Roxana Stingu
Head of SEO at Alamy
Getting reports is the easy part - far more difficult is to know what to do when a report tells you that JS rendering is slowing the site down. Roxana shares a primer on what to actually DO to increase page loading times.
About Roxana
Since 2006, Roxana has immersed herself in the world of digital marketing. Most of that has been in SEO roles, where she has specialised in technical SEO. Roxana is now the Head of SEO at Alamy, an online photo agency for stock, video and live news. She also speaks on SEO at conferences such as Brighton SEO.
The Need For Speed: Simple Page Speed Optimisations To Make Your Site Faster
“…Images can be very quick wins in the speed stakes. Compression is a basic step, but they should be resized to be no bigger than the maximum size they’re used at. Many images get loaded at sizes exponentially larger than what they appear as: a 1000x500 logo that displays at 250x125 is a great example.”
Q&A with Roxana Stingu
What was your first ever job?
I have never worked outside SEO - my first job ever was with a link building company back in 2006 when links were the basis of online success.
How did you get into SEO?
I was building links through comments on blogs and forums which meant I had to read articles about anything, from celeb gossip to medical journals. This has also led me to marketing websites where I started learning more about how to further optimise websites besides just by building links. So I hung up the link builder hat and applied for a regular SEO job that allowed me to also stick my nose into GA, search console and other types of data.
What is your favourite SEO task to do?
Although I hated it for years - it’s reporting. Numbers tell the most exciting stories and the more time I spent reporting, the better I got to know the websites I worked with and the easier it got to decide which projects should be prioritised.
What inspired you to choose the topic of your chapter? Why is it important to you?
The web is getting heavier when it comes to page loads and our attention spans are getting shorter by the second. This makes speed, besides being a ranking factor for SEO, an essential asset in order to succeed online. Every SEO needs to focus their attention to this topic, no matter if they are in a technical role or not. I feel it’s our duty to at least start questioning if our websites are fast enough or if we can do better.
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
I’ve been struggling to answer this one: I can’t pinpoint one piece of advice that helped me as there have been so many people in my life that said the right thing at the right moment.
What one tip would you give someone who would like to get into SEO as a career?
Don’t silo your SEO knowledge because your job role is siloed - read about international SEO even if your website is local, learn more about image search even if your website’s traffic is primarily coming from Universal search, read the WordPress optimisation posts even if your website is on Magento - just learn how everything works as that will help you make better and faster connections when you need them.
What is your favourite SEO / marketing related resource or book? (other than Mastering In-House SEO of course!)
So hard to name just one - there is so much great content out there. If I do have to name just one I would point to developers.google.com because it’s pretty much the manual to making Google happy for technical SEOs.
How do you relax when you aren’t working?
Mining tunnels in Minecraft or having a very competitive (but still friendly) game of Scrabble with my brother.