Google Tools! For SEO Helps…!!!

We all love SEO tools because they can make our lives so much easier. Members of SEOmoz know this better than most with the array of tools that SEOmoz has. However we always want more as there are always some tasks that can be automated or made quick by using a tool instead. Google actually provides tools that can assist with SEO tasks; some of them you may know about, others may be new to you. Either way, I wanted to give you a run down of ways you can use Google to help with SEO tasks.

Just as a quick side note, Google actually has an SEO guide (PDF link) which is pretty good as both an introduction and a reminder of the basic principles of SEO and how Google works. It amazes me how many SEOs don't read into the technical side of Google and how everything works behind the scenes. This guide helps to cover some of this.

So what tools does Google give you...

1. Follow Finder

This tool helps you to find people on Twitter who are similar or related to the person you search for. You just enter the profile name of someone and the tool will return a list of people also on Twitter.

Practical Use - Very handy if you are just getting into a new market and want to find out who the key influencers are as well as who is active in that community on Twitter. This can lead to the potential of outreach and building relationships with these people. The tool does seem quite accurate given the results that it returned for a search on Rand's profile:

2. Google Sets

I've been using this for quite a while now and even though it is very simple, it is quite useful. You input a keyword and the tool will return a list of keywords which are similar to the one you started with. Here is an example of what results I was given on a search for "BMW":

Practical Use - I use this a lot when I am just starting a project and need to get a feel for all the different related keywords that could be related to the client. It's almost like a brainstorming tool and can certainly help if you are stuck or have brain freeze!

3. Google Alerts + Google Reader + iGoogle = Win!

So this one is a combination of tools. You can use this combination for a number of purposes, but the idea is that you can get these tools to work together then feed the output into an easy to consume format.

Practical Use - I have two main uses of these tools. The first is like an improvised reputation management dashboard. I do this via the following steps -

• Setup a Google Alert for my keywords, eg "Paddy Moogan" OR "Patrick Moogan"
• Add this Google Alert to Google Reader - you could stop at this point but it can look much better!
• Take the RSS feed from Google Reader and add it to your iGoogle interface

So when I login to iGoogle, I have a small widget which will contain any mentioned of the variations of my name. You can then mark them as read and only see new results in your feed which makes things much more efficient. Fortunately today there are no mentions of me. :P

4. Latest Results

Not many people think of this as an SEO tool but it can be used in a few different ways. The way it works is very simple, just input your keyword and click on Latest from the left hand menu:

Practical Use - I sometimes use this combined with a site: search to see how a website is being cached by Google. If you enter a very large website with lots of link juice, then you can pretty much see live re-caching of the pages on that website, just like this example using the BBC website:

Another use is to use a similar approach to my previous task of monitoring Google Alerts for mentions of your brand. You could run a search for your brand, then leave the latest results running in a different tab / browser whilst you do other work. Then just come back every so often and see if there are any relevant results to you.

5. Google Suggest

Again, this isn't really thought of as an SEO tool but it should be! I actually blogged about this quite a while ago and gave a few instances where this may be useful. In partiuclar when you have to do some very quick keyword analysis and give an answer to a client. There is some debate as to where these results come from, but to me it seems to be a combination of search volume and on-site factors as well as social mentions. So it's still a valid source to look at when trying to come up with additional keywords - in particular long tail keywords.

Practical Use - Fortunately there are tools out there which make using Google Suggest as a tool a lot easier, one of which is this tool from Rob Millard which makes use of the Google Suggest API.

6. Google Insights

I don't use this as much as I should really. I don't think the data is 100% perfect but when doing comparisons, it can often come in handy.

Practical Use - Make comparisons between similar search terms to see which one you could be targeting and see which ones have become more popular in recent times. I also use it to try and see what search terms are rising pretty fast. If you are lucky enough to see one that is related to your industry, you can sometimes ride the wave by publishing a news article or piece of content around that term. This works especially well if you are included in Google News too. Here is an example of what I've found at the time of writing:

7. Google Webmaster Tools

This one kind of goes without saying! There is a wealth of information inside Webmaster Tools and Google are releasing more features all the time.

Practical Use - I love using Webmaster Tools when doing technical site audits. Google gives you information on crawl errors and what they have found in terms of on-site issues which you can then try and fix to improve your site.

8. Google Trends

Trends is a little different to Insights which I mentioned above. One of the extra features that Trends gives you is the ability to see the "Also Visited" and "Also Searched For" information. We can see the following results when I searched for www.seomoz.org which seem fairly accurate:

Practical Use - This is a very useful one for doing research around a market that you don't know too well, for example at the start of an SEO project. It can also give you some ideas for sites to get links from, because these are very relevant sites. You can also use these sites to do backlink checks for finding more links that you may not have previously seen.

9. Wonder Wheel

Another useful tool from Google is the Wonder Wheel which was introduced quite a while ago. It's very good for finding related keywords, almost like Google Sets or Google Suggest which were outlined above.

Practical Use - Where the Wonder Wheel really helps is when it comes to showing clients and non SEO people a way to visualise keywords that are related to each other. It works very quickly and you can easily get into the long tail of search terms. Here is an example if you were working in an industry that sold garden sheds, after just three clicks I've got some long tail keyword ideas and can see what the competition is like for each one by looking at the search results to the right:

10. Image Swirl

I've cheated with this one a little bit - it hasn't really got any SEO use from what I've seen so far. But it is so cool to use! It shows you images that are very similar to each other and the interface is very slick and smooth. Its almost like the Wonder Wheel but for images:

A screenshot here can't really do it justice so just go and have a play :)

11. Google Zeitgeist

Thanks to Justin for pointing this one out to me. This is almost like a combination between Trends and Insights but looks so much better! The link above is to a summary of 2010 and the billions of searches on Google during the year. You can click on various world events and see a visual representation of which were most popular and in what parts of the world. Just check this out:

As I said this one is quite new to me so I'm yet to find an SEO use, but it sure looks great and has tons of data for you to look at.

Well there you have it, eleven tools given to us by Google. Go have a play and let me know in the comments if you have any others or different uses for the tools above.

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Yahoo To Use Bing Search Engine In New Deal

Microsoft and Yahoo have finally finalised a deal that could go a long way into helping Bing achieve a foothold in the browser market. The deal has been ongoing for around 6 months now, but this week both parties have finally agreed to the terms which will see Bing powering Yahoo’s search for the next ten years in exchange for Yahoo! Selling advertising.

In a joint statement yesterday, the companies explained their belief that their deal would lead to increased competition in search: “Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.”

However, Yahoo will still remain Bing-less for the time being, as regardless of the deal between the two companies, it still has to be checked about by both the US department of Justice and the European Union to make sure no anti-competition laws are being broken.

However, it seems likely that such a deal will go ahead.

Bing and Yahoo combined will account for nearly 10% of all worldwide search if the partnership goes ahead, according to the latest figures for worldwide search engine usage. Meanwhile Google accounts for around 85% of worldwide usage – still a huge figure.

The statement concluded: “Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

Source

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Google, Yahoo, and Bing, the masters of SEO

Most webmaster IT development types are well aware that results from Yahoo search are now delivered by Microsoft’s Bing. Many have gone so far as to rename the collaboration Microhoo. What many internet marketers may not realize is Yahoo and Bing are still competitors. Yahoo only makes money when people use their engine to search and then click on an ad. They keep 88% of all revenues generated on their site. Yahoo also no longer carries the expense of maintaining data centres around the globe. It is a most profitable arrangement. Still, if people stop coming to Yahoo there will be no profits and soon be no Yahoo. This raises the thought that even search engines need search engine marketing.

Much in the way a television station announces upcoming programmes, Yahoo lists their own features and cross promotes them with interlinking. They go to great lengths to write search engine friendly dynamic content for all of their inner pages. In short, Yahoo employs major search engine optimisation. Yahoo engages in dynamic link building and on page optimisation so as to increase their position in search engine results and across the internet. For as much as the major search engines deride SEO, the truth is they invented the process and are the masters of the SEO universe.

The other day, Google ran another one of their engaging and entertaining doodles. The Flintstones were honoured for their 50 years of full colour service to humanity. The depiction was quite brilliant and gave one a lift every time Google was used. Similar success has been met by Google with hundreds of these little drawings. Other than doodles Google remains its white background, “nothin’ to see here folks,” search engine self. The Yahoo homepage serves as a portal for sports, mail, weather and a hundred other favourite pursuits. Bing falls somewhere in between with some beautiful high end photography and a few promotions listed on their page. All three of the major search engines have unique marketing approaches so as to hopefully gain market share. Whether they print a doodle or a picture of an astronaut or a listing of football results, they are all optimising their pages so as to draw a result… just like we do.

Source

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Google And Bing Away From The Search Engine Algorithm

Both Google and Bing are racing the clock to incorporate social network input into their search results. What they may not realize is that those results may become irrelevant before they can complete the adjustment. For at least a dozen years the expression “Content is king” ruled the internet. The premise being that the formulas by which the best websites relevant to a topic were chosen used a heavy weighting based upon the amount of and quality of words on a page. Suddenly we are to disregard this factor and focus on a new one. That factor is context. Now context is supposed to be King. This is not so much for search results as it is for advertising. Social network sites have made SEO agencies keenly aware that the objective is to sell products, not merely rank high for keywords.

A case in point is our recent study of clicks for the term, word document recovery. We work hard to rank for major keywords such as recover deleted files and data recovery. But it turns out that the customers most ready to buy software are specifically looking for lost Microsoft Word Docs. Consumer preferences as shown on social networking sites make this type of data easy to spot. Sites like Facebook don’t need an algorithm to make this determination and can deliver results strictly from their in house pool of paid advertisers. If one can deliver sales simply by buying targeted ads without the time delay of SEO for organic search, SERPs become unnecessary.

All of this should make SEO companies working to deliver high rankings on free natural search, incredibly nervous. Yahoo has wisely segued away from search, drifting further into the portal business. Facebook is pushing hard to make your Facebook home page your computer’s homepage. Google and Bing had better come up with a hybrid solution fast or they will be left behind.

Source

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Google Adjusts Algorithm To Exclude Black Hat SEO

Google adjusts contextual portions of algorithm to exclude Black Hat SEO

In our “Just so long as you spell my name right,” department we reported that a few days ago Google closed a major Black Hat SEO loophole. It seems that quite a few scam websites had taken to encouraging complaints about their products. Many websites selling fraudulent and low quality goods actually did so purposefully so as to generate link bait publicity which resulted in thousands of news stories being written. These in turn resulted in links to the site which Google, not taking the links in context, then used to give credence and power to the site. This in turn resulted in more fraudulent sales and so on.

It would appear that the adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” was ringing true and paying off handsomely. Google execs and techs upon reading about this quirk, quickly got to work and adjusted the contextual recognition of their algorithm so as to reflect a preponderance of negative publicity and red flag such websites.

We have at times been engaged to help honest website owners counter bad publicity unfairly placed on the net by jealous competitors. It comes as a twist and a surprise that much of that negative commentary may have actually helped bolster those same sites. All of this points out that SEO is in many ways a massive public relations endeavor. If one can just start the little snowball rolling down the hill, great things might happen.

Source

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3 Funny SEO Quizzes

There are quite a few in-depth SEO quizzes to test your knowledge (I for one never had the time and patience to take any), but this post focuses on funny SEO quizzes only – can you link to more?

1. Which Stage of SEO Career Are You at?

This quiz was created by yours truly using ProProfs quiz builder. It was fun to create as I loved picking LOL cats for each answer (if you take it, hopefully, you’ll appreciate the humor

If you have an idea of another fun quiz, please shout – I am always happy

2. SEO Cartoon Quiz

This one is rather an association game which is quite funny. I haven’t seen to get the attention it is worth, so I am happy to mention it here.

Currently the quiz consists of 15 cartoons, most of which only an SEO will understand – gotta try it out!

3. SEO quiz – Just the Essentials

This one is a bit outdated as it was created soon after SEOmoz’s SEO quiz was publicized back in 2007 but it can still be a perfect example of timely and funny linkbait.

The quiz is the parody and, unlike the one from SEOmoz, it won’t take you “25-30″ minutes – you will only need a couple of seconds to pass it. Enjoy!

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Super Solutions For The Robots.txt

Use robots.txt can prevent effective inbound link

The only thing about using robots.txt to block indexing of search engines is not only that is quite inefficient, but may also reduce the flow of inbound links. Locking a page using robots.txt, search engines are not indexing the content (or links!) Page. This means that if you have inbound links to the page, the link juice can not flow to other pages. It creates an impasse.


While inbound links to the blocked page is probably some benefit to the general area, this value inbound links are not used to their full potential. You missed an opportunity to convey a certain value link internal page blocked in several important internal pages.

3 Big Sites with Blocked Opportunity in the Robots.txt File

*1 - Digg.com

*2 - Blogger.com or Blogspot.com

*3 - IBM

Super Solutions to the Robots.txt

Great site, for example above, we have covered the wrong robots.txt file. Some of the scenarios were not included. The following is a list of effective solutions to maintain the contents index of search engines with no link juice to lose.

Noindex

In most cases the best alternative to robots.txt robots exclusion meta tags. By adding "noindex" and make sure it does not add 'nofollow' your pages will remain in the results of search engines, but will link value.
301 Redirect

The robots.txt file is not a place to list the old worn pages. If the page has expired (delete, move, etc) is not only the block. Redirect this page through a 301 to replace the most relevant. Get more information about redirecting the Knowledge Centre.

Canonical Tag

Do not block your overlap since the versions in robots.txt. Using the tag canon to keep the additional versions of the index, and consolidate the link value. Where possible. Get more information at the Information Centre on canonization and use the rel = tag canon.

Password Protection

The robots.txt is not an effective way to keep the information confidential at the hands of others. If you have confidential information on the Internet, password protect. If you have a login screen, go ahead and add meta tag "noindex" page. If you expect a lot of incoming links on this page for users, be sure to link to some of the most important pages of internal login page. This way, you pass through the link juice.

Effective Robots.txt Usage

The best way to use a robots.txt file does not use it at all. Use it to report that robots will have full access to all files on the site and to control a robot in the sitemap.xml file. That's it.

Your robots.txt file should look like this:

-----------------

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

-----------------

Bad Bots

"Robots and instructions for the robots.txt file," which means that there are robots that do not follow the robots.txt at all. So when you do a good job of keep away with a good, you are doing a horrible job to keep away from "bad" against. In addition to filtering to allow access only to the Google bot Bing is not recommended for three reasons:

1. The engines change/update bot names frequently.
2. Engines employ multiple types of bots for different types of content.
3. New engines/content discovery technologies getting off the ground stand even less of a chance with institutionalized preferences for existing user agents only and search competition is good for the industry.

Competitors

If your competitors are warned SEO in any way whatsoever, they look at your robots.txt file to see what they can discover. Say you are working on a new design or an entirely new product and you have a line in your robots.txt file that disallows bots "index" it. If a competitor appears, check the file and see this folder called "/ newproducttest" when they just won the jackpot! Better to keep it on a staging server, or behind a login. Do not give all your secrets in a small file.

Handling Non-HTML & System Content

* It isn't necessary to block .js and .css files in your robots.txt. The search engines won't index them, but sometimes they like the ability to analyze them so it is good to keep access open.

* To restrict robot access to non-HTML documents like PDF files, you can use the x-robots tag in the HTTP Header.

* Images! Every website has background images or images used for styling that you don't want to have indexed. Make sure these images are displayed through the CSS and not using the tag as much as possible. This will keep them from being indexed, rather than having to disallow the "/style/images" folder from the robots.txt.

* A good way to determine whether the search engines are even trying to access your non-HTML files is to check your log files for bot activity.

Robots.txt High Impact Solutions

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Joomla being SEO Friendly

Joomla is an excellent CMS, but when it comes to search engine optimization, you need some time to tweak it the way it needs to be. I have spent lots of time doing it and would like to save your time. So I compiled a little tutorial for Joomla SEO

How to make Joomla truly SE friendly?

This is not an exact tutorial, so you are doing it at your own risk. I am just posting what has worked for me and what not.

1. Think about SEO from install on

Firstly you will need to install some extensions, to prepare Joomla to be serving URLs the right way. We will use SEF patch, openSEF and Joomap.
Important: Do it immediately after installing a fresh copy of Joomla.

2. Install Joomla SEF patch

This will patch Joomla core and enable you to add keywords and description in every menu and content item of your site. It will also make titles show the correct way. That’s what Google and other SE want! File is located in our Webmaster Center. Instructions and Homepage. (Takes you to Joomla At Work)

3. Install openSEF component and make it work

1. Enable it. Site > Configuration

 

 Go to SEO and Click Yes for Search Friendly URLs.

    2. Change .htaccess from integrated SEO to 3rd party SEO

    3. Install openSEF. Go to Installers > Components

Select your file from hard disk, Upload and Install.

For troubleshooting go to this forum.

4. Configure OpenSEF with these instructions.

OpenSEF will basically rewrite your internal Joomla like urls to external that are SE and User Friendly.
Here is a video how to configure openSEF.
IMPORTANT: Once you launch your site, DO NOT CHANGE your content item names and category names, because your URLs will also change. And this breaches Google’s guidelines and WILL, I repeat WILL hurt your rankings.

So make sure once you set your urls and content to leave it that way for good.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT THING: If you will be using components, check if there are OpenSEF extensions for these components. This will make these components SE friendly too. Check this great forum about this matter. I use Docman and it has been producing me lots of junk urls. Installed extension and now works GREAT!

5. Install Joomap

Joomap is a next step to Joomla SEO. It will create a sitemap for your site and a XML sitemap that will feed Google spider. It automatically creates XML file every time a new item is added.

1. Download it from our Webmaster Center .
2. Enable it by creating a menu item which points to this component.
3. Configure it by going to Components> Joomap

Configure which menus you want to include in the sitemap.

4. Configure the way it will display information; you can even exclude items or categories.
   
   

5. And the important thing: Submit your XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps. You will find your sitemap address in Back-end Administrator in Joomap settings. Once you enter it into Google, it will automatically pick up changes.

Be careful: set your live path in configuration.php in joomla with www before your domain. Also make it the same for Google Sitemaps. They have to be the same or Google will show errors in your sitemap.

6. Joomla Seo and Content:

Make sure to delete all unused content items and menu items by default Joomla installation. Clean it so you won’t have problems later.
Each URL needs to have proper Meta tags for Joomla seo (keywords, description), title and consistent use of H1 and keywords in text. Thanks to SEF patch, you can now manually configure each page Meta tags.

7. OpenSEF Friendly URL tweaking:

Once you click on all your links site wide, OpenSef will compile a list of Search Friendly URLs. Because of Joomla Nature - it produces several duplicate ids and id items, you will have to manually set only one URL to be used, and set others off. Don’t delete them, just turn all cases with the same external URLS off, just leave one to be used. I don’t know why, but sometimes it worked only if i selected case with id and itemed in the name of internal url, instead of those having only id in the name of internal URL.
Here is a video how to manage URLs with openSEF .

Conclusion

Joomla CAN is SEO friendly. That is what worked for me. If you have any suggestions or comments let me know.

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On Page SEO tips for SEO Beginners

Title -
Use your keywords in your title.

URL -
Use your keywords in your URL slug - shorter is better, hyphens not underscores.

Headline -
(h1) Use your capsule headers (h2) instead.

Natural repetition in body of content -
Repeat your keywords, but don't "stuff" them unnaturally.

ALT attribute -
ALT tag controlled via the caption segment of the image capsule.

File Name -
Changes file name upon upload.

Keyword Location -
Use your keyword within the first 100 words of your content also use in your custom summary.

Internal Links -
The amount of links to your content from within the site itself are valuable, using tag pages in order to get internal links will give you a boost on top of the powerful built in interlinking that HP already employs. This is essentially what a HP tag is, an inbound link from within the site that you can control. Also be sure to interlink your own content with anchored text link.

Italics/Bold -
They have a tiny SEO benefit - italics more than bold - and do not need to be used more than once!

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Joomla SEO Tips For Beginners

Joomla is not the default search engine. You need a little work on improving this. The most important thing is observed when starting work at the site of Joomla SEO is the address of each page. The URL of the page generated by Joomla is not search engines. Always search parameters that do not provide lots of information for search engines to index and classify these pages correctly. By optimizing the page for search engines, one of the things you should pay much more attention is the URL of the page you want to optimize. It should be informative and well filled significant extension of keywords, and preferably. "HTML."

Use the first search engine friendly URLs, you can make your Joomla site web search engine friendly, you have several options. The first is to use standard Joomla SEF plugin. By default, this plugin is not enabled, then you must go to your global configuration page and activate it.

Arts catch the titles of pages for each page of your site more often I see sites in the default Joomla header that says "Start." This is the title of the homepage. Most beginners do not see and how to change the title a bit 'dark to begin with. As you know, the page title is one of the main reasons for the search engines view sites site ranking. So you must give place to place significant main keywords in it. If you want to change the title as follows:

a. Menu Manager and select the main menu.
B. a menu list, open it says "home"
C. Now, on the right side of the screen a number of parameters can be changed. Open "Parameters (System) field and change the cover, which tells the page and save desired.

Define the metadata for each page on your site meta-data can not be so precious in the eyes of search engines were used in a few years ago, but still works well for optimization. When the meta-data optimized website. You should place greater emphasis on description rather than keywords. Write a good description of your side, preferably to 160 characters. This description is what you will see the results of a search engine with the title of the page. And therefore it's very useful for connecting the results page stands out. Of course, if the search engines you can not find an adequate description meta tags, which try to extract the body text of the article page and use it as a description of the results page of search engines. But you have to decide to put in place, use the advantage of attracting more visitors from search engines.

The biggest problem I think many of Joomla powered using more meta description and keywords of each page of your site. This is wrong! It should provide a description and keywords of each page of your site. You can still use the global configuration defines the metadata for the entire site, but you must add metadata Each element adds to the main section of the page. You can add metadata to the article you wrote, looking at the right side of the article [edit] page to find sites that offer data and metadata.

Using page 404 pages most often you see a Joomla site with the standard 404-page with little information about the error and a link to the site. You must submit a 404-page, or by some sort of plugin or a manual configuration. Include useful resources on this page to the user's location to your website. Or include a search form that can be used by the user on the right track. You can also use phrases users search on the previous page and produce a page of search results as you. The point here is to prevent users from being frustrated by the average error page.

Insert H1 Tags in Joomla is a good idea to use H1 tags to your contractor under the article. Is of some importance to students to convince search engines that the page is currently in the keyword that you quote the title page. I know the pages that do well, no H1 tag, but who cares if you can get a little help from your SEO work for nothing or almost nothing. Go ahead and H1 tags for the title of your items.

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Take Advantage of Google's Site Speed Algorithm

The following are seven proven techniques well known websites use to boost their site speed.

1. Enable Gzip

Gzip is a open source compression algorithm that can used to compress your website's content before your server sends the data to a visitor's browser. This makes your servers' job easier and makes pages load faster for your users. You can learn how to enable Gzip here.

2. Minify Javascript/CSS

Minify is the process (and software) for removing unnecessary formatting characters from code. This makes your files smaller and your visitors happier. You can learn all about this process here.

3. Use a CDN

CDNs are systems of interconnected server resources that spread content and assets around the globe to shorten the distance between server and prospective user. They are commonly used by the Web's most popular websites. You can find a list of free CDNs here. Note: This is not a tip for beginners. Working with CDNs gets complicated very quickly.

4. Optimize Images

You can take advantage of the countless man hours that have been devoted to image compression and make your users happier by simply saving your images as the appropriate type. As a very general rule of thumb, I recommend saving photos as JPEGs and graphics as PNGs.

5. Use External Javascript/CSS

When a browser requests a website from a server it can only download a set number of files of the same type at any given point. While this isn't true of all file types, it is a good enough reason to host applicable files on alternative subdomains. This is only recommended for sites where the pros of speed will outweigh the SEO cons of creating a new subdomain.

6. Avoid Using Excess Redirects

While redirects can be extremely useful, it is important to know that implementing them does force your servers 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 sparingly.

7. Use Fewer Files

The most straightforward way to speed up your website is to simply use fewer files. Less files means less data. My favorite method of doing this is utilizing CSS sprites. You can read how popular websites are using this trick.

Google SEO Algorithm

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