It is known the importance of the page loading speed over the traffic of your blog. Recently there were a lot of discussions and probably the page loading speed will become an important SEO factor for google and other search engines.

The main problem with the existing .htaccess file is that the RewriteCond directives checks the existence of a file on disk when it is not really required. Each access to disk increase the page loading time.
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Despite the fact that website speed looks like simple factor you can measure, it hides tricky questions: What website speed or page speed really means? It’s the speed by which the html is loaded? Or you have to measure the time in which the browser loads all the required files? Or time required by the browser to render the page? You should also include the time required to run the onload javascript code and widgets? If you think this post answers these questions you should stop reading it because it doesn’t. However, you’ll find out several ways to measure the page speed. Read the rest of this entry »

One measure you can take to improve page loading speed is to enable the caching of static files(images, js and css files). If you have a simple blog with just a few visitors this might result in an improved user experience. A faster website will keep its visitors. On the other side, if you have a very visited website, or if you can get high peaks from time to time, caching static resources can have a dramatic effect, minimizing the server load and keeping the website up.

If you use the classic PHP Hosting like most of the people, you can enable it in Apache modifying the .htaccess file. The changes are pretty simple:

<FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public"
</FilesMatch>

The above code instructs the browser to write the cache information in http header for specified file extensions. The browser will parse it and it will know that the file expires in 30 days(2592000). It will store in its cache and for the next 30 days will use the cached version.

Minimize Number of Requests

When a webpage is loaded the browser loads the main page file(.html, .php,…) and then it starts loading the files referenced by it: css files, js files, images,… The more requests are required, the longer it takes to load the page. There is also a limit for most of the browsers with the files that are loaded simultaneously from the same domain. Firefox can load only 2 simultaneously from the same domain. Read the rest of this entry »

Online marketing, and particularly SEO (search engine optimisation) has resulted in more content online which is actually material designed to lure in a user, and not necessarily add value to that user. You might think you are reading an article on how to do something, when in actual fact, it is only placed there to create backlinks to a particular website, and hopefully lure you in as a customer. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who does web content will tell you that websites, to their credit, are demanding top quality content. The “Content is King” motif has produced a healthy demand for quality materials, with good reason. The net is growing up, and diversifying into specialist market segments, with informed readers looking for high value information. If you check out the new search engine optimization keyword ranges, you’ll note that technical terms and much better defined classifications are now the norm. Read the rest of this entry »

The following entry is a guest post, providing a few tips right about Guest Blogging, from AuroIN, a SEO company providing  SEO Services.

There are several websites that invite ‘guest bloggers’ to submit blogs that will then become generally accessible.  That’s fine, but if you are going to take the time to create the blog and post it on the guest bloggers’ website, you should be doing that for a specific purpose, other than the satisfaction of seeing your creation on the internet.  Typical goals would be to generate free publicity and/or traffic for a website or to identify yourself as an authority on a specific topic.  Read the rest of this entry »

If you are serious about online marketing and SEO, staying ahead of the game is all about understanding the direction of the search engine Google. Changes in the way Google views, pays weight to and calculates your page’s rating, and how you will come up in searches, can radically change the situation you find your business in. Some changes in the last few months have greatly impacted on a number of businesses. Recently, the VP at Google, Marissa Maye, laid out the company’s future direction. Her comments and statement are a guide for our future search engine optimisation activities. Read the rest of this entry »

The whole point about blogs is that they’re supposed to be interactive, generating feedback and encouraging participation. This is what the business schools call “participation in the market”, and it’s critically important to know how to maintain participation levels.

The real drivers for blogs are interest levels. If you check out some of the most popular blogs online, you’ll notice a pattern:

Lots of new material, all the time.

• High quality blog materials.
• Unique materials.
• Various areas where user participation is actively encouraged. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a wordpress blog with a decent amount of traffic, hosted on a shared server and you didn’t applied any of the following tricks to your wordpress installation until now, you can expect to have your hosting account suspended anytime. WordPress itself is not written with the performance scope in mind so the default installation uses lots of resources at decent usage. Read the rest of this entry »