Our brief was to design a new high performing mobile responsive website with optimum page load speeds. After advising and assisting the client on correct keyword density and word count, we had to source and optimise appropriate images for each page type and category.

Correct plugins to maximise site speed

Our next consideration was the optimum use of widgets and plugins to ensure that the site performed as the client required it to. After examining the resource load metrics from the various types of plugins out there, we selected the WP Forms plugin for website communication, WP Fastest Cache to improve site speed and Yoast SEO plugin to correctly add the required meta data for all pages. Lastly, we utilised the Schema.org plugin designed specifically for WordPress to allow us to add rich snippets and Schema data for the correct website category.

Wordfence was added last to ensure site protection from spammers, hackers and brute force protection. Wordfence options also allowed us to protect from brute force attacks and add a firewall to the website admin area/server area also. Further security actions were also taken including turning off the directory browsing from the root .htaccess file and preventing php code execution by creating and uploading a .htaccess file in the "UPLOADS" folder.

A Google Webmaster tools was also created to allow the client to communicate with Google in the event of any indexing issues, upload a sitemap and ask for a recrawl after any major site updates along other things.

A sitemap was also created and submitted via Google Webmaster tools.

Project Results

The website is now appearing on the top 2 positions for the businesses chosen target keywords after 3 months. We have also scored highly on both Google Page speed Insights with the desktop version of the site scoring a 91/100, the mobile version of the site scoring a 99/100 and an "A+" rated score on GTMETRIX in terms of site speed, loading and optimised code .