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mod_pagespeed: The Bottom Line

Phil — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:46:10 +0000

Here’s the bottom line on mod_pagespeed: Webmasters and developers will use this to improve performance of Web pages. But there is some specific information these developers will need to know. This is open-source Apache software used to automatically optimize pages and content served with the Apache HTTP server.

The key is using filters that drive down to best performance practices on the pages. The module includes filters to optimize JavaScript, HTML and CSS style sheets, along with filters to optimize JPEG images and PNG images.

When word first came out about mod-pagespeed there was a tendency to panic. Developers and Webmasters found that in addition to the dozens of factors affecting search-engine rankings Google was going to start using speed as a primary factor. The questions were:

Would this have a serious negative effect on the “little guys” who couldn’t afford to fully optimize their self-designed pages?
How would complex but attractive pages be affected?

Using page speed as a primary factor in the search-engine process will only affect a tiny percentage of sites, according to information from Google. The company provides a number of ways to speed up sites. Webmasters should probably take look at these. code.google.com

Using mod_pagespeed in combination with the correct compression and caching steps should result in significant improvement in loading time.

Analytics Tools

Phil — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:00:04 +0000

When it comes to free web analytics, there are several choices. Four favorites are Onestatfree.com, Google Analytics, Piwik, and GoStats, each of which you can see in the accompanying screen shots. In each case, using the analytics software is a matter of registering, copying a snippet of code, and pasting it into the source code for the page you want to track. You can track something as simple as how many visitors per day you get to complex information like conversions and percentage of goals reached.

Google Analytics is the most elaborate and feature-laden of the bunch, and it’s all free, whereas for some of the other programs, you have to pay to upgrade to get premium features. But Onestatfree, Google Analytics, Piwik, and GoStats are all easy to use and set up. For most people, convenience and ease of use will be the factors that influence how much use you get out of any web analytics software. There will also be a certain amount of discipline you’ll have to get used to in order to make the most of your analytics. But once you learn to use the numbers to your advantage, you’ll be more motivated than ever to get your site in order and optimize it so you can reach all your goals for your website.

Google Webmaster Tools – Is Your Site Healthy?

Phil — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:16:13 +0000

There are lots of ways that webmasters can assess the health of their websites using Google Webmaster Tools. One good tip is to use a text browser like Lynx to look at your site. That’s because most search crawlers “see” pretty much what Lynx does. If your site’s full up with JavaScript, cookies, and Flash, crawlers might have a hard time crawling your site.

It’s also a good idea to find out if your server supports the HTTP header “if-then-modified.” With it, your server can tell Google if your content has changed since the last crawl of the site, saving you bandwidth.

If you use the robots.txt file, you can tell crawlers which directories can be crawled, and which can’t. Google Webmaster Tools has a robots.txt analysis page that can help you determine if you’re using robots.txt correctly. That way you can prevent crawling of things like search results pages or automatically generated pages that aren’t going to add any value for users finding you via search engine.

Another great test of how healthy your site is (at least as far as Google is concerned) is how fast pages load. You can use the Page Speed tool as directed here to check.