Google +1 and Facebook Like buttons increase your page’s load time. Research shows that each additional second can cost you literally tens of percent of potential visitors. Our findings that adding the Google +1 button can increase load time by almost a full second is therefore scary. Moreover, Google ranking algorithm takes page load time into account and landing page load time affects the Adwords quality score.

A Facebook Like button or rectangle with friends’ faces is considered standard these days as well. In our experiment we focused on measuring the effects of these social elements on page load time. We repeatedly measured page load times on four web sites (with three different hosting providers) using the online services tools.pingdom.com, gtmetrix.com a siteloadtest.com.

We averaged the results to find the mean effect on time from click to display when Facebook and Google +1 buttons are displayed. We measured load time for the Facebook button (inserted as iframe) showing friends’ faces, without faces, with an additional Google +1 button and then with the +1 button on its own, comparing it to load time without any of these social buttons.

The graphs below show our results:

The measurements have shown that a Google +1 button on its own had the least effect on load time, while Facebook Like showing friends’ faces understandably added the most.

What is to be done?

Following the recent launch of Google+, bloggers began sharing solutions to improve the load speed of the Google+ button or prevent the page from slower loading. Most of them drew on Google Page Speed recommendations for webmasters. Asynchronous Javascript loading and linking through HTTPS became a part of the updated code for G+ button inclusion, increasing the website speed. While the asynchronous function is only supported in Chrome and Firefox 3.6+, it does not negatively effect browsers that do not support it. When Javascript is loaded in this manner, its position (header, footer) no longer matters. Analogous system us used in the Google Analytics tracking code implementation.

In addition to XFBML and IFRAME, the Faecbook Like button offers a HTML5 implementácie with the support of above-mentioned asynchronous Javascript loading.

A few days ago support for Google +1 button on mobile devices has been added. Until now Javascript had to be edited to display the button to avoid wasteful HTTP connection usage. This is now supported on mobile devices using Android 2.1+ and iOS 4.0+.

The easiest ways to further speed up sites using Google +1 and Facebook Like buttons are:

• turning off the Google +1 and Facebook Like counters
• turning off faces for Facebook Like
• only displaying social buttons if new content is shown

Efforts at making sites faster with respect to social buttons load time represent only one of the areas of page speed optimisation. If you use multiple Javascripts, the NBL Javascript for global asynchronous loading of scripts may be useful.

There is much more room to improve various aspects of website performance and we are happy to help!

Radio_FM compared the time spent listening to its online stream of people coming to its site via its Twitter and profile on Facebook. Listeners who came from Twitter contributed more to increasing the average time spent listening to the radio’s stream than the five times larger but less involved Facebook group, Radio_FM director Dušan Vančo reported on his blog (in Slovak).

He also wrote that they used a focus group composed of Facebook fans to fine tune how they communicate online without alienating their audience.

What do your analytics show? How many Facebook friends is one of your Twitter followers worth?

How do the print styles work? Basically, there are the same CSS rules as you are using for your web site’s layout and design today. The only difference is using a print media to mark the rules valid for printing. You can, for example, add a print style on your web site just like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

Do you really want to print everything?

Except from the actual non-ecological nature of printing the web pages the way you see it displayed on the screen, you should also think if all those sections are really necessary when printing. Does the printed left menu help your visitors in any way? And what about those ad banners – what’s their actual role on a printed sheet? And what if you would like to provide an additional information in print that is not visible on your web site? Or even more – you would like to have your logo and photos printed in better quality?

Print styles come to your help. Eliminate the unnecessary elements of a page or simplify the printing layout of your web site. Let’s say that an element banner contains advertisement you don’t want to print. We will also remove the left menu that is useless on a paper. And a logo, of course, will look better when printed, if we provide it in higher quality. We will add the following rules in the print.css stylesheet:

#banner, #menu { display: none }
#logo { background: url(images/logo-hq.png); }


Call to action on a paper

On the other hand, we want to show an address of a page (URL) that is printed out – we will add a hidden element printurl into HTML and a rule to make it visible to the print stylesheets:

#printurl { display: block; font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; }

A reader of the printed version will immediately know the actual web page address. You can even add a call to action to an element visible only when printed, e.g. “Visit www.example.com and get a 5% discount!” or “If you order until September 30th, you get a free shipping!”.

Printed order available for an immediate checking

Ideally, you should be using the specific CSS print styles during shopping process for every “thank you” screen offering a summary of an order, travel itinerary, important contacts or a date of delivery. That’s the good time, when the use of special CSS rules makes the printed pages easily scannable with all information available immediately. Save your customers a bunch of frustration and yourself time spent answering the same questions about the orders repeatedly.

By the way: you will even get this article served a bit differently when printed (use the Print Preview to see an example).

Do you know other uses of printed stylesheets for offline marketing? Let us know about them in the comments!

http://blog.pizzaseo.com/print-styles-offline-marketing/

In 2010 we therefore designed a completely new audit, the Web Presence Audit (the working title had been the Web Visibility Audit but a Slovak competitor) beat us to this word. The new audit goes even deeper in analyzing clients’ (and their competitors’) overall presence on the web – in social networks, local search results, covering the basics of online reputation management and synergies between paid search engine presentation (PPC) and optimization.

We are therefore sharing our Effective Web Audit, in most respects still valid, with everyone. Website owners and designers can check their sites, and SEOs can compare it to their audit practices (not all of which stand up to scrutiny).

Our Effective Web Audit evaluates your web site in six main parts:

1. (X)HTML and CSS code – is your code well structured and valid? What kind of layout are you using? What about your CSS and Javascript? Do you have well-titled pages and use META information?
2. URL addresses structure – do you use friendly URLs? Any duplicate content issues?
3. Technical issues – is your web site indexed by search engines? Are pages cached and links working? What does your robots.txt file say?
4. Statistics - do you know your traffic? Do you use Google Webmaster Tools? What are your keywords and their positions? How is your backlink profile?
5. Accessibility - does your website display properly in every browser? How do text changes impacts your web site? Do text links clearly stand out? How fast does your web site load?
6. Usability - is your logo positioned properly? Is web site navigation clear? Does the user know at all times what page he is on? Do you offer a sitemap? How are your links targeted? Are they well described? Is there meaningful content on your web site? Does your error (page not found) page help or scare people away? Does overall look and feel of your web site agree with its goals?

To download (licensed under Creative Commons Attribution cc by license):

• Effective Web Audit – PDF format

ODT or DOC formats available on request.

See if the Effective Web Audit helps you understand web marketing better. If you require professional internet marketing advice or help contact us.

First day at Pizza SEO was notable for all book recommendations I received.  After acquainted with my colleagues, I jumped right into work. I received some training and was told what books I should read. I was shocked by the amount of recommended reading, but all books look interesting.

In any company a new guy must have his first training and know the working processes of the company. I learned what the business of Pizza SEO is, what things they do. The best way to learn is to study the last work cases. Of course, they also gave me further papers to study processes and techniques. And of course I was reading and searching for information about SEO on the internet.

The best time of a day for me was a meeting with a client. We were chatting about plans and strategy at one cafe. A client was open-minded and accepted some of my proposals.

And at last, one small comment on the first day. The office would look better, if we hanged some nice and colorful photo on the wall.

Main screen / New tweet textbox

Display the whole box on click, not on key-down.
Reasoning: The size of box is seen as limiting for first-time users of Choqok. Also it is small (one line
textbox), compared to the sizes of other Twitter clients.

Main screen / Posting new status

I would recommend adding traditional icon showing some kind of network activity (circle with small dot going around or similar) to be layered over the tweet textbox (some kind of opacity should be added, so it partly hides the textbox) on posting.
Reasoning: No dynamic indication of message posting occurs. If larger image is attached to the tweet and tweet posted, only Statusbar (if enabled) indicates messages is being posted.

Main screen / Flow of tweets

Tweet on mouseover
I would go for having only two larger icons RE: and RT side by side and moving Favourite “star” to the top right of the tweet.
Reasoning: Icons (Reply etc.) look very small and blurred (specially on higher resolutions).

Flow of tweets / Retweet icon

I would recommend changing it possibly to some kind of classic or double arrow directed to the right.
Reasoning: RT icon looks like a recycling, which is usually related to the delete/erase action.

New tweets count in parentheses

Hide new tweets count on restoring Choqok (or maximizing it), not on minimizing.
Reasoning: New tweets count in the parentheses is hidden only when Choqok is minimized. Users should
not be forced to minimize Choquok (or press CTRL+R) to stop it from displaying number of new tweets, replies or direct messages.

related: Settings

Have an option to “Include replies in Home”.
Have an option to “Include direct messages in Home”.
Have an option to “Merge Inbox and Outbox into Dms”.
Reasoning: Hiding unnecessary tabs (if user chooses so) saves space and make Choqok look cleaner and simple.

related: Tabs

These actions are related to the settings as described above.
In case “Include replies in Home” option in Settings is checked, delete this tab as it would be redundant.
In case “Include direct messages in Home” option in Settings is checked, delete these tabs as they would be redundant.
In case “Merge Inbox and Outbox into DMs” option in Settings is checked, display only one tab “DMs” (alternatively Directs” or “Direct messages”.

Merging direct messages’ Inbox and Outbox

I recommend Inbox and Outbox tabs to be merged.
Reasoning: Merging enables user to follow up easier on the mutual communication. Alternatively, threading could be introduced, with last message shown as the larger one with other DMs belonging to the same conversation moved to the right under the latest DM from/to the same person. Left margin should be set to some value to put older DMs under the new one.

Main screen / Statusbar

Status bar should be disabled by default.
Reasoning: Statusbar does not add any informational value to the tweet list (flow of tweets) or when
browsing menu. Last update time could be optionally displayed next to “You and your friends” text in the
parentheses, e.g. (5m ago, no new tweets), (10m ago, 5 new tweets). A tooltip could be displayed on
mouseover with additional information: “Last updated 5m ago. 5 new tweets, 2 replies, 3 DMs”.

Download the full report

You can download the full report in PDF format (143 KBs). The report contains recommendations on usability improvements to Choqok Twitter client as well as more information on Pizza SEO and what we do.

Some of his tips include unplugging mouse and using only keyboard to work with the web, using only a software keyboard, turning off the monitor and navigating by screen reader only, sitting far away from the screen or decreasing brightness of the screen.

His tips are well thought and if more developers and designers followed them, it would make websites better in general.

Newspapers will become a lucrative niche for SEO. There are signs of print newspaper slowly fading away – two Detroit daily papers are refocusing on digital, as the old model had become “unsustainable”. Circulation and advertising revenues are falling for newspapers around the world.

People are reading digital media much more and news is reported often up to the minute (e.g. Twitter journalism, Qik, Google News) rather than with a day’s lag. Since newspapers are under pressure to build their online presence, around the world (with the partial exception of Belgium) they are trying to optimise the content to appear better in search engines.

SEOs noticed when New York Times put its SEO strategy in place. It made its archives accessible (with a few old school SEO “tricks”) to build traffic and incease ad revenue.

There has also been talk of reporters getting trained in basic SEO tactics regarding usage of keywords. The Times Online editor-in-chief said search and SEO were completely interwoven – reporters learned SEO techniques and monitored site searches to better gauge reader interest. Sub editors, who usually make up catchy headlines, are being pushed out by SEO requirements.

Respected Dutch SEO Joost de Valk put forward his ideas for newspaper SEO based on work he did for Dutch papers: fix templates (tags, code) and URLs (include keywords, as well as some numbers with at least three digits to meet Google News requirements) and a bunch of other useful tips.

At Pizza SEO we had the privilege of working with SME Online in 2006, the online edition of one of Slovakia’s main broadsheets. They have been lauded as some of the most innovative online newspapers in Europe and had introduced blogging into the press. We have also worked with Euractiv, a news server on EU affairs both in Slovakia and in Brussels.

Media clients are usually refreshing in that they do not have a shortage of content, which many other clients suffer from. Rather they have an abundance and there are numerous challenges in presenting the rich content to visitors in a usable and accessible format.

Lookout for more and more traditional media outlets around you looking for SEO staff and consultants. There are likely to be opportunities for SEOs both in-house and outsourced in many geographic an linguistic news markets.

After we had agreed to start one of Slovakia’s first SEO consultancies in the beginning of 2006, we had thought long and hard about a good name – one that would work both in our home market and leave room for international work. We thought the name should contain SEO as it stands for the search engine optimization, our core area of work. Trying different phrases and finding no agreement between the four founders even after multiple rounds of beer, I finally said in exasperation: “We might as well call it Pizza SEO, huh?” Everybody was surprised for a moment, but then we realized we had stumbled upon a winner. After all, everybody likes Pizza…

So there it was and it became official – we are Pizza SEO.

However, it does not mean that searchability, accessibility and usability issues regarding Flash websites have been resolved. Flash is an important tool and has a role in web presentations but should rarely be the format of choice for entire websites.

Indexing Flash better does not mean indexing Flash well. By design there is very little text within a Flash site for the search engines to read. Moreover, you have little control over how the website will appear in the SERPs (and often, it won’t be pretty).

There is no jumping inside a Flash movie. Google reading more into Flash does not mean it can overcome one of its main usability drawbacks – the fact that most flash websites are on a single URL or have a limited URL structure. You cannot link to a specific point within a Flash site. So even if Google knows that somewhere within your site there is something a user wants to see, it has no way of sending her there.

Many usability conscious SEOs are worried that news on better indexing of Flash sites devalues their oft used argument – it is easier to convince someone to avoid Flash if you can threaten very poor search engine visibility. However, most companies with pure Flash websites are simply victims of looks-obsessed graphic designers who don’t understand user experience. All the arguments against Flash abuse still hold: hard to optimize for search engines, poor accessibility (think rich managers on mobile devices if sight-impaired users aren’t good enough), poor user experience (no back button, no way of knowing how to interact with many sites).

This does not mean there is no role for Flash to play. If used correctly (most of the time within a website rather than instead of a website) Flash can make for great user experience (Future NOW’s Jeff Sexton provides great examples) . So next time your advertising agency or web designer tells you to go Flash make sure they understand its limits.