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How to efficiently restructure SQL queries for dynamic SEO metrics in a distributed environment?

πŸ‘€ Views: 18 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-09-24
PostgreSQL SEO performance SQL

I'm updating my dependencies and I need help solving I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. This might be a silly question, but Recently started working with a distributed team focused on SEO optimization for a web application that collects various metrics from user interactions... We're using PostgreSQL 14 to manage our data. The challenge arises when generating reports based on user engagement metrics that have to be recalculated frequently due to fluctuating SEO requirements. I designed an initial SQL query to aggregate these metrics, but the execution time is longer than expected, especially as our dataset grows. Here’s what I came up with: ```sql SELECT page_url, COUNT(*) AS visit_count, AVG(time_spent) AS average_duration FROM user_engagement WHERE visit_date >= NOW() - INTERVAL '30 days' GROUP BY page_url ORDER BY visit_count DESC; ``` While this gets the job done, I've noticed that the performance degrades significantly when querying against larger datasets. To optimize, I tried adding an index on the `visit_date` column: ```sql CREATE INDEX idx_visit_date ON user_engagement (visit_date); ``` Even after indexing, the performance is still not optimal. I also experimented with breaking the query into smaller parts, storing the results in a temporary table: ```sql CREATE TEMP TABLE temp_metrics AS SELECT page_url, COUNT(*) AS visit_count, AVG(time_spent) AS average_duration FROM user_engagement WHERE visit_date >= NOW() - INTERVAL '30 days' GROUP BY page_url; SELECT * FROM temp_metrics ORDER BY visit_count DESC; ``` However, this approach does not seem to yield significant improvements either. At this point, I wonder if I should explore other strategies like using `materialized views` or adjusting our database configuration to better handle these types of queries. Additionally, the team is considering how to incorporate a caching layer to alleviate some of this load when fetching these metrics repeatedly. Any advice on restructuring these SQL queries or insights into best practices for handling such scenarios in a distributed environment would be greatly appreciated! Looking forward to your suggestions. This is part of a larger API I'm building. My team is using Sql for this REST API. What's the best practice here? I'm working on a web app that needs to handle this. For reference, this is a production desktop app. Thanks for taking the time to read this! I've been using Sql for about a year now.