the company you're using now.
You will receive much faster storage because of SSD's verse SATA
you will be the only person on a virtual private server (VPS) no one running some crazy setup can take more resources than other people and slow down your site.
Blue host throttles your traffic it's a fact that they do this.
You need to have a quality hosting company and by using get flywheel you will have extremely inexpensive access to a very high quality CDN NetDNA /MaxCDN enterprise only $10 a month. Plus the cost of hosting which starts at $15 a month
Because flywheel is built on digital ocean and designed for WordPress only hosting they have worked on fixing the issues that make some WordPress sites slower than others and can guide you if a plug-in causes an issue with your site. Your ability to control a shared host is almost impossible unfortunately you have to upgrade your hosting to get better speeds. You've done an impeccable job of optimizing your site to receive only one request on the 2nd call.
I recommend using Get flywheel tell them to use the San Francisco data center. You will have a much faster website, and they migrate for free.
The only other alternative would be WP engine they're going to be more expensive. Previously you asked me what my opinion was in a different thread who I would choose I would go with GetFlywheel WordPress is awesome for search engine optimization managed WordPress hosting companies take all the issues that WordPress gives people and deals with them so your site will be fast safe and managed by WordPress experts.
CDN's are great but they not a fix for bad hosting trust me Bluehost is not a good hosting company fix do not put a badged on it.
If you used a application delivery network then you could set your origin wherever you wanted and you would not have to worry about the speed of dynamic content
People are forgetting
Because your site contains bolth static & dynamic content a CDN will only accelerate and cache static content. It is not a true solution. So clouldflare will not fix this.
to what the problem you're facing is. Honestly a true solution in my opinion if you want to keep your host would be to use.
The edge cast ADN will accelerate both dynamic and static it comes at a price of $2500 a month I am testing it right now on you with how it works if you like. The simple truth is your server is going to have requests that it must answer with its network so CPU speed, latency, storage speed basically hosting a infrastructure or play a huge role in your site speed.
Choosing the company I'm suggesting or another match WordPress hosting company will take care of all the security problems cloud-flare does and remember code flare is not a fix all. It has free service tier that I do not think is worth anything. To have a site that gets slightly more bandwidth and a couple more options cost of dollars a month for that you can have a completely managed WordPress hosting solution.
You're simply putting Band-Aids on a real problem.
Even cloudflare railgun which acts like edge casts ADN would still be placing a Band-Aid on a huge problem.
Fixed the hosting try it for free they migrate for free and let you try it for 15 days if the parallel of your site is not much better than don't use them.
However I have accounts with every match WordPress hosting company and a lot of other hosting companies this is a very inexpensive and very high-speed solution.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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Thomas, if he is using lots of JS and CSS files, that will be fixed by CloudFlare. Also, if he also uses a cache plugin that cache pages instead of going to the DB every time, CloudFlare will also cache those pages and serve them from the cache, just like the JS and CSS files, plus compressing and minifying everything.
If he uses the appropriate plugins to build the cache, all the stuff you said about bluehost wouldn't change a thing, as CloudFlare will even serve the "dynamic" (now seen as static by CloudFlare) from its cache.
Right? Or am I missing something?
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Hi Federico,
Unfortunately I think that's a common misconception release for the three-tier or any tear below the one that cost the base price of $200 per month. As I do believe well Gon does offer a dynamic caching ability. However all other plans under the $200 mark on her static
http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-free-cdn-and-you
What kind of static content does CloudFlare cache?
CloudFlare caches common static content file extensions, including JavaScript, CSS and images. The full list of what CloudFlare caches can be foundhere.Does CloudFlare cache dynamic content, such as HTML or PHP?
CloudFlare does not currently cache these content types.Will caching my static content affect dynamic updates to mysite?
No, dynamic updates to your site will still occur as they do now. CloudFlare is fully compatible. -
Thanks for that.
Yet, if he caches the pages serverside, that would avoid the re-request to the DB.
Then there are also the certified partners that have "railgun" running automatically with CloudFlare hence making the requests between CloudFlare and the host much faster, as it actually only sends what has "changed" on a page.
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Hi Federico,
I apologize for the bottom of that message I was using voice recognition on my iPhone and thought it completed what I was saying.
Unfortunately if he even spent the $200 a month on railgun it would not be the best way to spend the money. He could simply add railgun to a faster host and get a much faster result.
It's is easy is saying his site is currently hosted on a Geo you can trick it out and do all sorts of crazy stuff to make one faster however if you had a Porsche 911 Turbo and you spent the same amount of money to make it faster it would be a faster car than the Geo regardless.
Because his current host is where his website resides he would still be paying a lot of money to not go as fast as he could with a better host
this explains it very well
http://websynthesis.com/wsa/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/The-Truth-About-WordPress-Performance.pdf
I would still recommend using get flywheel and only spending $15 a month on hosting +$10 for a CDN instead of adding $200 to blue host.
I definitely understand why so many people think cloudflare is dynamic caching however it's only the $200 and up railgun plan actually is.
To be honest I have no problem with people using that system it just is not going to make a very slow host faster case in point media Temple GS shared hosting is not more than 15% faster and it is running railgun all the time.
I have been working with fire host & peak hosting on a project I intend to implement just prior to 2015.
The idea of caching static and dynamic content on a CDN platform I believe can be done by cloudflare railgun however I've seen firsthand when shared hosting companies implement railgun on to their shared clients accounts. This does speed up the site but not by allot. Now do not get me wrong this is one railgun account spread across hundreds if not thousands of users.
edge cast who has just been purchased by Verizon is a partner of mine and I have been very lucky to have the ability to use their ADN application delivery network or simply a CDN that does allow for dynamic caching in addition to that it implements Google page speed along with front-end optimization. This I know sounds a lot like CloudFlares railgun however the huge differences in speed along with configuration.
I set up 2 identical servers and used both products of the difference in speed is so dramatic that I was taken back quite a bit. Edge casts were outdone themselves here's some information on that in addition to why if a site does not have its HTML being served up by the CDN it must be retrieved from the server that's why it is extremely important to have a high-quality hosting company. I believe for the money that either client Linode
Digital Ocean Linode and Media Temple
websynthesis.com run on Media Temple
is a very good hosting company however once again you will have to pay either $100 a month for a complete VPS or share one at $27 month with no CDN the reason CDNs are not very important in comparison to the hosting company is very well laid out below
http://websynthesis.com/wsa/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/The-Truth-About-WordPress-Performance.pdf
pressable.com run on Rack Space is a fantastic host as well
http://kb.pressable.com/speed/how-zippykid-powers-your-website/
if you have a high traffic site you will want to use get flywheelhttp://builtwith.com/edmontonweb.ca all managed WordPress hosting companies employ a unique to WordPress caching system effectively with a do is get rid of all dynamic content from the beginning. Meaning they everything directly from RAM this includes all redirects the database is never accessed when your website is queried it is what makes managed WordPress so successful.
This is a description of managed WordPress caching
Cache
Tired of struggling with caching plugins to get faster speeds? Never again. With our proprietary EverCache technology, we manage caching for you, including page-caching, database caching and object-caching. All built in and fully managed by us, all included with no plugins that you need to tinker with.Nginx allows a server to use 1/8 of the ram to achieve the exact same thing as Apache would however because Apache is so RAM hungry compared to Nginx you get a much faster site because even with the very best ADN or railgun whatever you want call it still is more important to have a quality web host then to try to replicate a poor quality host with a very expensive system. Remember the data originates regardless at the host if the hosting provider is slow your website will be slow it's as simple as that. If you're hosting providers fast your website will be fast and if you bolt on some more things like CDN's ADN & RailGuns you will have an even faster website.
WP engine is built on Linode Get Flywheel is built on Digital Ocean both are spectacular hosting companies that give a lot more power to websites for a lot less money than many competitors for instance out-of-the-box a $40 digital ocean VPS is 15 times faster than 2 $100 instances of AWS. Here's a very easy to understand reason why some hosting providers are built better than others
http://cl.ly/image/3w060E2w1p1x
Just http://getflywheel.com/flywheel-add-ons/
CDN
remember when this video was made they only had the data center out of New York now they have data centers out of Europe as well as San Francisco this is easily close enough to be very very fast.
http://getflywheel.com/what-is-a-cdn/My best advice is don't spend a penny of your money simply fill out the form here then remember to leave a note in the notes section that you want your site served out of the West Coast not only will they migrate your entire site for free but they will allow you to test everything for 15 days at no cost. If you don't like the service or the speed you have nothing to lose. You never spent a dime in the beginning no credit card needed this is where you sign up to migrate they will even install Google page speed for you they do all the work literally so you've spent more time trying to figure out why your site slow then it would be to fix it by a long time. I'm glad that you did because I hope I've shared some of what I've learned about hosting.
http://getflywheel.com/migrate-wordpress-site/
Like I said WP engine run on linode would be the other alternative however I should warn you that they're not going to be as inexpensive and you will share a VPS with other clients. So unlike flywheel you cannot run any plug-in you want there are a few other price concerns considering WP engine charges you for bots both are excellent managed WordPress hosting companies that I know you'll be happy with. My $.02 and I've done my homework is use GetFlywheel
http://wpengine.com/
if for whatever reason you do not want to go with a managed WordPress solution I think that you are making the wrong choice considering you're running WordPress however it's obviously not up to me. But as someone with an account with every one of these hosting companies I am certain I am telling you which one you'll be happiest with. Currently that one is get flywheelGood options for hosting if you do not want to go with a 100% WordPress host
http://www.castmate.fm/blog/Digital Ocean vs. Linode
http://blog.schneidmaster.com/digital-ocean-vs-linode/https://www.linode.com/
https://www.digitalocean.com/one-click-install-applicationsInformation on dynamic accelerated CDN's unfortunately the least expensive one his $200 a month but fortunately if you use a managed WordPress hosting company your site is always served directly from memory all things are cached including your database 301 redirects you name it it is cached so you have what is really the beginning of the hose with you rather have a firehose or would you rather have a garden hose with a bunch of people sticking their thumb on the end and trying to convince you that more waters coming out. In order to have a fast website you 1st need to start where the website originates and that is with the host.
Here's the town of information on ADN's
By far the fastest ADN on the market is the edge cast ADN is not a simple tool it is a content delivery network that accelerates dynamic content as well as static content therefore adding Google page speed honestly one of the best things you can do for any site along with edge casts new DNS makes it extremely fast. Much faster than cloudflare the test I did. I ran a fire host 1 core 1 Gig of RAM server using the edge cast ADN on a tool called neustar RUM and load testing I then did the exact same thing with Akamai's system as well as CloudFlares railgun all 3 made the host faster by only a few milliseconds because I was running a site blueprintroad.com with a total of 3 pages it's running WordPress 3.8 and the load time was never over 15.ms running the edge cast ADN Akamai's system averaged 40ms CloudFlares railgun 76.4MS now keep in mind I only ran this test for one hour using simulated users from all over the globe the average load time of that site is approximately 300 ms you are welcome to test it and then normal configuration is running DynECT DNS with edge cast CDN not ADN. Because fire host is extremely well-built and I had requested that they build the server running Nginx in a reverse proxy configuration is also running here is a very good look at what the site is running http://builtwith.com/blueprintroad.com
I only tested each for 1 hour
at the time of posting this it reads hosting providers FireHost and then there is a 2nd provider listed as AWS the only reason I can think of for this is I was running a bucket though I no longer am so it should be updated but it's not.
This is just out information about the edge cast ADN along with strange loop which I have yet to try but want to and Akamai which I tried.
http://www.edgecast.com/docs/ADN.pdf
http://www.edgecast.com/docs/ec-adn-datasheet.pdf
http://www.edgecast.com/docs/ec-adn-ecommerce.pdf
http://www.edgecast.com/docs/ec-edgeopt-datasheet.pdf
http://www.edgecast.com/docs/adn-wp.pdfhttp://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/terra_alta.html
http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/steelhead_cloud_accelerator.htmlhttp://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/assets/images/Infographics/Web-Stress-Infographic-500.jpg
I am happy to answer any other questions however when you think about it just think about it this way would I rather have my website start out going 100 miles an hour or have to have it pushed or pulled to get to 100 because if my website starts out at 100 and I push or pull it I am going to have a website that goes 150 if my hosting company my website would start out at was blue host 20 then I would push or pull it and it would only go 35 so the easiest answer is your post makes the biggest difference of all.
If you find that it is not meeting your needs speed wise you have people that are WordPress experts deal with the problem. However considering it costs you nothing to actually migrate dear entire site onto their servers and try for no money what it would be like to be on that hosting system you would have to be crazy not to.
My simple answer is use get flywheel the best value and they'll do best by if not use WP engine there excellent as well.
I hope this is going to help you because running around in playing with old database plug-ins that Yoast made around 4 years ago is not going to speed of your site. Plus a VPS is a better way to host a website then shared hosting. Your current site is definitely not served from memory only does not have proper caching set up therefore has no way to be fast.
http://getflywheel.com
your site will fly.
Sincerely,
Thomas -
Hi Anton
As many state below, the platform has little to do with potential SEO but rather how the site its self is setup. WordPress is just one of many means to an end. WordPress by default is great - but many things added to it such as themes, plugins, hosting packages, customization etc can really mess with it. Less is more. The more you can simplify your setup the better.
This is the ultimate post on WordPress site speed I've ever seen.
I definitely suggest also checking out some content I have on Moz;
No site is going to rank on the first page of Google for your top keywords super quickly, without plenty of all the right signals. This includes on-page and off page such as links, social metrics and in the case of your site local SEO factors (local SEO factors here). I suggest checking out Danny Sullivan's periodic table of ranking factors for a high level look of all ranking factors.
My favorite speed test of choice is WebPageTest - and your test results are here. I especially like the "Waterfall View" as it shows the performance of each element as it loads.
- It is showing the visible load time to the user as 2.8 seconds which is pretty quick actually
- One thing for example is some sort of Twitter file being called which takes over 1 second to load (3rd party social buttons are notorious for this). It may not be needed for every page, or you may be able to find a better way to do that.
Anyhow, I know there's already a lot of info on this page - so hope that also helps!
-Dan
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