1 tip on gzip
SEO - Using GZip
Now that Google is looking at page rendering speeds, it's a very good idea to ensure GZip is enabled on your server to get that extra SEO tick in the box for your web design!
In a nutshell, GZip will compress the webpage server side, transmit it across the internet and then your web browser will 'unzip' it and render the page. Significant improvements in page rendering times can be achieved using GZip.
However, despite this being a great idea, many hosting services don't have GZip running natively which is a pity. If you are hosting using Apache, then you are in luck. GZip can be instigated by coding up .htaccess using the following:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
IIS7 should have GZip running by default and if not you can set up GZip programatically using microsoft.web.administrator. However, with IIS6 things are a little trickier. So long as you have direct access to IIS on the server then it is just a matter of checking a couple of property boxes and your done. But unless you have a dedicated server, this option is pretty much unavailable to you.
If you are having trouble getting GZip to work contact your hosting provider.
