Optimizations Archives - Page 2 of 3

How to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

April 4, 2022October 15, 2021

Voice search isn't necessarily something we put at the top of the pile as bloggers, but at the very least, it's worth being aware of.

Many may remember that Google launched voice search in 2011, it wasn't all that practical, but as technology has changed, so too has demand.

Digital marketing agency DBS Interactive even notes in a recent article that in the US “41% of adults use voice search at least once per day.”

Yes, a large portion of that is for music and weather, but the use of voice search to find articles and news has skyrocketed in recent years.

3 Ways to Increase Pages Per Visit on Your Blog

July 21, 2022August 15, 2021

In an earlier article on This Week in Blogging, we had a discussion about the differences between CPM and RPM when it comes to advertising revenue on our sites.

The main takeaway from that was CPM is the cost to advertisers for one single ad on your site (per 1,000 impressions) whereas RPM is the total revenue a site earns across all ads (per 1,000 sessions- typically). RPM takes in a number of factors including article length (number of ads displayed), audience demographics (for cookie-based advertising), pages-per-visit, and more when it comes to determining what you actually earn on your site.

We concluded that article with ways to increase your RPM, and one was to work on optimizing your site to increase your pages-per-visit. As that is easier said than done, we thought it'd be timely to put together an article all about the topic!

WP Rocket Settings – A Guide to Improving Your WordPress Blog

July 5, 2021July 5, 2021

At its core, WordPress is an open-sourced Content Management System (CMS) that is designed to be versatile and accept a wide array of hosts, themes, and plugins.

Much like how it is hard to shuffle a deck of cards and never deal the same hand twice due to the insanely high probability, it is also unlikely that any two blogs are designed identically (well, unless you copy all of our guides and WordPress plugin recommendations, in which case there could be a few).

This poses an inherent set of problems for bloggers as some programs simply aren't designed to play nicely together. Some themes may be designed to stand alone without a huge plugin array while others are simply backbones that allow you to customize to your heart's content via plugins. Optimizing performance around all of this adds one more layer of difficulty into the mix.

One plugin that we have found absolutely critical for the performance of our WordPress blogs is WP Rocket as this premium plugin is a beast- it combines and minifies CSS and JS files, lazy loads images, and so much more.

So in this one, we want to share more about what WP Rocket does, why you may want to use it on your blog, some pitfalls to keep in mind, and of course share our own personal settings as this one can become overwhelming in a hurry.

5 Unique Features of WebPageTest You May Not Be Using

May 24, 2021

When it comes to auditing our blogs, one tool we find ourselves using over and over again is WebPageTest.

This tool has some pretty powerful diagnostic features that go well beyond simply looking at how fast your site loads in a cumulative sense. You really can dive down and look at individual elements as well plus how your site performs on desktop, mobile, and an array of devices to name a few!

So in this one, we wanted to share some unique features of WebPageTest you may not be using (but should). But if you haven't used WebPageTest at all, we recommend starting with our base guide at the previous link!

Breaking Down Core Web Vitals – What Are They and What to Do?

May 11, 2021May 10, 2021

It is never boring running a blog as major players in the field can and do change the rules regularly- often without any advanced notice at all.

Sometimes we do get a bit of a heads up that change is coming, and Google's announcement that Core Web Vitals metrics would become a ranking factor has been known for quite some time. But in true fashion, many of us waited until the absolute last minute to start looking into it, and the time to do these improvements is now.

So in this one, we wanted to break down a bit about what Core Web Vitals are, what each metric evaluates, and give some tips on what to look for when improving scores on your own blogs!

3 Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Issues and Fixes for Your Blog

May 3, 2021April 30, 2021

Google's Core Web Vitals metrics are said to be a new ranking factor starting in June 2021, and bloggers across the world are rushing to implement improvements on topics like Largest Content Paintful (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

While we could talk about each of these topics individually for days, one, Cumulative Layout Shift, is perhaps the most vexing- so much so that even those who run premium caching plugins like WP Rocket Pro may still not pass by default!

In this one, we wanted to highlight a bit more about what CLS is, what it looks like, and a few unique ways you can possibly improve your CLS score on your site beyond caching plugin settings!

Note: We feel that plugins like WP Rocket Pro are obligatory for those who want to run fast sites (both for CLS and otherwise). Unfortunately, the compatibility of some of the settings found in plugins like these will vary based on your theme and plugin array. In this article, we assume you are using a plugin like this one by default. The purpose of this post is to talk about other CLS issues that are common that you may need to work on.

Blog Spending Audit – Every Premium Blogging Service We Use

July 21, 2022March 22, 2021

Every so often, I like to do an audit of my business expenses to ensure I'm not overpaying for services or have recurring fees for things I no longer use.

As part of this, I've come up with a list of all of the premium services we use for our blogs be it via hosting, plugins, or other third-party tools outright. As I generally think sharing information like this is helpful for others who may look to improving their blogs (like with our list of WordPress plugins we personally use), I thought it'd be appropriate to share all of the premium services we personally pay for.

My motto when it comes to blogging services is to spare no expense to do things right. That being said, I am thrifty at times and adopt an 80/20 mindset to most things. If I can get 80% of the value at 20% of the cost, I will do it, which is why I pay for things like Keysearch which costs in a year what other SEO services charge for a single month.

So when I say that I pay $3,500/year on services you should instantly recognize that I am paying for quality things, often with multi-site licenses to run my seven sites, but have sought out deals via the 80/20 mindset when appropriate. As you likely do not run as many sites as I do, it is worth pointing out that single site licenses for the below would run about $1,200/year– so you can see that scaling becomes cost-effective in the long run!

So in this one, I wanted to discuss a bit about each service, rough estimates on single and multi-site prices, explain why we pay for them at all, and also highlight reasons why you may want to skip some services as well. Some are simply worth the price far more than others. And, as with everything, your mileage may vary based on your own unique circumstances.

*Note: This guide is for general blogging programs and services we pay for. It does not include advertising nor niche-specific purchases. For full disclosure, I pay an additional $3,000 to $6,000 a year in advertising across all my sites- mostly as a means to get new projects off the ground as opposed to promoting the more established ones.

5 Signs it is Time to Change Your Blog Hosting Service

April 11, 2022January 26, 2021

We see two questions about WordPress hosting come up time and time again in blogging groups. They are simply:

What hosting company is good for [X] monthly page views?
When should I consider upgrading my blog's server?

In our opinion, the first question is far easier to answer than the second.

We're big proponents of Managed WordPress hosting services as they are generally responsible for a wide range of activities all around guaranteeing uptime of your site. Some premium hosts even have development time baked in for extra assistance beyond uptime concerns and are priced accordingly.

My present Managed WordPress host for all my sites, including This Week in Blogging, is BigScoots, and my highest trafficked site has flirted with 300,000 monthly page views in the past without any noticeable slowdowns, downtime, or other negative effects. Whenever we have an issue pop up, typically around plugin updates creating compatibility issues, we submit a ticket in their support system and they jump on it almost immediately.

So in this respect, the question of where to host when you're ready to upgrade is easy. But the question of when you should upgrade your blogging host is not clear cut.

In this one, we wanted to highlight five common scenarios bloggers run into that may be a sign it is time to upgrade your server!

How to Show Related Posts with WP Show Posts and Ad Inserter

January 13, 2021

When it comes to showing related posts on your WordPress blog, a number of plugins exist that will use proprietary logic in order to display relevant posts at the end of any given article.

Generally speaking, I don't like these. First off is that the level of control you have over what posts are shown varies considerably, and second off those that have built-in display logic can be, at times, slow. The latter may be partly due to bloated scripts, but also because it takes time for the plugin's algorithm to parse your content and return recommended posts.

So what can you do if you want to fix one (or both) of these issues? Well, the way we show relevant content on our sites without interrupting our load times is with a combination of two plugins- WP Show Posts and Ad Inserter.

Today, I wanted to provide a walkthrough of how we do it.