Speed is a big ranking factor with the search engines, so you want your website to load as fast as possible. More compact files take less time to load and therefore speed up your website and your visitor’s experience. It is a simple process that can have a positive impact on your overall SEO.
You might have heard some talk about how compressing your web pages helps with your site’s SEO, but how does it help and how can you use it on your site? This article will provide you with some details on what file compression is and why it’s essential to the process of optimizing your site.
Since most web users prefer to get what they want quickly, this means that the faster your website loads, the more user friendly it will be and the more the search engines will like it (search engines like sites that have fast response times). The issue ultimately is that the larger your web pages are (in kilobytes), the more time it will take for the web server to download the data in the file and deliver it to the browser so that it can be viewed. Users that do not like waiting (like the rest of us) there's a chance they will just abandon the process and move to another website which is faster.
So how does it work?
Compression (or minification) is the process of removing unnecessary characters from your markup like spaces, new lines, and tabs; thus improving load times. Just drag your files (or website project files) into the program and click Compress Files and that is it! How cool is that!
Output Options
- Overwrite Original Files: Use wisely as there is no backup!
- Output Folder: Specify where the files should be saved to.
- Overwrite Mode: Replace, prompt and ignore.
CSS Options
- High Compression: All line feeds are removed. Just be aware that using this compression method may cause the CSS file to fail validation due to the nature of the changes that are made.
- Moderate Compression: This is the best overall compression method to use and will not cause your CSS file to fail validation.
- Low Compression: Minimal compression is used.
HTML Options
- Convert <em> to <i> and <strong> to <b> etc..
- Remove superfluous spaces
- Remove superfluous returns
- Remove all returns
JavaScript Options
No options at this time. Compression of JavaScript files involves removing the comments and unnecessary "white spaces" from the files.
