Category Archives: SEO

Is Web Page Load Speed Really Important?

Hosting, Organic SEO, SEO, SEO tools, ,

Yes! Tips and Advice to Make Your Website Screamingly Fast.

Photo by CircaSassy / Flickr

The amount of time it takes for your website to appear is very important for quite a few different reasons. We’re going to explore those below, but before we begin, it’s important for you to know the current page load speed for your homepage at least. To do this, you can use Google’s Pagespeed analysis online. Use the free tool to see how well you stack up against your three major competitors. Not liking the results? Keep reading.

Why Web Page Load Speed is Crucial

First of all, you have to think about your human visitors. Whether they’re using a mobile device or desktop computer, they expect your website to load quickly. If it doesn’t, they’ll click away and find another one. Additionally, Google and the other search engines are using page load speed as one of many factors to determine whether or not to rank a web page and where to rank it in their index.

Tips to Improve Page Load Speed

Here are some easy things you can do to decrease the amount of time it takes for your pages to load.

  • Follow the Advice – If you followed the instructions at the beginning of this article, you should know how long it takes for your web pages to load on average. You should have noticed in the tool that Google gives you quite a few suggestions on how to improve your speeds. This is the very first place you should start to look for ways to get your website loading quickly.

  • Strip it Down – If something is not absolutely necessary on your website, get rid of it. Too many websites try to do everything for everybody. This is a mistake – even for mega sites like Facebook. Instead, pick one or a handful of things and do them all really, really well. Going deep rather than wide is a wise strategy in the Information Age. When you do this, you’ll find that you don’t really need all those bells and whistles that can slow down your website.

The speed of your website is very important to people and to Google’s robots. This is why you should make it a priority for all of your web properties. The good news is that once you do the work, you can reap the benefits for a long time to come. If you have any other specific tips for decreasing the amount of time it takes to load a web page, leave a comment and share your wisdom below. (And take a moment to let us know what you think about the time it takes for this website to load. Be honest, please!)

Author Bio:-

Sheila Kurdinger is a fan of Festool brand tools. She’s even bought them as gifts for her family and friends who aren’t so mechanically inclined. When not reclining in her chair in the living room, she likes to read about infographics online.

Using CloudFlare to Speed Up Your Site

SEO

CloudFlare Can Make Your Site Faster – and More Secure!

Photo by Garrett Heath / Flickr

Content Distribution Networks – CDN – technology has come a long way over the years. In 2013, CloudFlare is leading the way with a new generation CDN that is secure, seamless and very easy to install and get going. Compare this with first generation CDN networks that were cobbled together. Keep reading if you want to learn how to use CloudFlare to make your website run faster while at the same time protecting it against spammers and other malicious attacks.

How CloudFlare Makes Your Website Safer

As with other features on the CloudFlare service, you get a lot of control over the various security settings for your website. You can set using a preset option – think low, medium or high security – or you can go in and turn knobs and dials individually until you come up with what works best for you.

The dashboard allows you to see all the bad traffic you have blocked – as well as a simple breakdown of search engine crawlers that have visited your website. You’re going to be amazed when you see how many attacks happen against your website on a daily basis. If you get any amount of traffic, a certain percentage is going to be spammers or malicious attacks.

How CloudFlare Makes Your Website Faster

If you sign-up for the free service only, you’re going to receive a CDN (that’s easy to setup) for all your static content resources. Additionally, you’ll get access to Rocket Loader, which offers synchronous loading of JavaScript resources and Auto Minify to make your file sizes smaller. Pro and Business class accounts get other features like automatic image optimization on the fly. Yes, you heard that right. All of these can dramatically decrease the page load times for your website.

Is CloudFlare Right For You?

Easy answer? Probably. Even if you sign-up for the free service to test it out, within a couple days you should be able to notice a difference. There’s a very good chance that you’re going to at least see a small improvement. On the other end of the spectrum, you may be amazed at how much faster your website runs – while being more secure as well. Sign-up today and see for yourself the different CloudFlare can make.

If you already have experience with using CloudFlare services, leave a comment below and share your experience with the rest of us. This next generation CDN is light years ahead of the competition. Finally, it’s easy to make your website safer and faster at the same time without a lot of work. The best news is that there’s a good chance they’re going to be improving the service in the years ahead, making it even better.

Author Bio:-

Jessica Sampson has been looking for real estate in Reno NV online in her spare time. She’s thinking of moving there someday. For now, she’s content where she is living. She loves apples and orangutans.

How To Beat the Google Hummingbird Update

Blogging, content marketing, Hummingbird algorithm, Mobile Marketing, responsive web design, SEO, Small Business Marketing

The Google Hummingbird update is the biggest change in the search algorithm since 2001 and as with any update it is always a good idea to look at how your site could be affected by it and how you can combat those problems. The good news is that even though this is a major update it will not affect your website quite the way you thought, so in all honesty it should be that bit easier to beat it as will now be explained.

Be mobile.

A major part of this update is that it really does improve what happens with mobile search as Google rightfully realize that more people are using their smartphones on the move. What this means is that if you want to beat it, then you are going to need a mobile website because without it you stand to lose out as your site will just be lost in the vastness of those results pages.

Get a responsive site template.

If your site has been penalized with this update, then one thing you can do is to get in touch with your designer and ask them if you can be set up with a responsive design template. The reason why this is important is because it will mean that your site looks so much better on mobile phones as it means that your website will automatically be resized as soon as they land on it. By seeing you are prepared for these changes it should ultimately mean that your site stands a better chance of ranking higher.

Long tailed keywords.

However, perhaps the best way to beat this Hummingbird update is to spend some time looking at long tailed keywords as the main aim, aside from mobile search, is to improve the results that you get when you ask a question. This means that you should perhaps get in touch with your SEO company and get them to do some work on this area because if some clever work is done with regard to these keywords it should mean that your website will rank higher.

Use white-hat techniques.

Even though it is not directly mentioned in updates, it is still the case that your website should only use white-hat techniques or you stand to be punished. This update may be a major one, but it does still include various aspects of the older updates such as Panda and Penguin and Penguin 2.0 in particular would hit black-hat websites hard and the same applies here.

In short, when it comes to trying to beating this Hummingbird update it does involve you using special templates to enhance the viewing experience for somebody that is using their phone and also it places more importance on keywords than ever before. Generally speaking there may not be that much you have to do to your website in order to survive, but if you are unsure about anything remember to talk to a professional who can guide you through the process and advise you correctly on what your next step should be.

Henry Hernandez is a veteran, father and CEO of an Austin SEO company. You can learn more about Henry by checking out his Google+ Page.

Why Google’s Matt Cutts Thinks Moderation Is Key To Guest Blogging

Blogging, Business Tech, Content creation, content marketing, guest blogging, Link Building, Organic SEO, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, , , ,

SEO experts, writers, marketers, and business owners have been writing about guest blogging for years now. Guest blogging is something that should help your company improve it’s branding and visibility, SEO, and reader satisfaction, so knowing you need to create a guest blogging strategy is pretty much a no-brainer. However, as Google continues to grow and develop, guest blogging is becoming trickier. It’s hard to know how to be successful when it comes to building links and exposure anymore, so of course it makes sense to go to the man with all the answers: Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

A Quick Recap: Why Guest Blogging Is Beneficial

For those who are unfamiliar, guest blogging is essentially the act of writing a piece of content, publishing that content on a different (but related and relevant) website on the web, and then earning a link back to your company in an author bio in return. As discussed above, guest blogging is a great way to build up your linking portfolio as well as earn you visibility with a  new audience and really show the world that you know your stuff.

There are a few different strategies used by companies today. In general, how you want to setup your guest blogging has been according to your niche and size, and this isn’t going to change. A few different ways it has worked in the past include:

  • Hire a guest blogging agency. This is usually what very large companies do when they have a lot of guest posting needs. There are many agencies out there that do nothing but guest blog and build links for websites, and if you do your research, you can find plenty that produce great content.
  • Hire a team of in-house writers. This is usually the option for larger companies who don’t like going the freelance route. It gives you more control.
  • Hire freelance writer/writers. This is probably the most popular option. If you just want a little bit extra visibility, hire one or two writers to freelance is an easy way to make it happen. Be careful though and always monitor these writers!
  • Guest blog on your own. This is usually the route for very small companies. If you’re just getting started, and particularly if you work in an odd niche, this should work just fine.

As you can see, some of these strategies produce quite a few guest posts. In the past this was a great way to improve SEO because you earned a lot of authoritative backlinks and all of that visibility, not to mention it allowed you to really work with a variety of blogs (also good for SEO). While this still works, Cutts says that moving forward guest blogging approaches need not be quite as forceful.

Why Cutts Say Moderation Is a Necessity (And How to React)

The biggest thing to understand is that Google is working to put less emphasis on linking and more emphasis on the actual content. While backlinks will still be important, they aren’t as important, and therefore Cutts explained in his latest video that moderation is the key to success moving forward. You can watch the video below:


As you can see, Cutts does make it clear that Google can easily tell the difference between a guest blog and a blog that paid for links, so no worries there.  Still, moderation will allow you to make sure that you are not just spinning articles; you’re actually writing meaningful content, which will be better for your reputation in the long run.

Do you have a guest blogging strategy that doesn’t worry about moderation? What do you think is the best way to use guest blogging to your advantage? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for HigherVisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country.