Simple and Easy Tips to Increase Website Speed

When you start a website, you put its design and content on a very high priority; after all, that is the main purpose of your website – attracting visitors and grabbing their attention.
But, what is also important is that this content and design should not negatively affect your website speed.

Learn HOW TO INCREASE WEBSITE SPEED in 5 simple Steps

Your website loading speed is a very important factor, playing crucial role in search engine rankings, user satisfaction and thus, customer conversion rates. Time is precious.
Therefore, nobody likes to wait for more than a certain limit. And in fierce competition on the internet, if your website doesn’t load very fast, you may lose your visitor in a matter of seconds.
Research has shown that a slow loading website could have following effects.

•  A website will lose 25% visitors, if it takes more than 4 seconds to load and lose 35-40% visitors if it takes more than 10 seconds.
•  52% of visitors close the websites that load slow and don’t visit them again.

Here’s the best 5 very simple and useful tips for you to increase website speed.

5 Best tips to Increase Website Speed.

1. Use Optimized Images Only

Just like you cannot run fast carrying a heavy load, so does your website. With large images, it is bound to load slowly. This problem can be easily sorted out by using simple image optimization techniques, without any quality compromise.

•  Always use an image conforming to proper display dimensions on the website. Do not try to “fit in” images by shrinking or enlarging them by coding.
•  Always use JPEG format as preferred choice for photographs. Use PNG format for all images, such as icons etc.
•  Use CSS effects for shadowing and other visual effects wherever possible, instead of images.

You can also use Kraken, it is a great tool to get your images optimized. More resources: tinypng, compressnow, jpeg-mini

2. Use Proper Font

Just like images, unnecessary fonts can also hinder your website speed.

•  Never use more than 2-3 font styles in a single webpage. Excessive fonts mean excessive coding, avoid it.
•  Do not use bigger font size, unless absolutely necessary. Also, try to make do with commonly used fonts available rather than going for complex fonts.
•  Prefer use of simple and low line weight fonts as far as possible.
•  Use custom font in place of graphic based text.

3. Use Proper Coding Technique

Since every element in coding has its own effects, therefore each of these element should be properly placed. Some important tips are

•  Keep CSS files at the top – As your purpose is to display your website design exactly the way you want it to look, therefore CSS files should be loaded first. CSS files are faster to load and also serve the purpose of providing user with interesting and useful contents, before anything else.
•  Keep JavaScript at the bottom – JavaScript files contains some widgets for user interaction like comments, and also takes comparatively more time to load. Therefore, they should be loaded last.
•  Keep Codes minimum – Why waste time loading anything irrelevant, so try to keep everything minimum by including only absolutely necessary elements. Avoid every bit of anything extra, keeping it “short and sweet”.
•  Use Compressed Files – Compressed files requires less memory than uncompressed files and using them can have a huge impact on website loading time, reducing it by up to 70%.

You can use online tools like CSS Compressor and YUI Compressor, to minify coding. UseW3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache plugins for wordpress website.

4. Uninstall Unnecessary Plugins

Your website loading speed will definitely slow down with additional plugins on your site. Some plugins are absolutely necessary, but still you can resort to following minimizations.

•  Identify the unnecessary plugins, then either uninstall or switch them off.
•  Always opt for integrated or built-in plugins instead of going for third-part plugins. For example, if you have a WordPress website, using built-in social plugins will greatly reduce your website size and improve your website speed. Use P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) to check stat & usage of plugins in your wordpress. 
•  Check my article about Basic WordPress Plugins you need after installing wordpress.

5. Choose Proper Server Location

The location of the server which is hosting your website also affects your website’s loading speed. The site takes more time to load if the users are situated at far distant places. While choosing a server location, follow these steps.

•  Identify – where do most of your website’s visitors come from? Which geographical location? Which country?
•  Always choose a web hosting provider whose servers are located at a place where most of your website’s visitors come from. For example, if your website is intended for Indian users, make sure to get web hosting in India. You will get znetlive hosting at flat 30% off by using this coupon codes. I would suggest you to go either with Hostgator or ZNetlive, both are best indian web hosting provider.
•  Consider CDN(Content Delivery Network) if you were not using managed hosting. Don’t forget to check Best CDN Comparison Guide.

Keep Testing your website:

For analyzing the page load speed of your website, you can use online available tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom and keep doing the changes recommended by them. These are great tools, easy to use, and free.
Even if you don’t have any coding knowledge, still you can easily apply these simple techniques or ask your web developer to apply them.
A faster loading website will definitely increase traffic on your website, increase reader satisfaction, improve retention and conversion rates, and ultimately result in big business gains. 

Any suggestion regarding increase website speed ? Let me know your thoughts by commenting below.

6 Reasons Why Dedicated Server Hosting is Best for Your Website

Every small and big business has many options to choose from for hosting their website. These options include shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server hosting. Among these, shared web hosting is the most preferred option not only among business owners, but among all needing web hosting.

But, as far as businesses are considered, sooner or later this turns out to be a poor choice. Because shared web hosting does not provide as much power, control and security that a business website may need. Therefore, for business websites,hosting on a dedicated server is the best option. Dedicated servers provide the best hosting features that a business or commercial website needs.

Let’s see why a dedicated server hosting is the best option for hosting your website.

1. Your Own Unique IP Address

Every server has a single and unique IP address. In shared web hosting, where hundreds of websites are hosted on a single server, all these websites share the same IP address. The disadvantage of sharing an IP address is that if any of these website is reported for spamming or hosting objectionable content, then it may get blacklisted. And subsequently, this affects all the websites sharing that IP address.

By getting a dedicated server, your website gets a unique IP address which is just for your website and is not shared with any other website. So, you don’t have to worry about mischievous activities of anybody else. Use MXToolbox to check your server for IP blacklisting.

2. No Sharing of Server Resources

In shared web hosting, since you are sharing the server with many other websites, so you have to share the server resources (CPU, RAM, Hard Disk, Bandwidth, etc.) as well. There is a competition among websites to get enough resources for their proper working.

In managed dedicated server hosting, your website has full access to the server resources and you are the sole user of your dedicated server. Your website will never face any hindrance in resource utilization and work flawlessly to deliver great performance.

3. Protection from Malicious Activities On Other Sites

Just like your shared IP address can be blacklisted due to malicious activities done by others, similarly your website may face severe security issues due to the sharing of resources with other websites. If any of the websites on a shared server is attacked by a malware or a virus or get hacked, your website will also become highly vulnerable due to inadequate security measures in shared hosting.

With a dedicated server, your website is completely secure as it is isolated from others. Also, you can install appropriate security measures to secure your website and protect it as good as you want and never worry about your website getting down due to malicious intent of others.

4. Greater Flexibility, Control & Freedom

A shared hosting server is overloaded with websites and it does not allow a website to claim a part of server resources. It allow all websites to use any part of the server and it does not provide any limitation of usage. But, the real fact is that it does not provide any control over server resource to any website.

But, for better performance it is necessary that your website have control over its server resources and a dedicated server provides this control. In dedicated server hosting, you not only get control over the server resources, but also the flexibility and freedom to use them as per the requirements of your website.

5. Enhanced Performance & Best Server Uptime

In a shared hosting server, you will never get the optimum level of performance that you expect your website to deliver. It is because your website never gets enough resources to deliver great performance as the shared server is overloaded with too many websites. This even results in frequent server downtime.

To bring the best performance out of your website, you must host it on a dedicated server, which will provide necessary resources to your website and ensures highest server up time, so that your website always remains up and running.

6. Best Security

The shared hosting server is the most insecure from security point of view. It does not have proper security measures in place and hosting hundreds of websites makes it even more insecure.

For best security, the dedicated server is the best option. It is most secure as it has great security features and there is not any other website to make it insecure. On your dedicated server, you can install the best software and applications for protection against every kind of possible attack.

These above mentioned reasons state that a dedicated server is the best option for your website, especially if you are running a professional business or commercial website and need a great and consistent performance from your website.

As a final suggestion, it is obvious that you must purchase your dedicated server from the best dedicated server provider. For this, it is highly recommended that you get it from ZNetLive, which is a very reliable and trusted provider of managed dedicated servers and all type of hosting solutions. 

Which type of Web Hosting is right for you?

Moving to a new place? What is the first pre-requisite you need to take care of? Undoubtedly, it is the accommodation; and the type of accommodation you choose depends on your preferences – affordability, need for space and extent of privacy, among others.

Similarly, when deciding to “move” online, and getting a website, you need to decide where your website and it’s data will “stay”. And this is where a web hosting provider comes in – providing you with a place where you can store your website data.

Types of Web Hosting

The type of web hosting you need depends on your requirement. There are three types of web hosting:

• Shared Web hosting
• VPS (Virtual Private Servers)
• Dedicated Servers

We’ll understand each type of web hosting and its pros and cons with the accommodation analogy used above.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is identical to staying in a hostel or a dormitory.

Space– Like in a hostel, occupants have to share the space; multiple users are allocated a huge portion of web space to share, and have to keep their data limited in a way so as not to exceed it.

Scalability – You cannot throw up a surprise party in your hostel room, can you? Your room mates will be disturbed, as the space is limited. Likewise, websites on shared hosting cannot handle instant increase in traffic, as it may disturb optimal functioning of other websites.

Freedom- As the hostel stay does not grant permission to choose the resources like the best A.C., a cable provider of your choice, or a hot plate, shared hosting also comes with the resources which your hosting provider chooses to provide you with, and you do not have flexibility to get your “favorite” cable provider or any other extra amenities you might want to add to make your stay better.

Security- Your stay in a hostel is secured within the hostel boundary but since you are sharing your room with your roomies you can’t be very sure of the security of your personal belongings within the room. Similarly, any malware or phishing activity on a particular website may hamper the other websites hosted on the same server.

Cost- Shared hosting is the least expensive mode of web hosting, same as a hostel accommodation.

When should you buy Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is an ideal mode of web hosting for small businesses, like small static websites and blogs where:

• Data to be shared is not very vast.
• Data does not require security layers
• Data accessing traffic is minimal.
• Scalability of the vital stats of server and storage need not require alterations.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Getting a VPS is akin to moving in an apartment or a flat. Just like a big building is partitioned into several apartments, a big dedicated server is partitioned into several VPSs. The partition means much more space, privacy, security and flexibility in terms of choices.

Space- The web space in a VPS is much more as compared to shared hosting.

​Scalability – A VPS allows you to scale as per your need in terms of web space, bandwidth etc. You can expect your VPS to handle high traffics with grace. Also, if your neighbor VPS gets a sudden increase in traffic, your website/application’s performance won’t be affected at all.

Freedom – As compared to a hostel, staying in an apartment allows more freedom in terms of using extra benefits like having electrical appliances, a cable provider of your choice, a UPS for power backup etc.  Same goes with having a VPS – you can install custom applications, software and other tools (backup and security) you need as per your requirement and choice.

Security–  A VPS means much more security than shared hosting. As in shared hosting, your website is hosted along with several others, the security flaws and vulnerabilities like malware, viruses and hacking attempts in theirs, might jeopardize your data’s safety too.  A VPS on the other hand isolates your website from others to provide relatively high level of security.

Cost- A VPS is relatively expensive than shared hosting but is not the costliest of all the web hosting types.

When should you buy VPS?

Hosting on VPS is ideal for small to medium size businesses, especially ecommerce websites where:

• A sudden growth in website traffic is experienced for some particular periods of time.
• Data storage demands security layer.
• The amount of data to be stored increases to an extent.
• Scalability of the vital stats of server and storage need alterations.

Dedicated Servers

Staying in an apartment, although relatively better, has its fair share of constraints. At the end of the day, you are sharing some resources with others – water, for example. Imagine if your neighbor drains out the water tank during the night, you’d be stuck while getting ready in the morning wouldn’t you? Replace water with bandwidth and you can connect the dots.

This problem can be solved if you have your own independent house – wherein you have complete control over all the resources. This is where dedicated servers come into the picture.

Space– As per your need and capital, you can add as much space you want in a dedicated server, all reserved for your use.

Scalability – You can increase the amount of resources allocated to your server as and when the need be, without any restrictions.

Freedom– Throw a party, have a pool table, get the widest available TV screen, have pets – you can do it all at your independent house. Same goes for dedicated server – install all the software and tools you need without any restrictions.

Security– A dedicated server ensures top-notch security for your website and application.

Cost- Dedicated server is the costliest hosting option.

When should you buy dedicated server?

Hosting on dedicated server is ideal for large enterprises, high volume informational sites and other organizations, whose websites demand

• Heavy traffic and CPU needs.
• Data storage demands maximum security.
• The amount of data to be stored is very vast.

Important posts about hosting:

⇒  Why Dedicated Server Hosting is Best for Your Website

⇒  top 5 reasons why you should consider ZNetLive as your web hosting provider

Conclusion:

The type of web hosting to be chosen depends on the type of website you own. The traffic witnessed by your website and other requirements like data security, resource scalability, privacy and affordability are other major factors which decide the most appropriate web hosting that you should go for.

Infographic Credit: WebHostingSecretRevealed

Confused while choosing niche for your Blog?

When you first start blogging, you’ll hear a lot about choosing niche. Your niche encompasses both the subject of your blog and the target audience who will be reading it.

 

Choosing the right niche will help make writing your blog both enjoyable and profitable, but the question remains: how do you choose the right niche?

There’s no one formula for finding the perfect niche, but the following guidelines will help you to pick a strong niche for successful blogging. Nichehacks asked this question to 50+ experienced bloggers. You’ll find their answers and insights here.

What do you think is the best method of choosing a niche for your blog and what do you recommend someone who wants to start blogging for a living?

Pick a Subject You Care About

Choosing a subject that you’re passionate about is certainly an important consideration while choosing niche for your blog. If you want to have a successful blog, you’re going to be writing regularly (at least once a week) for a long time. Your content will become dry and boring very quickly if you’re not personally interested in your topic. Your readers will absolutely notice if you are not excited about your topic.

Of course, there will be days when writing a blog post isn’t your favorite activity, but overall, your blog needs to give off a sense of expertise and enthusiasm. The more you know and care about a subject, the better you can write about it, and the more readers will want to read your content. Choosing niche you’re passionate about will also help to motivate you and keep you writing in the long term.

Choose a Profitable Niche

If you want to make money from your blog, you also need to choose a niche that has some potential for profit. This means deciding on a niche that a substantial number of people are also interested in. One way you can figure this out is by using a keyword analysis tool, such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Copyblogger’s Keyword Research. Try entering in keywords related to your subject and see how many searches people are doing for those terms. You want to choose something that’s getting at least a few hundred monthly searches to ensure that some traffic comes to your site.

To choose a profitable niche, you’ll also want to consider the potential for advertising. In order to effectively monetize your blog, you’ll need to find advertisers who want to reach your target audience. Off of the top of your head, can you think of at least 3 companies who might be interested in advertising on posts about your niche topic? If not, you might not have much potential for advertising revenue, and you might need to come up with a different niche.

Choosing Niche of the Right Size

One of the trickiest things about choosing niche for your blog is picking something that’s the right size. If you choose something too general, you risk being lost in a sea of search results. If you choose something too specific, your target audience may be too small.

When you’re coming up with an idea, try creating a list of variants of the same niches, ranging from the most general to the most specific. Then you’ll want to pick something around the middle. Niches such as “Travel” and “Business Marketing” are likely too broad. You’ll be competing with thousands of other websites with the same keywords, and you’ll miss out on readers who are looking for something more specific. “Budget Backpacking” and “Marketing for Landscaping Businesses” are more specific but still have significant target audiences.

With a more specific niche, you’ll have less competition and are more likely to draw in readers who are looking for more targeted information. Just be careful not to go too narrow, as you’ll potentially be writing hundreds of posts on this topic.

Remember that you can tweak your niche a bit as you build your blog. If you start with too wide of a focus, you can decide to make it more specific and write posts within a smaller area of interest. Conversely, if you realize your niche is too small, you can add a variety of posts to broaden your subject. This is easiest to do if you choose a niche to start with that has a bit of flexibility for expansion or contraction.

If you do your research and choose something that you’re passionate about, your niche is likely to help make your blog successful. After selecting perfect niche, you need to choose blogging platform for your blog.

How Your Blog Can Benefit from Network Marketing Tactics

Let us first get one thing clear – although its success usually goes unnoticed, the entire network marketing industry is bringing a lot of money to the table. That is why we see more and more traditionally oriented businesses implementing network marketing tactics into their own operations, usually with a lot of success. But can this be applied to your blog and is it even possible to emulate MLM tactics if there is no tangible end product and, therefore, no tangible profit you can base your affiliate network on? The shortest possible answer is – sure. Let us take a quick look at some network marketing tactics that can help your blog get off the ground.

Develop Your Own Network

Let us start with the thing you and various unrelated businesses do have in common, which is at the same time the very reason marketing networks exist, and that would be a need for affordable and efficient marketing. As we have already mentioned, MLM networks are based on sharing chunks of profit, which is in your case absent, but that does not mean that you cannot find mutual benefit you can base your network on. And truly, it is not that uncommon to see various internet personas (most notably Youtubers) doing shared projects with their colleagues and making guest appearances on their websites in order to increase traffic, and potentially tap into their pre-established audience.

Be Coachable

Of course, if you want to, you can always take the MLM network model and interpret it in a more literal fashion. In other words, it would not be a bad idea to look for young and up-and-coming bloggers, recruit them into your network, use your experience and influence to help them get on their feet, allow them to make guest appearances on your website, and later use the established connection to your advantage. Once you manage to gather a large enough circle of associates and affiliates, pushing your content into the masses, and doing SEO are going to be much easier endeavors.

Know Your Target Audience

One very important thing that separates unsuccessful network marketers from successful network marketers is that the latter ones have a very clear picture where the money lies and who their target audience is. Learn something from them and keep in mind why you started writing, who are the people that brought your blog into existence, and what drove them there in the first place. Side projects are great, as long as you do not get lost in them.

Never Stop Self-Improving

Another thing we can learn from successful network marketers is constant self-improving. These days, new technologies are developing at a relentless pace, and the focus of marketing is inevitably shifting into the web space. It is clear that marketing networks would not be as successful as they are if network marketers were not constantly going through the cycle of network marketing training and kept knocking at the same door. If you want to keep your blog relevant and ensure a constant influx of new followers, you must take some notes from them and take some time to master new web technologies and find a way to exploit new communication channels.

Master One Thing at the Time

Last but not the least, the strongest marketing networks are based on quality products, recruiting only  promising candidates, giving them enough attention until they are ready to take their rightful place in the network, mastering one marketing approach at time, and, finally, never abandoning the well until it is fully depleted. If you fail at either of these points (in your case, of course, the backbone of the network should be great content, instead of product), or you aimlessly chase every opportunity you stumble upon down the road, you will end up achieving nothing.