I decided to do a test of a few different document sharing sites and compare them to see which really is the best. With SEO it’s all about optimizing our time and getting the most bang for out of our effort. So let’s look at the results!

The four sites I used for this test are:
Issuu, Scribd, Docstoc and Doxtop.

For this test I used the exact same article on all four sites and published all articles at the same time with the help of my SEO team.
We used an article with obscure and low competition keywords so that we could see the results more clearly.

INDEXING
The first test preformed was indexing times of each of these sites. For this test we simply published our content on the site and let it sit. We didn’t do any Social Bookmarking, Pinging or any other tactics that might alter results. Results may vary.

1. Doxtop – (Indexed in 16 hours of publishing)
2. Scribd – (Indexed in 23 hours of publishing)
3. Docstoc – (Indexed in 3 days of publishing)
4. Issuu – (Indexed in 6 days of publishing)

Doxtop and Scribd are very quick to get indexed but the other two sites take quite some time. In a case like this I would add these two sites into a software like Traffic-Bug to increase the indexing time.

RANKING FOR KEYWORD (TITLE)
The second test was preformed after all sites had been indexed. We also verified that all articles were on a level playing field and no one article had comments, traffic or backlinks. Since all four articles had the exact same title it would be easy to do an exact phrase match search and then log which sites ranked best.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu (ranked two pages lower than Scribd)

Scribd was the clear winner but Docstoc and Doxtop weren’t far behind. Issuu in this test scored miserably.

RANKING FOR TEXT IN BODY(GOOGLE)
Next I wanted to see which sites preformed best for the actual body text. Title’s are nice but often times we are unable to squeeze our keywords into the title of an article. So it’s very important to test how the body text is ranked. For this we used an exact phrase match for a phrase in the body of each article and compared which articles ranked best. I wanted to take this test one step further and so I divided Google and Yahoo into two separate tests.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

RANKING FOR TEXT IN BODY (YAHOO)

1. Docstoc
2. Scribd
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

Docstoc had a clear advantage over Scribd in this test on Yahoo. In Google both services were fairly close. In both tests Scribd and Docstoc were clear winners over the other two services.

PAGE RANK OF SITE
For the most of us we aren’t actually using these sites to necessarily target rankings. It is nice to dominate the entire first page on Google, but the reality is we may have dozens of these articles all pointing back to our main page. So it’s important to measure how much weight each site carries. So I did a quick measure to see how the sites rank in Page Rank. *Note. Just because a site’s homepage is a certain PR does not mean your article is that PR. This test is more of a measure of the strength of the overall site in general and the link juice it can pass.*

1. Scribd – PR8
1. Issuu – PR8
2. Docstoc – PR6
3. Doxtop – PR4

EASE OF USE
Sometimes it’s all about speed and ease of use. If a backlink is only 10% more effective but it takes 3x longer to achieve it often times is not worth the extra effort. So for this test I wanted to quickly compare which sites were easiest to use. The trick to this test was to get an objective opinion. Since I used three of these sites regularly and have my favorite and hadn’t ever used Docstoc before I didn’t want to be the judge on this test. So I brought in my wife who hadn’t ever used any of these sites. I had her go through the whole process of creating an account and publishing her first article on all three sites. Then I had her give her opinion on which site were easiest to use and her preference.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

SPECIAL FEATURES, LIMITATIONS, FUNCTIONALITY

1. Issuu
++Link for every document in doc description (DO FOLLOW)
++Link on profile page (DO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect appears to have been added. This was added recently after my test and I have not verified.

2. Doxtop
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect or login with Open ID (registration is much easier this way)

3. Scribd
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect

4. Docstoc
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect

THE RESULTS
*Drum roll please*

1. Scribd.com -25 points
2. Docstoc.com -20 points
3. Doxtop.com -17 points
4. Issuu.com -15points

And there you have it! Now you know which sites are ranked best and are worth your time. Though Issuu ranked in quite lower and I don’t use it as often I still find it a great resource! It is the only site on this list that offers a complete (DO FOLLOW) backlink that will show up on Google! A great tactic can be to publish several Issuu documents with backlinks to your main site. Then to give Issuu the boost it badly needs, simply input that URL into Traffic-Bug. This way you will look at much faster index times and are easily able to see backlinks being built to your main site.

If you have any suggestions on other article sites you would like to see tested just let us know in the comments section below.
or
If you have a different type of test you would like to see let us know! We are open to share our results on any subject!

**If you liked this article then let us know by clicking the facebook like button or sharing on twitter!

I want to send a warm thank you out to Caro McCourtie from OHM and 30dc.
I also want to send a thank you to her partner who helped set up the camera equipment and helped produce the OHM method.

If you want to learn more about the Offline Hero’s Method please go check it out here:
OFFLINE HERO’S METHOD

The OHM course teaches you how to attract business clients and teaches you how to help them build an online presence. I used many of the same tactics taught int he OHM course and I was easily able to bring in a very nice income. I think Caro and her partner really hit this course on the head when they laid it all out!

Some of my favorite quotes from Caro’s speech was:

“If you have any level of IM experience currently, you ALREADY know more than they do!

Remember to ask the client questions, not make statements, as the power is with the person who asks the questions (as you become the informed one).

You are NOT selling services; you are providing VALUE, this is a HUGE shift in thinking and how you approach your prospective Client – it’s about helping them get more customers, not demonstrating all you can do for them. ”

Here are some very solid tips everyone who owns a local business should be utilizing.

1) Register your business in Google Places.
a) When you register your business in Google Places be sure to fill out your profile as throughly as possible. Connect as many pictures as possible, video, etc. Also be sure to use your keywords in descriptions and for the IMG ALT tags on the photos.
b) Get as many reviews to your Google Places listing as possible. Offer new customers a discount in exchange for a review or contact some old clients that you have a good relationship with and ask for a review.

The more complete your profile is and the more positive reviews you have the better your listing will preform.

2) Build local back links!
a) Goto Google and type in (Your State) (your niche) blogs. Then start doing blog commenting on all the blogs in your niche for the state. After you do many of these narrow your search even down to seeking blogs in your city or adjacent cities.
b) Start finding all the directory type sites in your niche and create profiles and drive a few reviews. (A good example would be to get a profile up on Yelp if you are a restaurant.)

3) Try migrating your website to a server that is closer.
a) I talked about this in one of my news videos. In our testing we saw a small difference on rankings depending on where your server is located. Chances are your server is States away or possibly even in a different country. Locate where your server is actually at and move your website to a more local server.

4) Put these three steps above into action.
a) From my experience, finding good information to learn is not the problem. I could go on listing more tips, but the problem I see is people don’t put what they learned into action! I want you to take these three steps and really work hard on these. Build local back links and fill out a Google Places account. Even if you already have a Google Places account I want you to go in and review it. Can you add more pictures? Can you drive more reviews?

5) For USA readers…try filling out an Angie’s List profile.

Check out Caro’s own video now!

CARO’S  VIDEO

Michael R Roberts

The Caro interview I did will be up by Monday and I appreciate your patience on that, but for this post I wanted to cover everything interesting in the conference that was taught.

When you goto one of these…people start throwing website names out there…..
names you have never heard of. So you write the name down to research it later. Well at this conference so many dang cool things
were said… that before I knew it I had a full sheet of paper filled up with cool sites and ideas.

So without further ado…..here are some of the coolest sites and things talked about.

1. Start migrating Flash off your websites. iPads can’t support flash, neither can a lot of smart phones. There are already 17 million devices out there that can’t view flash. This number is only going to grow. So contact your graphics guy and start coming up with new solutions to replace the Flash on your website. (If you are clever or have a clever web guy….then you can actually insert a piece of code that detects when a mobile type device visits your site and displays something other than the flash.)

As Ed Dale says, “I hate Flash more than I hate the….” well I won’t finish that one. Fill in the answer in the comments section below if you were there! ;)

2. Wonder how much content your viewers can see on their monitor? Well Google has solved that problem. Check out this fancy Google Labs tool that will help you see how to improve your opt in pages or sales pages. Keeping content so 90% of browsers can see it is a good thing!

3. Voice Follow Up . Hmmm not sure what to say about this one other than it’s PURE AWESOMENESS. It allows you to have people opt in via the phone. You can literally broadcast your number and people can text that number with there email and name and they will immediatly join your auto responder sequence. This will be a killer for anyone doing radio ad’s. I will be adding this to my business cards when I goto events. I don’t want people actually calling my cell phone or home phone. Why not give them a numeber they can call where they reach a cool recording of whatever you like….with the option of learning more about your products or opting into a email sequence.

4. If your an iPad user then there is a very cool app you should pickup. Evernote. It can sync with your mac and you can simply write notes, keep track of ideas, etc. It’s an iPad Must Have.

5. The rules of a blog. During the conference they touched on a very good point. The three fundamental rules every blog should meet.

a) Simplicity – One Page = One Job – Look at the iPhone and iPad apps. They are so successful because they can do one thing very well.

b) Speed – Google is factoring page load speed into rankings and it has been proven over and over again if your page loads slow you loose customers. If you haven’t watched my video talking about ways to speed up your site go look at it now! Page Load Speed Video

c) Beautiful – No more producing shoddy quality! Spend a few bucks and get a graphics guy to design you some quality content. Take a look at my new video intro’s for example. (Yeah yeah I know this website still is very ugly but it’s in the process.)
***
To find cheap quality graphics people goto:
freelancer.com or fiverr.com

6. Tips for writing a sales page by the master John Carlton. Your sales page should fill in these three blanks.

We help (this group of people)
….do (this benefit)
…even if (worst case believable scenario)

Example:

We help aspiring artists
sell their art for millions of dollars
even if they have no agent and have never sold a painting before!

Simple yet effective!

7. Mashable. Most of you probably know about this one but I had to put it down for those of you who haven’t. Probably the easiest way to stay up to date on Social Media and Tech.

More tips are on their way as well as the video from the conference.

Michael R Roberts

Lot’s of people spoke today but I left my notes in the conference hall and to be honest
my brain is too fried, from the long day, to remember the order of everyone who was up there.

The highlights of the event was shaking hands with Frank Kern and meeting Andy Jenkins. Those guys are legends!

I have fairly good connections with a lot of the internet marketing Guru’s and all these connections were self made.
I had to work hard to meet these people, but Frank Kern is a nut I haven’t been able to crack!

I tried to talk to Frank Kern twice today and failed miserably. I managed to come off as a creepy stalker the first time,
and then the second time I was the awkward lingerer.

But that is what networking is all about! You have to build up the guts and just go out there
and talk to people and make those connections. I got rejected today by Frank Kern sure….but
I managed to talk with a few really cool people and got the ball rolling with them. I estimate the connections
I made today will easily be worth $20-50k in profit over the next year.

You simply can’t be afraid of rejection! I went out to dinner and sat next to two total strangers,
and the next thing I know we spent the next 4 hours together brainstorming and talking IM.
It was Awesome!

My favorite picture moment for the day was seeing Caro wearing a bib!
…….In her defense the restaurant made everyone wear one….well that’s at least what she is saying!
mmmm hmmm…sure Caro! ;)

Tomorrow we will be shooting all the interviews and then I will send them off to my video guy to
get them ready for you all to watch for free. I don’t think I will be in the mood to edit them
myself after another long day and a flight back home.

Wishing you were here!

Michael R Roberts

The day kicked off at 9am and lasted until about 8pm…and after that everyone gathered to network and do dinner.
I didn’t wind up making it back to the hotel until 10:35pm and I think my group was one of the tamer ones.

The line up was:

Ed Dale <--Dropped some big news (I will tell you below)

"The Legendary" John Carlton <---Talked sales copy tactics

Lunch

Eugene <---Talked about Market Samurai

Caro <---Talked about using local business marketing to make a killing

"The Dreaded Hot Seat" <---They put audience members sales pages up on the big screen and then dissect them. (It took some brave souls to volunteer for this one...but a lot was learned by this exercise.)

Probably the biggest news of the day was what Ed covered in the beginning.

This years 30day challenge
will be starting on July 1st!

and

It's no longer a 30 day challenge. They are changing up their entire layout.
It will be 7 days on, 7 days off, 7 days on, etc.

In all I believe it will be around 49 actual days of working
and then the rest weeks in there to make it around a 3 month course.

This is massive news for those of you who have done the 30 day challenge in the past.
With these rest weeks it will really allow for the sites and work you have done to mature.
(Not to mention a time for people to recharge their batteries.)

This was big news in the industry, but I had actually heard this many months prior with
a meeting with Guru Bob. For me the true highlight was the great people I got to meet.

I got to talk with Mike Filsaime, Paul Colligan, Ed Dale, Guru Bob, Eugene Ware, Caro, Dan, John Carlton, and a few other big names!

If you ever get the chance to attend a great IM conference, no matter what stage of learning your in....DO IT!
The connections alone are worth it.

If I pick up just one measly connection from this trip then it will have paid for the trip ten fold!

I am shooting a lot of B-roll for you guys to show you a behind the scenes video and tomorrow I am filming
my interview with Ed Dale and hopefully Paul Colligan as well.
(Both will be uploaded onto YouTube later this week, once I get a chance to edit them.)

Wish you all could be here!

Mike Filsaime & Michael Roberts

Michael R Roberts

I hope you liked the awesome intro! I had a blast making it, but I think I need to take up smoking and drinking whisky so I can perfect the movie intro voice.

What you will need during this video:

1) The WP plugin I installed is called: Digg Digg

2) Facebook developers page

3) Like button code:
(The raw html code didn’t want to display so I uploaded it in a pdf which you can download for free here: http://www.michaelrroberts.com/facebook_code.pdf)

WP ADMIN — Appearance — Editor — Single Post (single.php)

Your not going to blow up your site do don’t panic if your scared by all the code. Just try to scan the code for things that look famaliar, such as; Author, Date, Category or Comments. These things will provide you with refference points on where to place the code. Also avoid sticking the code in the middle of other code. Place it just after a closing statement (

4) Code for fan page like box:
(This code is also on the pdf which you can download for free here: http://www.michaelrroberts.com/facebook_code.pdf)

Be sure to replace my ID with your own fan-page ID. Also you will want to change; connections, width and height to fit your preferences. If you want your fan page box to show your stream of what’s going on in your fan page then place “true” after stream. If you turn the stream on then you need to make the height alot bigger.

I hope that has helped you guys…and I just formed my own Facebook fan page where I post all sorts of awesome FREE SEO information. So please click the like/share button on this article and go over on the right hand side of my website and join my fan page!

Lastly, I am nearly done re-doing my blog. The new layout, graphics, plugins is going to be awesome! So sorry this sore thing is hurting your eyes!

Michael R Roberts

FACEBOOK CHANGES:

Universal “like” button: One of the major new changes that users will see is the “like” button which will be shown on Web sites outside of Facebook. The “like” button on Facebook broadcasts what comments, photos or posts a user likes. These like buttons are already showing up all over the web and it enables users to share items with friends even when they’re not actually on facebook.com.

As an example if you went to IMBD.com and clicked “like” on “The Matrix”, that movie will automatically show up in your movie interests section of your Facebook page. Liking a football player on ESPN.com will put up-to-date information about that player in a user’s news feed.

The “Become a Fan” button has been changed to the “like” button as well.

FaceBook is even expanding their reaches further with a new developer tool bar you can easily add to your site. This “social bar” allows third-party web sites to access some FaceBook features without even leaving your site. With this bar they can even chat to their FaceBook friends right inside your website.

Facebook is also changing users’ profile pages so that the “pages” section will no longer appear in a separate section on the bottom of the “info” page. Those pages will be brought up to the “interests” section.

Users will be asked to convert their interests into fan pages: Is one of your interests “Green Day?” Well, now you can become a fan of Green Day in a single click. By default, users will receive notifications from their fan pages in their news feed.

Facebook also added new privacy settings that allow a user to control who sees all of these connections.

Community pages: So what about interests like “Martial Arts,” “SEO” or “Cooking,” which don’t have Facebook pages? Now they do.

Facebook unveiled about 6.5 million new “community pages” this week, which take the “fan page” concept and apply them to ideas, locations or interests.

Currently, community pages are pretty lame. A user can see posts from friends related to that topic as well as what the overall public is saying about it. There is also a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject. Users can’t yet add any content to these pages, but that ability is believed to be on the way.

Real-time search: Also among the biggest announcements is real-time search on third-party search sites, similar to Twitter’s service. Facebook announced that users’ public posts will be available for search on sites like Google and Bing.

FACEBOOK AND THE BAD:

Many of the changes take advantage of big revisions that Facebook made to its privacy settings in March. Those changes opened the door to allow select third-party Web sites the ability to access and store some users’ personal information.

Those sites can use that information to show what a user’s Facebook friends have been doing on their sites. CNN, IMDB.com and ESPN.com are just a few of the sties who have already signed up with this feature. So if you’re a Facebook user reading CNN.com, you’ll be able to see what all your Facebook friends are looking at, view recommended stories and see which friends liked which stories.

But even before the announcement, critics expressed concern about the privacy implications of such a service. A similar program called Beacon, unveiled in 2007, caused such a stir among users that the company removed it last year. FaceBook is moving forward strongly with these new updates and are acting quite confident learning from their mistakes with Beacon.

From a user standpoint this is a bit annoying in my opinion. You really can’t even make a joke in your interest section anymore without having a “Community Page” dedicated to it. All FaceBook is doing is lumping users into marketable bins, so advertisers and app developers can poke and prod you to buy something with more efficiency.

Also with the live search feature you will need to be more careful what you post to your FaceBook account more than ever. I have already heard of one story where a person was turned down for a job because the company looked them up on FaceBook and found some pictures they didn’t’ believe to be appropriate or aligned with their business. So if you are in the job market or if there is a slight chance you will be returning to the job market in the future watch what you post and adjust your settings in your profile.

However, If you think everything you do on the internet is “private” to begin with, you’re in for a big surprise. If you truly don’t want your information to be out there, stop using the net all together. You just need to be smart, educate yourself on how to navigate the settings you desire and use common sense before freaking out. Because ultimately these changes could mean a lot more money to be made for you and I!

FACEBOOK AND THE GOOD:

FaceBook Advertising just leapt to a whole new level! FaceBook overnight is offering the best targeted marketing you can buy. It’s not just targeted marketing but UP TO DATE targeted marketing!

As human beings our interests often can change quickly. Six months ago I was interested in snow boarding but now my hobby and passion is Martial Arts. So as my hobby has changed so has my web surfing. I will be visiting more martial arts sites and of those sites that have like buttons to FaceBook on them…there is a good chance I will be clicking those like buttons and my profile will be updated automatically. Now a savvy Martial Arts supply advertiser could easily reach me on exactly what I am looking for with ads right in my FaceBook profile.

So as from an advertiser standpoint using FaceBook has just become very powerful!
If you have never looked into FaceBook for advertising in the past NOW is the time to start looking into it!

Even if you are not interested in advertising with FaceBook that doesn’t mean you should ignore these changes. I am sure you all have seen those share buttons on every blog post all over the internet. These share strategies are great for a blog, but now they are all being creamed! If you could have only one share option it should be a FaceBook Share button! Go look for your self! I just looked up one video and captured the results which are displayed below.

Nearly anywhere you go now you will see FaceBook share beating out all the other types of share buttons. Obviously more people are using and want to share on Facebook than any other social media plat form. There are over 400 million active users on FaceBook currently and that number is still growing. If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd most populous country in the World!

The good news is with FaceBooks new changes it is easier than ever for us marketers to get people to follow us on FaceBook. With a single line of code you can now add a like button to your website. Trust me this is going to make your sites more viral than twitter, buzz or digg ever could!

I will be shooting a video and uploading it soon on some of the techniques to help protect your information and how to add these lines of code to your website!

As Mark said in FaceBooks F8 conference….Google knows about phrases but FaceBook knows about people and what they like!

Michael R Roberts

Twitter has introduced their new Twitter Ad Model. It’s going to be a way for twitter to make money and I expect over the next few months they will just continue to add more and more ads to the service. I hope in the future they allow for GEO Targeted ads as I see a big positive marketing niche there. Also, I am excited to see how the ads will be formated and to see the stats on the CTR’s. This could just become like FaceBook and Myspace ads are and just blend right in.

YouTube has come out with their YouTube Rental Store that allows you to rent movies and watch them right from YouTube. The movies range anywhere in price from .99cents to $3.99 per movie. I wonder how traditional movie houses are going to keep up in the future. With sites like YouTube, NetFlix and Hulu how are stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood video going to adjust their streams to keep up with the market change? Personally I don’t think YouTube’s Rental Store will be something I will ever use. I prefer to watch movies on my actual TV and for that I already have a NetFlix account which gives me nearly any movie I want that streams through my Xbox360 or BluRay Player.
With movies becoming more and more easily available the cost of actually producing your own independent film and distributing them is becoming easier and easier. I think this is going to continue to open up doors for aspiring directors and actors and ultimately us as end users will be able to see the cream of the crop a lot easier.

The FaceBook Bomb Shell
You can watch the actual F8 conference that was recorded on the F8 FaceBook Page. I found the 10 minute mark to the 20 minute mark to be the only parts really worth watching.

If you want my take on how to use FaceBook for your marketing and why this is important I will be writing a full article about it on my blog.

Not everyone is grooving on FaceBooks new change though…Matt Cutts and many other coders over at Google have actually put their FaceBook accounts on Hold/Standby. Matt Cutts, who works for Google, actually tweeted about how to do the same. Google could very well be making a statement against FaceBook but I believe the real reason is concerns about privacy.

If your a really big financial nerd, like I often am, then you can head on over to Google’s Financial Statement to read about how they preformed on their first quarter.

If you are in the recipe or cooking niche then this one is for you! Google has just came out with something very slick you need to be taking advantage of to put you ahead of your competitors. Google announced a new supported rich snippet markup format for recipes. This can include such things as user ratings, recipe type, a picture and much more. You can be utilizing this technique to help you take even more spots on page 1 of Google! To find out more you can visit their direct article here: Google Recipe’s

Google becoming more transparent. I really like the move that Google is making to become more and more transparent. I think transparency in any business is the best policy. Heck one of the reasons our American President won the election was by promising more transparency. Now Google has a website up where you can go and actually see the requests each government is making of Google. Governments are constantly contacting Google requesting for data to be changed or deleted, etc. Go check it out if your interested.

Google Places. If you own a business with an actual office then get on over to Google Places and mark your location! I am not 100% sure it works in all countries, but I do know it works in some parts of Europe for sure so I assume it works all over. Google Places used to be called Google Local Business center and got a fresh new name along with some new features. You can check out the full list of new features Google Places got at their press release. Also, if you don’t own a business and are just doing the online thing…there is still an opportunity for you! The average business owner knows nearly nothing about internet marketing and this actually presents a nice little opportunity for you. You can simply add this to one of the SEO services you offer to local business. I imagine you could easily charge a keen $25-50 per business to place them in Google Places and it would only take you roughly 5 minutes. Not too shabby? I just did this for a local company in Bend Oregon.

Google is often times a leader in innovation and technology but this time they are bringing it back old school. They hired a local farmer to come in with their border collie and help heard a bunch of goats across the Google Campus to cut down the grass. Google said the cost is about the same, but the goats are less noisy, fertilize the grass and are better for the environment than hiring mowers. In all there were about 200 goats!

That’s it for this weeks internet news!

Thanks for tuning in and be sure to subscribe to either my RSS feed of the blog or my YouTube channel to be sure to catch some of the
SEO video’s I am releasing over the next two weeks. The team and I have been doing lots of research and we will be releasing the results shortly!

Michael R Roberts

If you don’t think page load speed is important then watch my video and find out why it’s becoming more important than ever!
PAGE LOAD SPEED VIDEO

WP SUPER CAHCE
1) Install Plugin: WP SUPER CACHE
2) Before activating this plugin leave the plugin area and goto “settings” > “permalinks” > Select Custom Structure and enter: /%postname%/
3) Go into your WP Super Cache settings and set up your preferences and enable the plugin

WP Touch iPhone Theme
Awesome tool to install onto your blog to make it cell phone friendly. Greatly sped up the load time on my phone. Less scrolling and less junk to slow a cell phone browsing down.

Optimize your photos for load time
1) Free online tool to edit your photos is Picnik
2) Be sure to always remove all the white space around your photo. Crop that down as close as possible to the actual image.
3) Reduce the file quality. Often times you can greatly reduce a file size without seeing any loss in quality to the human eye.

CSS SPRITES
Another great way to reduce load times is by turning multiple back ground photos into a single photo. This will reduce the number of HTTP requests made and is a fundamental technique in increasing your websites load times.

1) Visit Spriteme and drag and drop the text/icon into your tool bar
2) Visit your webpage you want to create a CSS Sprite to
3) Click the Spriteme button in your toolbar
4) Click the make sprite button under the recommended sprites
5) Once the file is made click the export to CSS option
6) Now you can use your favorite HTML editor and FTP program to upload the new CSS Sprite

Spritme worked very well for me but a buddy of mine had issues using it. So here is a link to the second best free
CSS Sprite creator I found: http://csssprites.com/

FREE TOOL TO HELP YOU SEE PAGE LOAD SPEED ISSUES
1) First you will need to use which you can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
2) Next install FIREBUG
3) Now install Google’s Page Speed Plugin for it here: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html

- Simply visit any URL now and click the firebug button and you get a nice report on issues effecting your page load speed! *MAGIC*

BONUS TIPS NOT INCLUDED IN THE VIDEO!

1) XHTML instead of tables

*This tip is a bit more advanced and will require you to know how to fiddle around with your websites code.

If your currently using Tables they render much slower than DIVs by your browser. By using XHTML instead of tables you are essentially accomplishing more with less code which increases page load speed!

However, like most things tables do have their place in this world. In some situations using a table is going to make a lot more since. Creating a 6 columned table could require a lot more coding using XHTML so just be sure you use tables when necessary but try to switch to XHTML for the majority of your work.

2) Compress & Merge JavaScript Files

* Another more advanced tip

Compressing JavaScript files can greatly lower the size of your files and doesn’t have any negative effects on your side.
Try to merge JavaScript files to prevent multiple includes and if a JavaScript file will be used only in a few pages then try to include them inside those pages.

Here is a link to a JavaScript Compressor

3) HTTP Compression & Gzip

Ok this tip is probably one of the more effective tips and it doesn’t take a whole lot of knowledge.
If you simply can’t figure out how to do this see one of my lower tips on outsourcing this task to someone I have used and is cheap.

There are two common choices and you can either use HTTP Compression or Gzip.
You can either use Gzip (which is what I use), which can be enabled at the site level
or
you can use HTTP compression which is a great choice as well that can be enabled on the server side.

I would go into describing this but there is already a perfect detailed article on how HTTP Compression works.

4) GETTING A FASTER SERVER

A lot of people who get into the affiliate marketing game just dip their feet into the water. They don’t want to spend a bunch of money until they know they can make it work. This can be a very smart decision and is what I refer to as Boot Strapping. However, sometimes this can wind up shooting your self in the foot. You pick out a the cheapest shared server you can find and then the next thing you know your having reliability and site performance issues.

Making sure you have a fast server is critical. If you are getting 4-10k worth of traffic then it is definitely time to step up your server and move to a VPS (Virtual Private Server). This may sound big and scary but were only talking around $24 per month for a quality set up.

It’s at least worth looking into!
Hostgator is a great option with very good customer support, Softlayer is awesome and has slightly better prices and the last hosting company I have recently found is probably more suitable for smaller affiliates. They have crazy low prices and they are who I am using on many of my sites now.

If you want to get ahold of the nicest sales agent I have met over there contact: lijeesh@subhosting.net
(Tell him I sent you and to give you a killer price!)

5) HIRING AN EXPERT

My business model is focussing on putting out quality content into each one of my niches. I find it very difficult to hire someone to put together quality content, but for everything else someone else can do it better! Why sacrifice 8-16 hours of my time optimizing some of the more complicated tasks in improving my site speed when I can pay someone to do that and focus on the most important thing…putting quality content on the web! Now for me putting up quality content is what makes me money so everything else is just a distraction.

Hiring an expert though doesn’t have to be scary. I have done over 150 out sourcing projects and I have found some incredible and some awful freelancers. For this post I am willing to share the name of one of my better HTML, SEO, Web design guys. He even agreed to run the paypal transactions right through my company so that you guys don’t have to be scared sending your money over seas, etc.

If you need any help with improving your site speed, optimizing your on page seo, etc. just shoot him an email!

You can get ahold of my guy at:

siteimprovements@gmail.com

LAST NOTE:

I thought it was important to say not to get too carried up in this!  Obviously page load speed is important.  It has been proven to increase conversions and might start becoming a factor in rankings.  However, I wouldn’t spend all your time worrying about this as content is still king!  If your page loads extremly fast already don’t spend coutnless hours trying to squeeze more out of it.  My homepage and blog on this particular site do need some work and so in the next 30 days I have already set aside time to improve that, but note I am not going to drop all other SEO efforts for the month to worry about that.
Take it in stride!  :)

Hope you enjoyed the article!  If you found this article useful please share it on twitter, stumbleupon, dig, etc!
It really helps especially on these longer articles I put together for free for you guys!

Thanks again,

Michael Roberts

P.S. For an extremly detailed list of all on page factors you should take into consideration you should visit:

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html