Business websites
Sites built to be read by search engines
Server-rendered pages, no JavaScript framework in the way, and markup a crawler can read on the first pass. The site you're on is built that way, and it's the clearest example I have.
The approach
How these are built
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Fast
Critical CSS inline-first, deferred everything else, compressed images generated on upload, and close to no JavaScript.
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Readable by crawlers
Real HTML from the server, semantic structure, canonical URLs, generated sitemap, and JSON-LD. Nothing that depends on a script running first.
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Editable
A small admin behind the site so content, images and posts can be changed without a developer and without a page rebuild.
Writing
Related reading
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Small Business and Websites
Event Tracking in Google Analytics: What It Costs, and What's Worth Tracking
In the last post I said conversion tracking is the part of a report that proves value. True, but it is also the part that takes real work, and most of it is not worth doing for a small business. Track the few events that equal money, skip the rest.
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Small Business and Websites
Google Analytics vs Cloudflare: What Your Website Report Actually Proves
Website analytics is not a dashboard you glance at. Every number should prove something about what your site is delivering. Here is what Cloudflare and Google Analytics each prove, whether you need both, and where the numbers come from.
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Small Business and Websites
When Off-the-Shelf Software Hits a Wall
SaaS platforms and plugins are built for the average user, so the step that is specific to your business becomes a manual chore. A custom build turns that chore into a button. Here is what that looks like, and when it is worth it.