Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets

by Andrew B. King

Remember when an optimized website was one that merely didn't take all day to appear? Times have changed. Today, website optimization can spell the difference between enterprise success and failure, and it takes a lot more know-how to achieve success.

This book is a comprehensive guide to the tips, techniques, secrets, standards, and methods of website optimization. From increasing site traffic to maximizing leads, from revving up responsiveness...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596515081
• ISBN13: 9780596515089
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Extremely thorough book on managing a successful website

The first line of the preface to this book reads, "We've had a website for years now, but it hardly pays for itself." This book aims to solve the mysteries that many site owners feel about the performance of their website. Some owners don't know any better, some don't know where to start, and still others rely on false metrics to make their site seem as though it is doing better than it actually is. This book doesn't contain myths. This book doesn't contain "feel-good" stats about websites. This book contains in-depth information related to every aspect of your website, and how you can turn your website into something that works for you and, ultimately, achieves the goals you set in the beginning. This may be a financial goal and your website is responsible for driving sales. This may be a social networking goal, where you want to nurture a growing community. This may be an advertising goal, where you can optimize your site for advertising campaigns. The core of this book will help you, no matter what the goal of your website. Andy King has done an incredible job of thoroughly covering the areas of performance, optimizing these areas, and then properly analyzing the results. This book is divided up into two parts: Search Engine Marketing Optimization and Web Performance Optimization. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING OPTIMIZATION Natural Search Engine Optimization Anyone who has ever been in charge of optimizing a website for search engines can attest to the many challenges they may be presented with. These challenges are, often times, unique to any given project. Andy starts off the book by introducing natural, or organic SEO. He explains the benefits, shows some of the core SEO techniques, and wraps it up into a very thorough ten step process to achieve higher search engine rankings. He covers many aspects such as using a professional design, the pitfalls of Flash, and lists out some of the barriers to SEO. I personally liked that he took the time out to explain what a professional design looks like. He introduces the concept here, and then goes into more depth in a later chapter. I have always seen this as one of the most important aspects to your SEO campaign. Having a solid look, feel, structure, and organization will ultimately help both humans and bots find your important content. I also liked the fact that he had a nice section devoted to Microformats while explaining the benefits of Meta Data. Natural SEO Case Study: [...] So how do we know what he says is true or even works? The next chapter dives into a case study. Enough talking about what works, let's see some real world examples. This specific example, [...], took a site that was not professionally designed, and turned it around into something much more meaningful. While the copywriting was re-organized, much of the re-structuring took place in the markup. By employing quality markup, he was able to achieve better results, as things were all put into context. He makes brief mention of usi

Key for any working to enhance web functioning

Years ago an optimized website loaded quickly and worked on most browsers: today optimization includes a site's ability to attract, interact with and persuade customers. Any collection strong in web authorizing and design needs Andrew B. King's WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION, a key to all the elements that differentiate a superior website to a less effectual one. From strategies and techniques to maximize leads and sales to tuning performance with Ajax and other add-ons, WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION is key for any working to enhance web functioning.

Well Written and Thorough

First off, if you are a developer like me this book is not about the type of optimization that comes to mind when looking at the title (at least not fully). While Website Optimization does cover the technical details of optimization such as making full use of CSS, making efficient use of Javascript, and implementing AJAX wisely. It also covers the search engine marketing side of optimization. This includes the how to get your site to rank higher, how to plan and run a pay per click marketing campaign, and how to increase the percentage of clicks that turn into purchases. I see applicability for this section of the book beyond commercial websites. Open source projects or informational websites can use the techniques to increase their visibility. The book is well researched with many footnotes, charts, and illustrative case studies that demonstrate the techniques presented. The case studies follow the chapters that introduce a given marketing technique. The provides a concrete example that helps solidify the understanding of the material previously presented. The final chapter ties together the marketing and the technical with ways to measure how well you are doing at your optimizations efforts. If you are serious about improving your website from a marketing or a technical perspective this book gives you the tools you need to do so. The rest is up to you.

Website Optimization

It's kind of a catch 22. You can write the best web copy but if your website loads slowly no one will stick around to read it. But how can you make your site stand out, while keeping the loading times reasonable? Fortunately, Website Optimizing shows the average person how they can have full website optimization. Now you don't have to make a choice. You can have a quick loading website that looks professional and still create great web copy that demands attention. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by Website Optimizing. I expected it to be heavy on optimizing code and graphics. I never really expected this book to discuss web copy. Putting the two types of information together makes perfect sense.

Slimming Down, Speeding Up, and Cashing In

Andy King scored a big hit in 2003 with his first book 'Speed Up Your Site'. It's a guide which still has its own live web site where you can analyse the effectiveness of your web pages. This latest magnum opus goes way beyond that in scope and depth. It's a guide to maximising every aspect of a website and its performance.It's an amazingly practical manual, with page after page of ideas, suggestions, and strategies for getting your pages more widely known and read. On the whole, it's not too technical, and he supplies snippets of code only when necessary. All the tips are within the grasp of anyone who is used to running a web site, and along the way he explains the principles of search engine optimization (SEO) as well as briefing you on how SEs treat your site. This is an up-to-date account of how search engines such as Yahoo and Google rank your pages and deal with search requests. He also presents real-life case studies in which he shows 'before and after' makeovers of professional sites. These are most instructive in that the 'before' pages look attractive and professional enough - until their underlying weaknesses are analysed and rectified. The improvements give what are claimed as up to fifty times more site visitors per day, and in the case of a cosmetic dentist the need to employ more staff and move to bigger offices in Philadelphia. The first half of the book deals with search engine marketing optimization, which can be expensive as one enters the world of paid advertising. But the second concentrates on things which anyone can do and afford - making pages smaller, lighter, and faster by trimming off the surplus fat. In an age of faster and faster broadband connections, web users are simply not prepared to wait more than a couple of seconds for a page to appear - so you've got to make important pages lean and speedy:Web page optimization streamlines your content to maximise display speed. Fast display speed is the key to success with your website. It increases profits, decreases costs, and improves customer satisfaction (not to mention search engine rankings, accessibility, and maintainability). All of these issues are dealt with in detail - and I particularly liked the fact that he was prepared to repeat some of the techniques when they occurred in different contexts. It's not always easy to grasp some of these technologies in one simple pass. Especially as - in the case of optimizing images - he explains no less than sixteen possibilities for cutting file size and speeding up downloads.He's also keen on the optimization of style sheets and shows an amazing variety of techniques for creating what he calls 'CSS Architecture'. Here too there are no less than ten strategies explained which offer cleaner, tighter, coding and the use of structural markup to beat browser peculiarities and rendering delays. Most of his explanations are clearly articulated, but occasionally he lapses into less than elegant repetition and jargon,