[Tutorial] Website Optimization

There is a lot of website optimization tutorials, but i would like to share my, with a bit diffrent info.

Most important for me is to have a fast loading website. To check how your website performs in terms of its speed go to :

Code:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights.

To say that your website is properly optimized
for G you need to have score of more than 90. What G likes is a website that loads fast so users ( customers) don't
need to wait to long for a load and i believe big B ranks higher such websites. ( doesn't apply to huge, authority websites- they cna be slow cows)

So lets focus on speed first:
most common issues i see with this tool are:

- gzip compression (mod deflate)
what is it all about you can read here :
Code:

https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/payload#GzipCompression

to fix this and speed up our website add this piece of code at the bottom of your .htaccess file:

Code:

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain application/javascript text/css text/xml

this one is quite common mistake but now- bam, 1:nil for us.

Next common mistake is not using cache for static resources such as css, and images. here is g tutorial:
Code:

https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/caching#LeverageBrowserCaching

if we fix this we will score higher in speed tool and here is a solution for this:

Code:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType image/png A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpg A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A604800
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A604800
ExpiresByType text/css A604800

this code needs to be added in .htaccess file ( i've got it above the previous one) this will set expiration date for resources such as icons, images and css for a week (A604800- this is how many seconds you have in a week- wow, what a knowledge!). basically if someone return to your website all this stuff (gif,png,jpg,css) will be served from his hard-drive and not taken from your site and using your bandwith. 2:nil for us

another thing are images that are often too heavy. try to upload only light pictures so your website will load fast. before you upload pictures to your website use this little tool from yahoo which will do some savings for you:
Code:

http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/

with so light pictures your website will perform very fast. 3:nil for us.

Those are common issues that are always high priority for pagespeed tool. We fixed them, lower priorities you can check on your own
but if you are above 90 you are good to go. I should also mention that our website should be on fast and reliable server, causing problems for gbot because our website is down or server is slwo and shit won't help us.

Internal linking:

this is also important topic, because we can rank for some kws just thanks to this ( do not expect to rank for viagra or casino online thanks to only this:P)
i will not cover here how to do it for big site- just remember to link to other parts of your website with anchor text which should be relevant and not spammy
what i also usually do i add rel=nofollow to pages like login, register, contact, site TOS if i have links from home page-
there is no need to lose pr juice to unimportant pages of your website. If you have external links make sure you
do not have too many ********s because you loosing pr.

Basics:

Title- put here most important keyword- if you spam it with a lot of kws and have a nasty competitor who will send spam report you will be penalised.
H1- header tag. important for g, good to put a kw there. its good to do it right- instead of NYC SEO write SEO services in NYC- gbot will understand what you really want.
Meta description- everyone is saying it doesnt have impact on seo but it surely impacts your ctr. use keywords and call to actio or interesting description (shouldnt be longer than 160 chars sa far as i remember)
Meta keywords- same as above but can't see any reason not to add 3 or 5 in this tag

You want to have all of them on every page of your website (meta keywords you can only do once in index). You should have all of them unique for every page of your website. you do it one time and you can forget it but you should do it to call your website optimized.

Extra tips:

- if you run blogs it is good to add noindex tag for categories and tags to avoid duplicate content
- if you are on wordpress try to not use admin as a login and have secure password. there are many bored twats
who like to hack people's website and by using your name or your something instead of admin it will make it harder for them to hack your site.
if you are skilled enough change your login url
- always keep your plugins and cms version up to date

Last trick:

very often ranking for keywords around a city i.e. plumber nashville or something can be easier with..........
schema.org what is schema you can check by yourself. below is my trick that helps me rank local kws:


Code:

<div itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" itemscope="">
<h6>
<span itemprop="name">your company</span>
</h6>
<p>
<span itemprop="description">put kw here that you want to rank locally</span>
</p>
<div itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress" itemscope="" itemprop="address">
<p>
<span itemprop="streetAddress">street Address</span>
</p>
<p>
<span itemprop="addressLocality">your town</span>
</p>
<p>
<span itemprop="addressRegion">your region </span>
</p>
<p>
Tel.
<span itemprop="telephone">surprise- phone number </span>

Paste this html in your source. things like this:
Code:

<p>
<span itemprop="addressLocality">

won't be visible so don't worry. Very often for local keywords you dont need a lot of links and with this markup it is easier to rank.
Important: this markup must appear on every single page of your website, to work good for you- i usually keep it in a footer as a fast contact.