I don’t know what it is about SEO’s and specially blackhat’s but there’s something in us that is magnetically drawn to HORSEPOWER, PUSH, AUTHORITY. We all want the BLOW AWAY and DOMINATE the SERPs. It’s like a knee jerk reaction to want for more links, better links, impossible links. Links are expensive and come with risk.
#1 most overlooked on page SEO ranking factor is free and easy
Perhaps in todays SEO one of the most overlooked opportunities is your on-page SEO as a ranking factor. When most people say “On page” they’re thinking the text, use of heading tags, alt tags, keyword density, but there’s so much more to proper on-page than those things.
One MEGA overlooked opportunity that is optimizing page load speed. It’s FREE and EASY and has NO RISK. Google loves a fast loading site. Why? Because people do.
The only people who want your site to load slowly are your competitors.
Fast, easy and free methods to improve page load speeds
- Fast hosting
- Fast, not bloated, themes
- Caching plugins
- CDN networks for large files, traffic spikes and heavy server loads
- Optimize/compress images
- Optimize above the fold content
- Stream large content instead of hosting it
- Hire a site speed optimization expert
Don’t be THAT lazy webmaster
One of the biggest mistakes I see Webmasters make, especially WordPress users is uploading bloated or at least non-compressed images. Even if they steal them from the web! It’s not just bad UX, it’s lazy. Sure we want high res images that look sharp and we don’t all want to open Photoshop every time we need to trim down an image, but even compressing the image before uploading is a HUGE leap in the right direction.
Capturing an image on a camera or phone at 300+dpi (12 MP+) and the uploading to WordPress to be viewed on 72dpi screens is horrible Webmaster procedure and leads to terribly UX.
Optimize images quick, easy and free
All webmasters
Use http://www.tinypng.com to drag, drop and compress images BEFORE uploading. Have your VA do this or do it yourself as you go. It’s free and fast.
Use Blackhat.community (bitly.com/bhctools) bulk compression tool. Put all your images in a zip file and upload it to the bulk tool. It will compress them and return them in a zip file all compressed. Max upload is 20MB.
WordPress webmasters
Install WPSmush. It’s free and will auto smush new uploads. Free plugin will only compress images smaller than 1MB. Premium plugin can do over 1mb files. If you already have a lot of files, smush them manually in the WPSmush tab.
Free Download: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
Use http://www.tinypng.com before uploading too. Every kb is worth it.
Site speed is only going to increase as a ranking factor
In todays environment more and more people have access to high speed internet. So today lazy on-page still works, but as mobile gets bigger and bigger loading your site FAST on a phone or tablet is going to be more and more important. Why not start now and get ahead of your competition by making sure your site is optimizing and blazing fast?
Your rankings, visitors and wallet will thank you!
What are your go-to onpage optimization tricks? Have a person, website or service you use for site speed optimization? Give them a shout out here.
P.S. I even used TinyPNG to optimize the screenshot of TinyPNG and saved 38%! #bossmode