Adaptive Fabricating Inc.

adaptivelifts.com

We were brought on to this project to modernize and improve the search presence of this website. The site was in it’s second version and was updated in 2014. There was nothing technically wrong with the site based on W3 Web standards. The company owners had noticed that almost no customers came to them through the website.

The site was created with a purchased HTML5 and CSS template. Our task was to also include links or embed YouTube videos into the site on the correct pages. The site had links for email, Facebook and Instagram but that was it.

In terms of performance, we will mention only Google Pagespeed here as it is a good indicator. The site loaded in about 2 seconds on a desktop and about 3 seconds on a mobile device. This is decent and it got a score of 75 desktop and 45 mobile on average through repeated tests. The site was partially mobile friendly but needed improvement as there were fixed sizes and not fluid sizes.

The first task was to make the site mobile responsive. This involved changing only about 20 lines of code to achieve a responsive site.

Adding the YouTube videos actually slowed down the site so a javascript function was added to only load the videos once the site itself was ready. We also added some buttons to allow the user to switch between videos easily.

By optimizing the server delivery by minimizing files, compressing files, and optimized images file and size the website was now getting a 99 desktop pagespeed result (less than 1 minute view) and 85 mobile pagespeed result. The YouTube code still prevented a better mobile speed as it was still taking 2 minutes to view on a mobile device.

The site code was also optimized by removing content from the purchased theme that was no longer needed. Links were added to the phone number and a Google Map from their address. Opengraph tags were added to link the site to their Facebook and Instagram sites. Better titles and descriptions were added to each page, link and image for improved on page SEO. Added proper Google Analytics tracking and Google and Bing Webmaster tools. Submitted a proper sitemap for scanning by GoogleBots and BingBots. Additional items were fixed but won’t be detailed here for space.

Already with the changes being two weeks old (May 24, 2019), the site has improved from a 45th place result on Google.com (clean browser, not logged in) to 29th. This typically takes a month to 6 weeks to see results. Once this time frame has passed I will post an update.

Update 2022 – The site still gets an A rating on GTMetrix and a 91% desktop score on Google Pagespeed. The algorithm has changed with Pagespeed since the site was last updated for SEO. This could account for the drop as the site is being penalized for the Youtube javascript on the home page.

Searching Google with an incognito browser and no localization for Portable Lift Elevator returns this site as number 15. It isn’t the first page result some would want but the first page results are advertising and billion dollar companies like Alibaba.

Searching for portable wheelchair lift will return a number 1 or 2 result depending on the day which is great as this is more in line with what they are selling.