Try and consolidate files into a single file where possible. This mainly applies to Javascript and CSS files. Many people load at least 3 or so Javascript files on their sites, so reducing this to a single file will reduce the number of HTTP requests that the browser has to make. CSS is often split across multiple files too. If at all possible, try and merge the files.

Another easy task to speed your website up is to only load correctly sized images. By this I mean don’t load a massive image and resize it in the HTML to a smaller size. Instead, resize the image in an image editor and load it at the size it was built for.

When using images consider which format you will use. JPEGs are generally better optimised for photographs (reduce the image quality to 80% to cut down on file size without a noticeable difference in quality. PNGs are good for gradients and transparent images.

You can force the browser to cache certain things so it doesn’t have to download things again. For example, files that don’t often change such as javascript files, CSS files and images you can add an expires header (in the .htaccess file if you’re using apache) which will tell the browser how long before it needs to download a fresh copy from the server.

Finally, you can compress the output of text based files by gzipping them. This can be achieved on most modern web servers.

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Some elements of the new CSS specification may not seem particularly useful at first, but as you use more and more of it, new ideas for website layouts that simply weren’t possible before can now come to life.

CSS3 has its downsides too though, as only a handful of modern browsers have implemented this new specification into their rendering engines. Another downside is that these modern browsers have different ways of invoking these new styles. For example, if you wanted to make a div have rounded corners in Firefox you might put:

-moz-border-radius: 5px;

Yet for webkit based browsers such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari you would put:

-webkit-border-radius: 5px;

Browsers such as Safari and Firefox were early adopters of the CSS 3 specification. So early in fact that the W3C’s own implementation wasn’t yet decided on. In all future browsers, it is expected that rounded corners will be invoked using:

border-radius: 5px;

Fortunately, these new CSS rules degrade gracefully in older broswers like IE 6 and 7. In the example above, any divs that are intended to have rounded corners would appear as normal (without rounded corners) in unsupported browsers.

The new CSS3 specification, along with the upcoming HTML5 spec, are shaping the way the web will look in the future. Giving web designers more flexibility and freedom will undoubtedly be good for websites as a whole, making it easier to create user interfaces that are truly user friendly.

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What do you need to think about when backing up?

When creating a backup routine, you need to think about what information is important for the business. Most people think about the most crucial information such as databases and code, but also think about things that hold significant value, such as the email addresses of clients and contacts that may have taken a long time to get. Other important items might be bookmarks, important spreadsheets or word documents, training packs etc. It’s important to backup not only things that you use on a daily basis but things that you will need to use in the future.

Once your backup policy is drawn up, it’s important to think about how you are going to achieve it. Ask yourself:

• What software will you need?
• Do you run multiple operating systems?
• What hardware will you need?
• Will the backup be off-site?
• Will the backup policy be followed?

Creating a backup plan isn’t fun, but it is crucial to any business especially internet businesses, don’t be caught out! Backups don’t just save your important information, they offer peace of mind.

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If you work on the web I’m sure you have bought a domain and regretted it, or know someone who has 20 or 30 domains but will never have the time to resell or develop them. Although it doesn’t dent your bank account buying dropped or new domains, it can be a costly business if you are buying your domains from brokers.

Before buying a domain think about the following:

1. Have you got an idea for the domain?
2. Are you buying the domain just because its there?
3. Are you buying to resell?
4. Is there a market for the domain?
5. How long will it take you to resell?
6. Will you have time to develop the domain?

When you ready to buy a domain think about:

1. Is the domain generic or is it a brandable name? – Does it match or contain keywords that users are searching for e.g.  laptop(generic) vs bobs technology(brand).
2. If your buying brandable domain names ensure you dont step on any toes. There is nothing worse than developing an online business and then realizing that you cant register your company name because its taken.
3. Avoid numbers – although its tempting to buy domains that use 4 instead of for, using numbers in domains generally turns off users. There are notable exceptions to this rule, but most are big brands.
4. And most important of all make sure your domain is spelt right!!!

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The key to retaining visitors is to deliver your content in a clean and well-structured manner.

Here are are my top tips to make your site user-friendly:

• Your navigation should be located where people expect, this is typically at the top or left of the page.
• Group your content and provide sufficient breaks. Pages rammed full with informative content is excellent for visitors and Google, but ensure there are regular points where the user can take a breather.
• Avoid non-standard colour schemes, especially when choosing a background colour. It’s important to remember that most visitors are used to reading black on white.
• Make page loads as quick as possible. As we’re not in 2001 any more, the average user will close the page if it doesn’t load after 7 seconds.
• When selling products ensure that the user has the option to see a larger image of the product.

Although these are simple principles, they can make or break your business. Usability can be a very powerful way of increasing the turnover of your site, it’s important that you don’t jump the gun and get the basics right.

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As a techie at redsauce.com I just love data. Data can mean new pages, it can mean new categories or it can underline the need for new products.

9 times out of 10 data will show an opportunity to fatten your site with new content. Whether it’s market data from external sources e.g market trends, product trends, competitor analysis, there is always benefit in putting in some elbow grease to see where the opportunities are.

What data would be useful?

What data do you currently have?

Can you cross examine data and work out if you have enough content to capture traffic in certain areas of the site?

What useful data could you get externally e.g market information?

Is the data easy to get?

When deciding what data you need, think about where you can get it from.

Think about the in-house analysis tools you can develop for your sites.

If its unavailable; how much will it cost me? Is the data worth the potential gain?

Ensure you take into account all the fields that you will need.

Data requirements

Is the data accurate?

Is the data up to date?

How was the data gained?

What does the data show me?

Can you draw accurate conclusions from the sample size?

Is there potential to grow parts of your site or to venture into new markets?

Is there potential to add more content to the site?

I have only touched on this area so you can see some of the possibilities that data can bring. If you are running an internet operation and you have never dirtied your hands with data, then I suggest you roll up your sleeves and look for potential growth.

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Firstly, why might you want to ‘hide’ certain pages from the Google index anyway? The main reason is to avoid duplicated content. Sometimes there will be pages that your visitors will find highly useful, for example a page which lists articles relating to a certain tag. If this page were to be cached it would be likely to contain duplicated content from elsewhere on the site. Other pages that you may not want to be cached would be login pages, restricted areas of your site etc.

There are few ways making sure pages don’t get cached:

• add a meta-tag in the <head></head> of the page like so: <meta name=”robots” content=”none” />
• add the page in a robots.txt file in the root of your domain like this:
  User-Agent: *
  Disallow: file_name.php
• Finally, if the page has already been indexed in google, you can apply one of the above techniques and then request the removal of the page from the SERPs in Google Webmaster tools using the URL removal tool.

Removing and/or blocking pages from appearing in the SERPs may seem like madness, but it will make your site more powerful if you have content that is duplicated across multiple pages. One final thought is using the canonical method to tell Google that a certain page is the one that you want to be indexed and that any other URLs with the same content are merely copies. However this isn’t a trusted way of avoiding duplicated content.

To make a canonical page for a particular piece of content just add:

• <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/file_name.php” />

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What’s so bad about IE6? Other than the security issues, IE6 is phenomenally bad at displaying web pages to current web standards. Many newly built sites are shunning IE6, because of the headaches it causes. Although it’s tempting, this isn’t practical. 10% of visitors may not seem like a lot, but this could affect your bottom line quite badly.

So the only real solution is hacks. CSS hacks are rules that only IE6 can understand. There are a magnitude of bugs in IE6, so many in fact, that you could write a whole book about them. So, instead I’ll provide some quick fixes that can often get things looking right in IE6:

• The simplest hack is to prefix your IE6 specific CSS rules with an underscore _. eg. _height: 300px;
• Don’t apply margins to elements that have a float rule applied to them. The margin will be doubled in IE6, try applying margins to the parent or child element instead.
• To trigger the ‘has_layout’ property in IE6, you can try the adding clear: both; or position: relative; or zoom: 1; Applying any of these can reveal elements that couldn’t previously be seen in IE6.
• Apply a stylesheet that is specific to IE6 using:

  <!--[if IE]>
  	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie6.css" mce_href="ie6.css" />
  <![endif]-->

By not ignoring your IE6 users, you can keep reap the benefits of increased turnover. Don’t be tempted to abandon them. Instead try and encourage them to switch browsers by adding links to download them.

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The major benefits of adding pagination to data sets on your site are:

• You can add more pages to your site increasing your authority
• By chunking the data in this way, you make it easier for the user to understand
• You can reduce pageload time and server bandwidth by showing smaller amounts of data

Things to consider:

• All your H1 and title tags should remain unique to every page
• Unique content is a must for every page.
• Try to duplicate as little as possible
• Try to keep the URLs of your new pages SEO friendly

And now, here is a quick and easy function written in PHP that you may find useful in developing your paginated pages:

function pager($rows_per_page, $num_rows) {
 
    $request_uri = preg_replace('/\/?-?([0-9]*)\/?$/', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
    $num_pages = ceil($num_rows / $rows_per_page);
    $page_links = "<p class=\"page_links\">";
 
    for ($i = 1; $i <= $num_pages; $i++) {
 
        $page_links .= "<a class=\"page_link";
 
        if ($_GET['page_num'] == $i) {
 
            $page_links .= " page_link_selected";
 
        }
 
        $page_links .= "\" href=\"".$request_uri;
 
        if ($i != 1) {
 
            $page_links .= "-".$i;
 
        }
 
        $page_links .= "/\">".$i."</a>";
 
    }    
 
    $page_links .= "</p>";
    return $page_links;
 
}

Make sure in your .htaccess that a rule is set up the pass the page number as a variable to the page showing the data. If you are using a database you could then use this page number variable to determine how to limit your data. e.g. LIMIT 10, 10; This will will bring back data for 10 items starting from the 10th item. You will also need to know how many rows there are in total in order to pass it to the function above and display the right number of page links.

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I know this is web basics but if you look around the internet there are many websites including big brands that have sites that are not crawlable. The old hat way of developing dynamic websites is to have selectable categories and a search box so that users can find products using a search query. This architecture is outdated , all pages need to be physically linked to enable the Google spiders to race through your site and pick through all the juicy content.

What else can assist the spiders in indexing?

Correct Robot text – Robot text basically gives the spiders instructions on which pages to crawl and which to not. Insure this is correct

Create an XML site map. An XML site map is a good way of giving Google a map of your whole site architecture, ensuring that no pages are missed in the index.

Ensure that any flash navigation is also linked through HTML. Although some people suggest Google is reading flash with varying success i am a firm believer that flash doesn’t assist speed indexing.

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