On Page SEO details that matters for Google search engine

I say Hello to all DP members and I really want to share something that everyone should know about proper on page SEO which is so important for better Google rankings.

Recently, I have created a website that was loading for like 5-6 seconds and this is too much and is not ok for SEO. You can't get good results, you can't climb if your website is not loading quickly.

So what I did first and what you should do first if you also face the same problem is to check if the servers where your website is hosted are ok. What I did: I checked all my other websites and they were loading quickly so the problem was not in the hosting company, problem was in my website's on page optimization.

So, after you make sure you have no problems with the hosting and website's speed is not slow because of the hosting company, here is what you should do next:

Go to some free online tools like gtmetrix.com or webpagetest.org.
See what is the performance of your website, how fast it loads. If the result is over 2.5 seconds, well there is a problem you should consider fixing it.

You can first start fixing some simple things:

1. If your website runs on wordpress, make sure you have a nice cache plugin installed.
I personally recommend using HCE cache plugin or wp supercache. They are both quite simple and good working plugins.

2. Make sure you optimize the images on your website. If your images are in PNG, convert them to JPG, this decreases the MB's of the images. Also make sure you have no white spaces around the images.

Remember that Optimizing images for the web can reduce your total page load size by up to 80%.


Now let's get to some more complicated stuff.

3. Compress CSS and JavaScript.
Trust me, this may increase the page speed with more than 80%.
What you have to do actually is quite simple:
- Go to google.com and search for "compress css online". Just choose a website you like, most of the tools offered are free and online.
- Now go to your website files and find the CSS and Javascript files. Just copy the whole CSS text and paste it into the online compress tool. After that just copy the compressed version of your CSS and paste it into your website's CSS. Save the file with the new compressed text and that's all.
Perform the same for JavaScript.

4. Now if you're using cPanel there is a very nice option in the SOFTWARE/SERVICES section called OPTIMIZE WEBSITE. Just go there and compress all content with a single click.

5. Leverage Browser Caching
This is really important for all websites no matter how big or small they are.
You can set leverage browser caching through .htaccess file of your website.
Here are the steps to follow:
- Go to your website files via FTP or FILE MANAGER on your cPanel.
- Locate the .htaccess file of a website and open it so you can edit it.
- Paste this code:

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days"
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
Recommendations:
- Be aggressive with your caching on all static resources.
- Expiry at a minimum of one month.
- Don't set your caching more than a year in advance!

So let's say it with a few words: If you update your website very often then set the Expiry rates for a week or for a month. If you are not updating your website daily or weekly then you can set expiry rates for long periods.

After doing all the points I mentioned above you will for sure see some breaking results. Your website will be 100-150% faster than before.

 

Follow the techniques here on this amazing blog to know more about on-site SEO and its best practices. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/...de-to-Flawless-On-Page-SEO-Free-Template.aspx . Also use the templates provided in the blog.