Re: unnatural links to your site
If you got this message in your Google Webmaster Tools then you are probably feeling a little distressed right now. Don’t worry, there probably isn’t anything you need to do about it. You can see the full details regarding this issue from Matt Cutts, Google’s own Webspam expert.
It is important for a number of reasons why your web site page load speed is as fast as possible. Our previous article “How to speed up your web page load time” explains the importance of the issue.
Increasing your web site performance usually involves a number of small changes to your web page. Some of Google’s PageSpeed suggestions are easier to resolve than others.
Google’s PageSpeed reports “The following resources have no character set specified in their HTTP headers. Specifying a character set in HTTP headers can speed up browser rendering.”
Specifying a character set in the HTTP response headers of your HTML documents allows the browser to begin parsing HTML and executing scripts immediately.
This is easy if your pages are PHP encoded. Simply add the following line of code to the top of your PHP page:
header(‘Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1′);
Re-run Google PageSpeed and see the warning message vanish!
Why speeding up your web pages is more important than you thinkEven with today’s high performance web servers and mega bandwidth broadband to the home that web site page load speed is a massively important issue – yet many webmasters spend little time on the issue.
Would you be surprised to hear that 40% of users abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load?
We are way past the days of modems and 128k ADSL so you would think all websites would load in an instant. Well, that is not the case. To compensate for the increase in bandwidth many webmasters have bloated their web sites with unneccessarily large images, slow plugin-ins and javascripts that simply are not used. Basically there does not seem to be a need to optimise page load time any more – or is there?
Ten years ago people expected pages to load within 30 seconds. Any slower than that and you would start losing users. Time is short and people demand more these days. Your target today has got to be 2 seconds or less.
Even looking beyond the user experience you will find that page load time is also a factor for search engine rankings, conversion and perception of your brand. So for many reasons, all important reasons, you need to get your page load time in check.
There are a number of tools to help you squeeze the most of your web pages. If you have never optimised your pages before then there are lots of small things you can do increase the speed – you could get 300% with little effort.
The Google Developers are always quick to release super useful tools and PageSpeed is no exception, this should be your first port of call, a simply browser plugin and you’ll get a full report on what is slowing your page speed down and tips on fixing the issues.
My favourite online page speed tester is provided by Pingdom.com, you can compare your site over time and also against other sites. You get a performance grade and a page load comparison against all other tested websites.
Our result: We get a performance grade of 99/100 and our site is faster than 98% of all tested website.
Go to Pingdom now and start to increase your page load speeds as part of your regular webmaster tasks.
As explained time and time again, it is of utmost importance to get great Web 2.0 sites to link back to your site. You may have covered all the obvious Web 2.0 sites but there are plenty you will have missed.
We have compiled a list of 10 Web 2.0 sites of PR6 which we think you might have missed.
This week, make a pact with yourself to take a few hours and and sign up to each of the above services. Keep a copy of your username and passwords in a spreadsheet.
Keyword Targeting
Compile a list of keywords and key phrases that you would like to dedicate all the lovely link juice that these articles will bring to your site. Use these keywords in your anchor text which will link the article back to your site.
Putting Pen to Paper
As much of a drain that it is, write a unique article about your web site and post it. A good unique well written article will be accepted by the site owners and in time will begin to pass link juice to your site. Try not to include more than 2 links back to your site. A good rule of thumb is one link back to your root domain and one to an inside page.
SEO is a long term effort. The seeds that you sow here will help you reap the rewards of the future.
Re: How to stop Yandex, Blocking Yandex.RU
Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia. Your bandwidth can go through the roof if this bot targets your website.
Unfortunately for many, the robots.txt file is ignored so blocking Yandex using the official method is not an option.
If you have a busy forum or website with hundreds of pages you may find that the Yandex Bot is starting to take up more of your site resources by indexing up to 90 pages every 15 minutes often leaving connections open or failing to close them properly.
You can easily disable the Yandex.ru Bot by placing the following in your .htaccess file:
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "^Yandex*" bad_bot Order Deny,Allow Deny from env=bad_bot
Using this method saves you the trouble of having to find blocks of Yandex IP addresses and block them individually which would only work for a limited time.
The Google Panda update is well and truly rolled out to UK sites.
Some sites lost a high percentage of their traffic, others were unaffected. To minimise your site exposure to the new rules, consider the following 5 very important tips:
Keep your site within the new rules and your traffic will return and if you were unaffected, significant gains could be realised.
Facebook is becoming one of the world’s largest search engines. Use it as a way for your page to be found. If you have not set your username (Pretty URL) on Facebook, do it today!
Directing visitors to a business page is so easy with a URL like:
http://www.facebook.com/HostingUK
Some points to consider:
While Facebook is encouraging the use of real names, you aren’t limited in that regard. The system will suggest a few available options based on your first and/or last name, but it’ll also provide a blank field in which you can type something completely unrelated.
Each Facebook account gets only one username, and you can never change it. You can’t transfer it to someone else, either. Even if you delete your Facebook account, Facebook says the name won’t go back into the pool.
So go ahead, grab your name before someone else does….
http://www.facebook.com/username
Good luck!
This video tutorial explains how to get free traffic.
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains the importance of keywords to your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains Google PageRank.
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains how to boost your SERPS rankings.
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains 5 steps to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains how to get your site listed in a few days.
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains 5 steps to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
This video tutorial explains some of the myths of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Other video tutorials in our SEO for Beginners series include:
We hope you enjoyed our SEO for Beginners course!
