So, I wanted to celebrate because I’ve just gotten my one, two, three, four, five, sixth #lighthouseperfect website built in probably the last four weeks.
And I couldn’t be more excited, and I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate and share the fireworks with my connections and followers, but also I wanted to reach out and try to give you a very, very quick and dirty synopsis of how I’m achieving this, so that if you are in the WordPress web dev kind of world, you too can maybe recreate my success and increase your, your customer base accordingly.
The first page that hit #lighthouseperfect
This is a landing page. It’s actually still on a staging platform because the ads haven’t rolled out yet.
And this is a landing page that’s dedicated, like I said to ads.
The best practice when you have paid ads, even when you have organic ad types on social media or wherever, it’s best that if, if you have a call to action (CTA) that you send somebody to a dedicated landing page. Well, that’s what this is.
It’s a single page that has all of the necessary bells and whistles, but it’s really, really trimmed down to the bare minimum that’s required so that it’s fast loading and conveys the information that the ad clicker is looking for… is expecting.
But again, even with, and this kind of goes against the advice that I’m going to be giving you in a few minutes, but even with a form on this page, we still were able to achieve a #lighthouseperfect.
So it’s doable, but as you’ll find out in just a minute, I’m actually going to be recommending against putting form fields on your homepage in order to achieve the #lighthouseperfect.
Because typically that extra plugin just slows things down just that little bit too much in order to warrant having the form fields on the landing page that you’re hoping to achieve a #lighthouseperfect with.
But anyway, it’s doable as is evidence, right, right here in front of you. The next web site that I wanted to celebrate another #lighthouseperfect is another dedicated landing page for paid ads.
This one is live as you see up at the top. But it’s fully functional. It’s another single page. Not exactly an infinite scroll, but a single page landing page that provides the ad clicker exactly what they’re looking for and expecting.
It’s beautiful, simple, and easy to achieve. And it’s all, you know, the call to action is all about the call today. There’s no form..
That’s just what the client wanted. They want people to call. But again, #lighthouseperfect. I mean, it’s, it’s golden.
You can’t, you can’t think these numbers over here with the, the third website, this is an actually a full blown website.
So, you know, we can, we can navigate throughout. We can go to various places about, you know, the company and, you know, dial into everything that they have or who they are, all that type of thing.
So this is, this is a full blown website but the call to action contact us actually takes us to a separate page where they can fill out the form and, and complete that portion of the communication.
I found that until I moved the form away from the homepage, I was only getting 90 eights, 99, some times 96 is in the minute I moved the form to its own dedicated contact us page, straight up #lighthouseperfect.
Okay. So if you’re very, very close, but not quite getting the results that you’re looking for, perhaps make the contact form instead of in the footer, as some of us are, are, want to do at a link from, with the footer to a separate page, that’s dedicated to the contact form.
And then, you know, depending on performance, you might want to remove that from the site map and you might want to disallow it in the robots.
If the performance of that page is slow now, not page load performance, but like the bounce rate and whatnot, if people are going to it and you have a high bounce rate, maybe you need to consider those options, but dedicated contact us pages are not new.
They’re very common and removing them from the site map might mean that Google doesn’t provide that as a search result, which could negatively impact the SERPs.
So maybe you don’t want to do that in any case. This is a full blown website that is currently registering #lighthouseperfect on the homepage.
And I, full disclosure, I haven’t even tested the other pages. I assume their #lighthouseperfect or very close. So this is yet another, this’ll be number four, a website.
This is a full-blown website for a restaurant or in the area. And it is again, lighthouse. Perfect. Now all of these #lighthouseperfect are mobile, not desktop.
Desktop CWV core web vitals. That is also a ranking factor. That’s going to be rolled out too. So you can bet your bottom dollar that those will be dialed in for the desktop.
But right now I’m just talking about the mobile versions of these websites being perfect. I mean, you really can’t get any better.
That’s why Google celebrates with fireworks to say, Hey man, far out.
So this is again a full-blown website. You know, it’s got the bells and whistles.
This one’s got a couple extra plugins. So we’ll show you in just a second. When we look at the dashboard it is very simple, very pretty, very beautiful, very effective.
You know, it’s got another contact form option available for catering inquiries, which is separate to the contact, us, that sort of thing.
Again, the website, a landing page, the homepage is #lighthouseperfect. And I haven’t bothered checking the internal pages yet, but that’s to be done anyway.
I was super excited.
So I started this video perhaps prematurely, but anyway this is again taking into consideration the, the S the potential shift in performance from a hundred to 99, 98 depending if I incorporated the form at the bottom in the footer or anywhere else on the homepage.
And so this is, you know, encouraging people who want to, for example, talk to the chef to go to the dedicated space and landing page for that item.
That speeds up the homepage and makes it far, far faster to load the fifth website. That’s #lighthouseperfect for mobile again.
This is a legal website in the UK. It’s almost ready, but it’s not being crawled by Google yet.
Discouraging it from being crawled to this point. So hopefully, you know, if you all go visit it, the traffic doesn’t make Google want to try and index it already.
But this is integrating a GDPR compliance feature from the Jetpack plugin. I haven’t dialed it in or messed with it yet again, because it’s not yet published.
But even with the GDPR compliance, we can still maintain the #lighthouseperfect results. And this is utilizing again the same concept of integrating the form on its dedicated space on a dedicated landing page for contact us.
But this has a lot of fun bells and whistles that I’ll, I’ll talk to you about briefly. You have to click them in order to activate them on a mobile phone, but if you’re on a desktop version, then it’s a hover feature.
Okay. But again very, very simple, very, it’s got some animation features you know, that make it a little bit more interesting, let’s say for the site visitor visually anyway, but as I’m going to be telling you, when we dive into the dashboard from my development perspective, achieving #lighthouseperfect is far more important than having, you know, fancy bells and whistles.
And so I choose function over form. All right. In order to really ramp up the SEO of any particular website, that’s typically the decision that you have to make.
And then the sixth website that achieved #lighthouseperfect. This is another restaurant in my local area. It’s utilizing the same type of theme as you’ll see in a few minutes, but I’m using a different instance from the site library.
It’s kind of like a pre template or, or a template. And it’s very simple, very beautiful. And again, it’s function over form.
And lastly, the online reservation form, the contact us actually takes us to a separate page that is unique and doesn’t have the actual form in the footer, which was another choice that we had to make in order to achieve the #lighthouseperfect results.
So again, that’s one, two, three, four, five, six websites that are all receiving the fireworks for mobile in the light and Google Google Chrome lighthouse.
So this is really something that I’m, I’m ecstatic about. Like, I want to share with you my success. So here we go.
Let’s dive into the dashboard of where are you? I assume this is you. Yeah. So let’s dive in into the dashboard for these different websites.
Okay. So almost all of them are using the same recipe now, the variance of the recipe. Okay. But first off, let’s look at the theme.
Okay. The theme that has allowed all of this to happen is Generate Press. It’s actually the Generate Press premium version.
With the premium version, we are able to go to something that they call the site library. And the site library allows us to start with what I call an instance because it’s not exactly a template, but it’s kind of a template within the theme.
And so you choose your starting place right from the multitude of options, and then you dial it in and make it your own unique website, you know, based on whatever your clients need.
Okay. So this is Generate Press in order to unlock the site library, you have to have the premium version, but it’s amazing.
You see #lighthouseperfect.
You can’t do better than that. Right. And by the way, they do have instances that integrate the mentor page builder and the beaver page builder block builder.
But I’m not a fan because they kill the performance. You know, it’s, instead of hundreds, it’s for mobile, it’s somewhere between 20 and 40.
Typically. Now I do have another plugin that we’ll show you that will help if you’re already kind of married to one of these page builders and that’s okay.
But if you are not married to, and you’re starting from scratch, you can just use any of the instances from the site library that are not using the page builder in order to achieve these #lighthouseperfect results.
Now, once you’ve gotten your premium access to Generate Press then you’ll end up choosing a site line as site, an instance from the site library, and it will then install whatever plugins are packed into that particular instance.
Okay. Almost all of them are starting with Generate Blocks. Now I recommend that you get the Generate Blocks pro because that helps with the little animation that you saw in that Hingstonlaw.co.uk site, where you click it or hover over it pending.
And, you know, you have your little bells and whistles. It also allows you to copy styles from one block and then paste them across and even better.
I’m not going to go into it in this, but it allows you to create a global style that can apply to every block or every instance of that particular piece.
And so you, it’s kind of like its own CSS portion. So if you want to change all of the button colors, as long as they’re connected to that global style, then you go to the global style portion in the blocks pro and change it.
And everything changes accordingly. So, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a kick-ass so Generate Blocks and GP excuse me, GP premium.
This is the plugin that you have to upload in order to unlock the site library within the theme of Generate Press.
And then they almost all, as long as they’re not using the other builders, are integrating Generate Blocks to help with, you know, building out these beautiful cards and grids and everything else that you see on the website.
So other plugins that are built into this kind of successful recipe beyond the Generate Blocks and Generate Press our Jetpack now in this particular website, I’m not using the Jetpack plugin, but in other websites, you’ll see that I’m using the Jetpack plugin.
For example, with Hingston law the Jetpack plugin allows us to have that GDPR. And it’s also got some really nice little features, additional features as well.
But recently Automattic created Jetpack boost and this thing is killing it. It’s taking my 90 sixes to hundreds, basically. Okay.
So the Jetpack boost is a very, very simple little plugin. You just tick these three little radio buttons.
You just take these three, make them green and you’re golden. Okay. Now one minor complication. When I’m talking about the SG optimizer, I’ll tell you about the slight complication when you have both of these running in tandem.
Okay. There is a little bit of overlap. And sometimes when we have plugins that overlap, they conflict with each other.
And so we have to do our best to dial them in accordingly. Okay. But back to the plug-in list. So we’ve got Generate Blocks and pro we’ve got Generate Press premium.
We’ve got Jetpack boost. Now this website is also using another plugin called cadence blocks. And I think this is the only website that’s using cadence blocks, but one of the downsides of Generate Press theme is that the hero doesn’t have a slider functionality, or if you would prefer a video functionality, but as a Mike Oliver who built many of the instances in the Generate Press site library informed me, cadence blocks does have those features.
And so it plays incredibly well with Generate Blocks pro. So you put a container and then you put your cadence blocks inside the container, and you’re golden.
Okay. It’s mind blowing and it’s simple and, and you’re done and dusted, and you have those features that some of your clients are destined to ask for.
And so this is one of the websites that’s using the cadence blocks. And as you saw, it’s still #lighthouseperfect Rank Math SEO.
If you need SEO, I recommend the SEO pro version for rank math. Just because it’s got a few more bells and whistles and relatively speaking, it’s very, very affordable and it scales as your company grows too.
So but even the free version, this one’s, you know, not using the pro version as you can see, and it’s it’s #lighthouseperfect, wonderful SEO. So this, if you need search engine optimization, which every business that’s out there certainly does. This is the plugin that I highly highly recommend.
It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it does essentially everything that we need it to do from a search engine optimization, digital marketing kind of perspective.
And then there’s the SG optimizer. Now, the SiteGround optimizer is a really, really powerful plugin. It helps compress images. It helps minify CSS, minified, JavaScript, and also, you know puts them all together, compresses them and builds them out as one.
It has a image optimizer. I mean, it’s a super, super powerful plugin that comes free if you’re using SiteGround hosting.
And, and that’s one more thing that I’m going to talk about is I highly recommend SiteGround hosting. There are other hosting service providers that are out there that are legit incredible.
But as you can see with SiteGround, I’m still able to achieve these #lighthouseperfect results. And I’m paying in most cases, a fraction of the cost to some of the competitors that are out there like WP engine and, and beyond.
Okay. And then Wordfence is using the free version of Wordfence plugin. If, if you can afford that extra a hundred dollars a year, more or less the pro version is even better simply because it allows you to block by country.
And if you’re not exactly global then you can select by country or even IP address and block those, those places where you’re typically going to be getting hammered from Jetpack, by the way, also has some security features paid that provide really good security options as well.
So, you know, these two things combined super fast, super efficient, and again, ultimately #lighthouseperfect. Okay. So this is, this is the recipe, okay.
Generate Blocks and pro generate PR press premium. This unlocks the site library that I was talking about. Jetpack Boost.
Let’s look at a couple others happy forms, happy forms is fantastic. I’m on some of my sites I’m using free on some of my sites I’m using pro.
It’s very, very affordable, especially if you go get it now. And it’s lightweight really, really lightweight. I’ve used some versions of MailChimp and mail munch and jock forms and S you know, gravity forms.
None of them are as lightweight as happy forms. This one takes the cake. So if you’re looking for a form builder third party, this is it.
This is all you need. The free version probably is all you need, but if you need a couple more bells and whistles, or you need to tie it in through an API to get MailChimp integration or something like that, then you’ll have to get the pro version.
But again, it’s very, very affordable. So you’ll see that this site sugar shack is using both Jetpack boost and Jetpack.
So it’s not, you know, breaking anything right. Math, SEO, S G optimizer us site kit by Google. So this is another one that’s required.
Really, ultimately you need to have psychic psych kit essentially allows a connects to your search, a Google search console, which we all need to do that for optimization and analytics and things like that.
But also it connects to the Google tag manager and the Google tag manager. Then we can pull in, you know, our Google analytics, either the universal or the GA that’s come out recently.
And many, many other little things if we’re going to be using remarketing on the website, you know, we need to add those remarketing tags and whatnot.
So the site kit, all in one fell swoop, it takes care of everything, and it doesn’t kill the site. Again, this sugar shack is #lighthouseperfect.
As I showed you on on the little video at the very beginning. So this is the plugin that I recommend.
It’s free always and forever. I think it’s open source check Google, super. And for security, I recommend Wordfence. Okay. So this is almost an identical recipe.
Okay. So this website hillbillies is using the paid version of happy forms. Okay. Generate Blocks pro generate, press premium the paid version of happy farms, Jetpack boost, and Jetpack.
It’s also using the right math pro. Okay. It’s got a couple more for working with SVGs and WP show posts.
So if you want a very easy feature where you just, you know, drop a little short piece of short code that says, you know, essentially, you know, pull out, pull in X number of posts, you know, from this category to just pull it in nice and easy.
And it’s, it’s well formatted, nice layout couple of easy features to manipulate and you’re golden, and it’s beautiful. Again, all of these plugins now I hate plugins.
I hate them. I want like to zero, right. But these plugins are not breaking the bank. This is still as you saw #lighthouseperfect website.
And this is the website, right. It’s, it’s golden, it’s beautiful. It’s fully functional and simple, but anyway it’s great. Okay.
This is the Hingston law we looked at previously, the only difference is that, you know, we’re utilizing the MailChimp for WordPress to tie in okay.
For that form builder. And it’s still getting #lighthouseperfect. No I’ll draw your eye to nitro pack. Okay. So I told you a few minutes ago that if you’re using a theme that’s married to beaver builder or Elementor, or some other theme, and you, you’re not able to rebuild from scratch using Generate Press and all of these look into nitro pack and I’ll, I’ll leave a link taking you to nitro pack.
It is often referred to as magic. I mean, it’s, it’ll take your 60 and bring it into the high eighties, or maybe even low nineties.
It’s a super, super powerful, very simple plugin to connect and activate and integrate, and you’re done. Okay. So I’m not using it on this website.
It wasn’t called for, and in fact it kind of conflicted with some of the other plugins. That’s why I, I, you know, an unactivated it deactivate, whatever.
But it’s, it’s highly recommended. If, like I said, you’re married to your website and in fact, I’ve got a website that’s fully amped, right?
It’s a hundred percent amped. That was my specialization up until I found Generate Press. And it’s taken my, you know, low eighties into high nineties websites.
So it’s very, very powerful, very simple. And does most of the bells and whistles for you again, this one is using the pro version of brink math, SEO, the SG optimizer, which is dialed in.
Oh, I said that I would show you something. Okay. So from, within the SG optimizer plugin, let’s just look at it real quick.
Okay. Because we’re using Jetpack boost, right. Which has those three or four sliders or whatever. There is a little bit of conflict with the frontend optimization.
Okay. So I’ve had to deactivate this portion, which just combines the CSS files. If I activate that, then I end up with a minor error in the lighthouse performance score, you know, recommending that you’ve got to remove the unused CSS because this creates a SG optimized CSS file that the Jetpack boost doesn’t recognize or use.
So it goes unused. And then that reduces your performance score by just that point or two. And so there goes your #lighthouseperfect fireworks. And we all want those fireworks don’t mean, okay. So that’s the one feature from, I mean, everything else is just dialed in, you know, it’s just like, oh, you want this?
Yeah. I totally want that. Do you want this? Oh yeah. I totally want that. Absolutely media optimism. Oh, heck yeah. Even says, you know, if you’re using CloudFlare, you know, don’t, don’t do this.
And I’m like, oh, I’m using CloudFlare and I’m totally doing this. I don’t care. And so far it hasn’t broken the bank.
So just to show you that this is the same recipe for all of these websites, but as you saw the websites themselves look different, right.
I’m still able because of the instances from the site library and the Generate Press premium theme I’m still able to start with very, very different layouts and modify them accordingly, as long as I follow the general rules of you know, building with Generate Blocks and Hey, ho #lighthouseperfect.
Now it’s not without effort. Right. I spent a lot of time going to these different, you know, running parameters and I’d be like, okay, so this one’s a 99.
What, what is it, what’s wrong? No, 99 again, oh, I can’t get there. I can’t get there. Right. And then there will be a 97, a time to interactive and I’ll try to dial in, remove unused JavaScript, and I’ll, I’ll go and I’ll find that tag and I’ll try to remove it.
And eventually I get to the fireworks and it’s all exciting, but it takes time. It takes effort, it takes work.
Right. But with this recipe and with SiteGround, a couple of the features that I really like have me sold on SiteGround: one, I’m using a cloud server.
Okay. So, you know, I don’t have a shared server. I don’t know if you could manage with the shared server or not having tested it.
I can’t test it because I have a cloud server. Right. But as far as the security goes, you just, you must use the issue CPS and force.
Okay. That’s a no brainer. And again, with SiteGround they have, you know, cashing, they’ve got this memcache, which, you know, is kind of integrated into the SG optimizer plugin that we’re looking at, but they’ve also got free CloudFlare.
Now I’m using the free version. This is freemium, right. You can upgrade to premium and I haven’t even done that.
I’m still #lighthouseperfect. So until I see the need, I’m just going to go with the free version because I’m going to keep those extra couple of dollars in my back pocket.
But anyway, you know, I dial everything in with CloudFlare. I make sure that it’s connected and fully operational.
And, and that’s, that’s it. So SiteGround hosting and a CloudFlare free account. You gotta have your SSL certificates and you’ve got to enforce your SSL in order to get the honeys (100s).
And then this list of plugins. Okay. So you know, we’ve got happy forms, we’ve got Jetpack, we’ve got Jetpack boost, we’ve got rank math and I recommend the pro version if you can afford it.
And if not, the free version, super good. Okay. Site kit for Google tag manager integration and the Google search console word fence for security.
This is, you know, Generate Blocks pro okay. And Generate Press premium. You need both of those. And then the SG optimizer, again, you can, I don’t think that you can use the SG optimizer without being hosted on SiteGround, but I mean, I guess you could try it.
I don’t know. And then a couple of the plugins that I use, but not very often WP show posts and cadence.
I’m probably going to be using that a lot more as my client base starts asking for video heroes or, you know, carousel heroes or whatnot that Generate Press and Generate Blocks don’t currently use.
And then, like I was saying, if you’re tied to your theme, if you’re tied to the builder Elementor or beaver or any of the others then maybe nitro pack is the solution for you.
And all I ask is this, I’m going to put these links at the bottom of, of this little video or text, if you’re going to, you know, a white paper that I’m building.
I don’t know, I haven’t built it yet, but I’m going to put these links there. All I’m asking is that not all of these are affiliate links.
Some of them are some of them aren’t maybe the more will become affiliate links in the future as I establish relationships.
But if you found this video helpful and you want to give me a high five and say, you know, or fist pump or elbow nudge or whatever it is these days COVID please consider following one of these affiliate links.
They will, I don’t really make much money, but this will justify my spending the time away from my wife and children.
So I could put this video together and maybe this ebook or whatever, it might turn out to be a series of blog posts, whatever.
So yeah, that would be a really solid way of saying thank you so much. And I would love it if you would.
And find me if you haven’t already, look for @austintude on Twitter maybe that’s where you already found me or the linkedin.com/in/austintude, find me in either of those places.
My name’s Daniel Bisett, I’m the owner and lead developer marketer, whatever for Austintatious Design. I’ll put that here too. It’s dot co it.
You want to tell me the.com so whatever I’ll roll with it, Austintatious Design.co.
So yeah, that’s, that’s me and I, I sincerely hope that after watching this, you take some confidence away from this little video that says, you know what, WordPress recipe I can do it.
There’s loads of material for building with the Generate Press theme and the Generate Blocks. They’re excellent resources. It’s relatively speaking. A very easy thing to wrap your head around and the blocks are Uber, Uber simple.
And with that, and this recipe I think that you can also achieve #lighthouseperfect. Just like me. And when you do send me screenshots, I’ll be so stupid, excited if I’ve helped, even one of you out there managed to achieve what is otherwise almost impossible.
Like I’ve been working towards this for years and I finally cracked the code. And so now you have to thank you so much for watching.
Come find me.
