50 Tips to Speed Up Your Website

May 3, 2008

The folks at InsideCRM created a nice compilation of tips to speed up your website, titled The Webmaster’s Turbo Kit. There are all sorts of tips and tools included, from reducing the number of HTTP requests to compressing images and playing with caches. Here are six articles that I wrote on the topic some time ago (they were included on the list):
  1. Speed Up Your Site: Optimize Images
  2. Speed Up Your Site: Image Formats
  3. Speed Up Your Site: Optimize your CSS
  4. Speed Up Your Site: Use a slash on your links
  5. Speed Up Your Site: Use the height and width tags
  6. Speed Up Your Site: Reduce the HTTP Requests
Remember though, the first step towards a fast website is actually the hosting company that you choose. Read more

Why You Must be the First, in Google’s Search Results at Least!

May 2, 2008

People always say that you need to be in the first page of results in Google if you want to receive clicks, right? Well, this will hurt, but the reality is that merely being in the first page is not enough. In fact, if you are around the lowest positions, you could end up getting a meager 1% of the overall clicks on searches for those keywords. This is a very hot topic, but strangely there it not a large amount of research around it. The most reliable study so far comes from the Cornell University. They used an eye tracking technology to discover what percentage of users would click on each of the 10 results appearing on the first page of Google for certain topics. The results, at least my opinion, are pretty shocking, as the image below illustrates (image via SEO Researcher):
click distribution google first results
Let’s use some numbers to understand it better. Even if you manage to rank in the first page of Google for a keyword that receives 2,000 searches per day, you could end up receiving only 28 clicks daily if you appear on the ninth position. Even the web page appearing in the second position will only receive 268. Not a bad number, but it pales in comparison to the 1126 clicks that the first result would reap. Read more

April 2008 Most Popular Articles

May 1, 2008

Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out to make sure you have not missed any.
  • Let’s Follow Each Other on Twitter, Shall We?: After reading about it virtually on every single website on the web, a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Twitter a try. I must say that, contrary to what many people claim to, I did not get addicted to it.
  • Embracing the Status of Part-Time Blogger: 5 Practical Tips: I’m sure you read a lot about pro blogging and what it takes to earn a full-time income from your blog. This is a common topic among active bloggers and there are plenty of great articles that cover various aspects of the subject. With the huge amount of focus that is given to becoming a pro blogger, I think that becoming a successful and profitable part-time blogger is often overlooked. Earning a reasonable amount of money on a part-time basis is actually more desirable than most people realize.
  • May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved: What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits.
  • Killer Domains: My First eBook is Available Now: If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. It feels like all the marketable domains are already gone. And the problem is that the success of your website starts with the domain name.
  • 7 Reasons Why You Might Never Be Productive: Are you disappointed with the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to get things done in a productive manner? If so, then acting now is the way to go because you can rest assured that things will not exactly get better if you just stand there and wait for a miracle. As a blogger, being productive is definitely a must if you are serious about long-term success and living in denial is simply not an option.
  • Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus): The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.
  • The Best Sources of Content for WordPress Users: If you’re looking for technical documentation or support, the codex and forums are usually the first place to look. However, I would like to share some blogs and websites that provide a good amount of WP-related content that I think you will appreciate. Whether you are a theme designer/developer or a blogger who is looking to get more out of WordPress, visit some of these sites and see for yourself.
  • Website Traffic Series Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs: On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.
  • Make Sure Your WordPress is Not Hacked: Lately there there seems to be a hacking spree around old versions of WordPress. Most of the times the hacker will edit your theme files to insert spam links. One of my older and non-active blogs got that problem, and I had several friends complaining to me about it as well when chatting over IM.

Partner: MakeUseOf.com Amazing Websites and Tools you Never Knew About Read more

Know your DNA to improve your personal brand online

May 1, 2008

Having worked in recruitment for over 11 years, the DNA of potential new hires have been critical to being successful in growing my own teams and helping clients build theirs. What do I mean by DNA? Well it is their physical and mental make up, what defines them as individuals, how do they perform, what makes them valuable, what makes them special, what makes them tick e.t.c. If the people you work with, hire or seek to work with are not uniquely special, then why have you set the bar so low? I use an acronym to define what I feel is essential to know about an individual that makes them different. D - elivery N - iche A - ttitude Think about this from your own perspective. Read more

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