Linux, Open Source and Web 2.0 » SEO

7 Tips To Improve Web Page Load Time

Peter — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:39:50 +0000

With the increasing focus on Google’s Site Speed Algorithm, the following are 7 tips to improve web page load time, proven techniques well known websites use to boost their site speed.

1. Enable Gzip Compression

While compressing pages adds just a tad to your web server’s overhead, it will reduce bandwidth and transmission time and make pages appear to load faster for your users. Gzip is a open source compression algorithm that can be used to compress the content of your website before your the web server sends data to a client browser. You can learn how to enable Gzip in Apache here.

2. Minify Javascript/CSS

Minify is the process (and software) of removing unnecessary formatting characters and white space from javascript code. The result is smaller files, faster transmission and quicker page loads. You can learn all about minify javascript here.

3. Use A Content Distribution Network (CDN)

A CDN is a system of interconnected servers around the glove, that distribute content and assets around among them to reduce the distance between a server and a client’s browser. They are commonly used by large media web sites, such as Youtube and Break. You can find a list of free CDNs here.

4. Optimize Images

Take advantage of image compression and reduce the size of photos and graphics on you site dramatically. Never use a raw bitmap (.bmp) on your site, instead save photos as JPEG and graphics as PNG. Smaller images tend to be ok with a smaller quality setting, while large photos should be high to enjoy.

5. Use External Hosts Javascript And CSS

The Http protocol sets a limit as to how many concurrent files can be downloaded from a given host. This is currently set to two, which means the browser will have to wait for one to finish before getting the next file. While this isn’t true of all file types, it is a good enough reason to host applicable files on alternative subdomains. Hosting your Javascript and CSS files on a different subdomain increases the amount of files the browser can download simultaneously.

6. Avoid Using Redirects

While redirects can be very useful, it’s important to remember that implementing them forces your web server to do slightly more work per applicable request. Always avoid redirect strings (301 -> 301 -> 200 or even worse 301 -> 302 -> 200) and use these tools only when no other alternatives are available.

7. Use Fewer Files

Of the most simple and quick way to improve load time is to combine files into one. Remember the limit of downloads discussed in item 5 above? Try combining Javascript and CSS files, and make use of CSS sprites. It’s a method of combining several images in one file and use CSS for positioning. You can read how popular websites using sprites here.

Best New Chrome Extensions For Developers

Peter — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:36:11 +0000

With increasing popularity in Google’s Chrome browser, so increases the demand for extensions. This is especially true for Developers, as we are used to such a nice variety of high quality tools in Firefox. And the more tools are available on one browser, the more that browser is used in developing web sites, resulting in higher quality web experience for end users on that platform. Btw., did you know that Google Chrome surpasses Safari in US browser market (macstories.net)? The following are arguably the best new Chrome extensions for developers.

6. BuiltWith Technology Profiler

BuiltWith is a web site profiler tool, that returns all the technologies it can find on a particular page. BuiltWith extension helps developers, researchers and designers find out what technologies web pages are using and in turn help them to decide what technologies to implement. BuiltWith currently tracks widgets (snap preview), analytics (Google, Nielsen), frameworks (.NET, Java), publishing (WordPress, Blogger), advertising (DoubleClick, AdSense), CDNs (Amazon S3, Limelight), standards (XHTML,RSS), hosting software (Apache, IIS, CentOS, Debian).

5. Session Manager

With Session Manager you can quickly save your current browser state and reload it whenever necessary. You can manage multiple sessions, rename or remove them from the session library. Each session remembers the state of the browser at its creation time, i.e the opened tabs and windows. Once a session is opened, the browser is restored to its state.

4. CSSViewer

CSS Viewer shows the css parameters of any element in a web page, to enable/disable it simply click the toolbar icon. It’s a simple CSS property viewer for designers and web developers based on the firefox add on.

3.Chrome SEO

The Google Chrome SEO Extension provides an overview to Search Engine Optimization Tools which can help with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Back-link Checks, PageRank analysis and other valuable SEO tasks.

2. Web Developer

The Web Developer extension adds a toolbar button to the browser with various web developer tools. This is the official port of the popular Web Developer extension for Firefox written by the same person.

1. Firebug Lite for Google Chrome

Firebug Lite, as the name implies is the sibling of the famous version we used for so long now in Firefox. It provides the rich visual representation in HTML elements, DOM elements, and Box Model shading. It provides also some cool features like inspecting HTML elements with your mouse, DOM inspection, JavaScript debugging and live editing CSS properties.

What’s new in Google’s Search update – code named Caffeine

Peter — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:34:41 +0000

Google’s search algorithm update, codenamed “Google Caffeine” in set to launch in the coming days. Google Caffeine is said to stir up the Webmaster / SEO world with a slew of algorithm updates. Most predominantly, it will be much quicker than the current Google search and rely more on keyword strings in the page content, and it will make real-time search much more important.

The new focus on real-time search results means that sites that consistently ranked high will take a hit. This will give smart webmasters who understand the dynamic of real-time social media an excellent opportunity to markedly boost their Google rankings.

Here is a summary of what we know about Google Caffeine and it’s effect on SEO:

Page load speed will be important

The time it takes for a webpage to load is now important to rank high on Google. Studies have shown that improving page load speed results in improved user retention and increased conversions.

Check out Google’s Site Performance diagnostic tool in their Google Webmaster Accounts. Basically, it boils down to:

Writing lean HTML and CSS code
More intelligent use of Javascript
Compressing html, css and Javascript
Improve browser page caching

Fresh Content Wins

Pages with static content will drop in the search rankings and more dynamic businesses with active blogs will take their place. This update declares war on “black hat” SEO spammers and rewards webmasters that provide up to date, meaningful and original content.

Ideas to keep your site dynamic:

Publish dynamic content like blog posts, comments, press releases and company news. You should try to add fresh content daily.
Encourage user interaction through profiles, comments, social bookmarking and social media links.

Backlinks Rule

The Google Caffeine update will not affect off-page factors much, so quality and relevant backlinks will continue to be an important ranking factor. However, links and references from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will be weighted higher.

There you have it. Try to take advantage of Google’s new Caffeine and update your blog regularly, improve page load speed by using Google’s Webmaster Tools to pinpoint sections that are slowing things down and employ a strong backlink strategy that targets the viral potential of social media networks.

Nginx and memcached module

Peter — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:31:35 +0000

Memcache is traditionally used as a module inside server side scripts, such as PHP, ASP, ColdFusion and others. And it’s doing a terrific job, as long as it’s implemented correctly.

But if we look under the hood of the actual Memcache application, and I’m not talking about the PHP or ASP extension, but rather the executable that’s running as a daemon under linux, for example, it is a rather simple database like application running in memory. Now there are two basic actions that need to be performed to use it, one is writing info into memcache, the other is reading it. In a typical scenario, there are many reads for one write, that’s the whole point, isn’t it. But what if we can isolate the reading from the server side scripts, and let a small high speed module do that for us.

That’s where Nginx and it’s Memcache Module comes in. We use PHP to fill up the cache and then let Nginx serve that content to the requesting client. According to lead architect Peter Gilg, this configuration is used at Mademan.com, a lifestyle site serving up to 1 million pageviews/day.

To be more specific, we’ll have nginx listen on port 80. If a request comes in, it checks memcache if the requested page is in memory and serves it directly to the client, or sends it to Apache (on port 88 for example) to produce the page. At the same time apache inserts the page into memcache, so it’s available to nginx for the next request. A sample configuration nginx script would look something like this:

server {
  location / {
    set $memcached_key $uri;
    memcached_pass     name:11211;
    default_type       text/html;
    error_page         404 = /fallback;
  }

  location = /fallback {
    proxy_pass backend;
  }
}

Additional Resources: Nginx Memcache Apache

Auto Create Thumnails The Easy Way

Peter — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:43:23 +0000

Ever wondered it there is an easy way to resize your images or quickly create thumbnails from your favorite pictures?
Search no more, the awesome little utility ImageMagick does it for you.

Install it using your package manager, most of them should have it in their repository.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Once installed, this command will create tumbnails for all JPG’s in the current directory, 200 pixel wide/high on the longest side. Eg. if your image is in landscape layout, it’ll be 200 pixel wide, in portrait format it’ll be 200 pixel high.

for file in *.jpg ; do convert -resize 200 “$file” t”$file”; done

That’s it. Simply change 200 to the size of your liking, or change the extension if your images are in gif, png or any other image format.

Improve Web Site Traffic

Peter — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:27:46 +0000

There are several ways to generate and improve the attention for your web site. Some of them rather simple and easy, others thake a bit more effort and there are a few thing you really want to avoid.

1. Know what is trendy at Google, Yahoo and company

Making an effort in researching the popular keywords at popular search engines ensures that your articles are included in search results. Utilising tools such as Google Keyword Tool, Yahoo Overture Keyword Selector Tool or WordTracker can assist you in finding relevant keywords and balance them against the competition. Note that just because a keyword is very popular doesn’t necessary mean success. If there are many sites that contain those words, you competing against all of them, making it harder for your site to show up on top. And placing the keywords towards to top of your page and embed them into h1 or h2 tags improves their effect. In addition, embedding them into your page’s URL is just good seo practice.

2. Maintain a blog and get participation

The value of blogging on a consistent basis — aside from being able to share your expertise and opinions with the literate world — is that search engines will index your site more often. In addition, being an active blogger leaves your fingerprint all over the web and people will find your site by reading your posts/comments and that link back to you. For example, if you’re writing about basketball, and you participate in the important blogs in the world of NBA, having those links coming back to your site would be regarded as authority links and greatly enhance your sites page rank.

3. Leave your link and exchange links with other sites.

That includes getting links to your home page, special article pages and using your keywords as part of the anchor text. To get links, write articles and place them on other sites. Then make sure it includes a resource box or bio at the end of the article that includes your URL in the first line and something that will compel readers to come to your site in the second line, along with another link.

4. Make your visitors stay longer

That means focusing on compelling content and those areas that will encourage people to hang out longer. Interesting articles, interactive content, pictures, videos and music just to name a few. To measure sucess, use Google Analytics. You can track a multitude of variables about your site’s activity and best of all it’s free.

5. Don’t waste time and effort on email marketing

What about those newsletter sites that promise success and wealth? Forget it. There are so many highly effective spam filters and firewall, your mail won’t get to their intented target. And the few that get thru, end up in spam foders and are never read. Save your time and effort and focus on your site’s content. it pays better.

Useful SEO tips for images

Peter — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:01:28 +0000

Images are often ignored when it comes to SEO, despite the fact that Google has it’s own search domain for images. Paying a little more attention to naming scheme and additional tags can make a big difference in search referred traffic.
Here are some basic tips relating to images in web pages:

most obvious but often ignored, name the image according to it’s content. Instead of DSC00456.jpg, call it sunset-in-italy.jpg (do not use spaces in names, use dashes instead)
make use of the “title” attribute, adding meaningful information helps search traffic
using the “alt” attribute is debated when it comes to SEO, but should be part of any clean web design. Just imagine your image is missing or the path incorrect, the visitor at least knows that there is supposed to be an image containing what’s described in the alt tag.
placing ample and descriptive text around the image helps search engines index the images
store them in separate, descriptive folder
ensure that you’re actually hosting the images, otherwise the search referred traffic will go to the image hosting site
never use duplicate “alt” and/or “title” tags on two or more images