What's wrong with image dimensions?

Yes, what's wrong? I say you - pretty much is wrong. I've completed a kind of little study for our firm about how well is image optimization in times of mobile first. You know what! I was disgusted twice:

1. roughly 85% images are oversized - this is not a dark secret, we are used to this in the meanwhile,
2. roughly 20% images are oversized in terms of dimensions: it means 20% of original images are higher than their displaying dimensions.

Read further: study setup, detailed results, toolchain and scripts

Three perfect image optimizers for SEO

What is this - a perfect image optimization tool for SEO?

For me the perfect image optimization tool must have following features:

• This image optimizer is not a kind of hipster online tool, but the old good installable software,
• This image optimizer is free - not a kind of shity shareware, which means it would be free, but indeed isn't,
• User can setup an optimization level,
• The tool must do batch image compression - real SEO ninjas don't have much time,
• This image optimizer must, no - it MUST understand nested folders and
• it MUST be able to save optimized images in the same nested folder/subfolder structure,
• This tool, again, MUST be able to save optimized images without to change the file type,
• This tool should be able to resize images saving the width/height ratio.
• And, of course, it must do its compression job well ;)

Do i want too much? No, i believe, it isn't too much.

I will not explain, why image compression is substantially important for your website's rankings. Just one sentence: images are the most heaviest static asset type on ANY website. Do you still don't want to compress them? No prob, just as you wish. But why are you still here?

For non-ignoramuses among us: yes, such tools actually exist - they aren't just a subject of SEO fable tales. I know even three tools, which are able to accomplish every single task i listed above. Want to know more? Let's go →

Making decision: hosting of javascript libraries on external CDN or locally

The benefits of hosting common JavaScript libraries externally at JavaScript CDN are well known - i list them just in short: external hosting of JavaScript libraries

• reduces own server's traffic
• makes parallel loading possible

The first question is: where to host? Directly on library vendor's site? Or somewhere else? There are mainly two factors, which let us make a decision, where we host our JavaScript libraries:

• Speed
• Popularity

The second question is more general: whether to host externally? Or locally?
Lets look on some details, which help to choose an optimal public hosting of common JavaScript libraries.

tl;dr;

• If you doubtlessly want to host JavaScript libraries externally, host them at Google Hosted Libraries - so you get highest chance, that your visitors have them already in chance and don't need to download them again.
• If you doubt, host better your JavaScript libraries locally - visitors, who have JavaScript libraries in cache are very few, and the average visitor gets the data on fastest way.

Pro and contra of images encoding as base64 encoded data URI for performance purpose

One of the common techniques of the website performance optimization is the reducing of the HTTP requests amount. Each website asset, like image, needs a HTTP request to be loaded.  On this issue is based an idea, to embed website images as base64 encoded data URI. After an image is embedded directly into HTML or CSS of the website, no additional HTTP request is needed to load this image - it is no longer an external resource, but becomes a part of the source code. This is the good part.

H for htaccess: part 5 of the HASCH the OnPage SEO framework

.htaccess (hypertext access) is a text file, placed mostly in the root folder of the given site and invisible cause of the point at the begin. .htaccess contains directives for server, server software, robots and browser about handling of files, folders and paths / URLs.

Generally there are 2 topics, where .htaccess can be used for SEO purposes:

• Mod_alias and mod_rewrite directives (URL redirects and rewrites)
• load time optimization

Site security has in my opinion only indirectly to do with SEO, so i decided not to make it to a topic of this article.

The last, fifth part of my HASCH OnPage SEO framework is about the SEO mission of .htaccess. I aim to create a kind of multipurpose explained and examples-illustrated checklist about .htaccess usage for mod_rewrite and robots manipulation and load time optimization as advanced SEO objectives. This ".htaccess for SEO" tutorial will be helpful (for me and you) on performing site audits and building new strictly SEO-minded sites. Read the tutorial →

Is text to code ratio relevant for SEO?

• The short answer is: no. There is no such metric or signal or anything, what would Google measure.
• The long answer is: ...yes! How? Optimizing text to code ratio to the benefit of text, we reduce the code rate. Less code generally effects less page loading time. And this is very well a measurable signal, evaluated by Google and influencing a rank.

So what now? Text to code ration as measurable number isn't relevant for SEO in no way. But it does matter as a first symptom of possible loading time issues, related to dispensable code inside of web document. How to reduce the website code amount?

How to give a face to your entities? Earn SEO profit with making Wikimedia Commons to your media hosting!

We already know, how to become an entity - create a Freebase topic. But this is a common issue that add image to Freebase topic is no longer possible. Our goals regarding semantic SEO and our images are however:

• the ability to provide semantic informations about our images,
• a possibility to share images with belonging semantic informations
• embedding of semantically described images into web documents as images utilizing ImageObject class from Schema.org and, last but not least,
• to host these images with belonging semantic informations on an authoritative source.

All these tasks can be accomplished using Wikimedia Commons, a free media repository of the Wikimedia Foundation. I divide this article about using of Wikimedia Commons into 2 sections:

• How to upload to Wikimedia Commons (things like register, login, create user page, select and/or find out matching license, upload and describe image or other media file)
• How to cite Wikimedia Commons (using on websites, embedding into semantic markup)

30 cheat sheats for successful SEO

What a SEO needs to know?

The web is flooded with infografics and cheat sheets. Somebody meant once, such giveaways are good for SEO as linkbuilding assets and now everybody makes some. At least as copy and share. I will not speculate about whether or how many of them bring real value, imo most of them are redundant, but my personal biggest problem with them was - THE cheat sheet was NEVER present, if it was really needed (at least for me). Indeed, the sense and the convenience of cheat sheets is if they are there just in time, at the moment, whem one needs them. So i decided to create a collection of all cheat sheets i ever used on my SEO activities and share it. This cheat sheets suite is an evergreen knowledge, hints and tricks, which will be always helpful. Surely this knowledge isn't enough to call oneself an expert, but for somebody who does SEO, specially technical SEO and Onpage SEO, these cheat sheets will render a great service. And for somebody who learns SEO at the moment, they will give a great summary of things which must be learned. These cheat sheets cover already all essential knowledge segments a SEO brings daily into action. Befor publishing i reviewed all cheat sheets to find eventuallya fresher version - for some of them i finded one indeed.

Optimizing of Blogger load time

Insert scripts properly into Blogger template's head

There are many how-to's for implementing of third-part scripts into Blogger templates, mostly custom css and javascripts. I personally use Syntaxhighlighter and Google Analytics. But the most how-to's advice users to insert scripts into the template's head. This approach is against all best practices for optimizing of site's load times. If scripts are inserted into the head, the whole site's content will not load and wait till all scripts are fully loaded. This influences negatively the whole site's load time, which, as you know is an important ranking signal. The there is a strong dependency: more scripts in the head - longer load time - poorer ranking.

My advice for you (i tested it myself without any issue): insert scripts into the body's bottom, just befor closing tag. If something doesn't work, you could still move scripts one by one into the head.

Advanced image optimization: Exif matters!

You want surely , that your site comes into relevant SERP with its images. There are some technics, which will enrich your images and let them be better indexed. Beside of this we talk about image size optimization - size matters, you know.