Should minifying code be part of the SEOs "to do list"?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Devin Peterson: Should minifying code be part of the SEOs "to do list"?
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  Edwin Jonk: Sure but I wouldn't view it as high priority. But it depends if the site is very slow you might set it at a higher priority. That is, page speed should be at a higher priority. And not minifying code is a part of it, imo.
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  Pe lagic: Hi Devin, the highest priority is to compress (GZip) the HTTP connection itself ;)
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  Edwin Jonk: IE might be a problem, no?
  
  From memory that is.
• 
  Pe lagic: Absolutely NO !
  
  If a browser doesn't support it, then they wouldn't request it !
  
  http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html
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  Edwin Jonk: Thanks +Pe lagic ;!
  
  As an add-on, IE 6 did had problems but as +Pe lagic ;it doesn't really matter. Here is the bug report which is solved with service package 1, imo it is more then okay to implement gzip:
  
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837251
• 
  Cristian Oana: Usually it's not a priority...
  
  Unfortunately for me I had some clients that had 13 000 lines in the html file for every page on their site, they were all small articles....
  
  It depends how big a mess it is.
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  Dave Elliott: It really does make a lot of difference to page speed so i say it is important. Ever increasingly  ;so in the era of responsive web design where it is vital you keep size down for the benefit of those who view your site on mobile devices and don't have an all inclusive data plan,.
  
  Also, there was a recent google patent that suggests that page speed will be a genuine ranking factor soon, so you might as well do it now and save time later!
  
  http://www.seobythesea.com/2014/02/googles-patent-site-speed-ranking-signal/
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  Matthew Tudge: I think so due to the impact it can have on site load speed, which Google definitely looks at.
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  Gnarly Digital: Try to have a single file for CSS & JavaScript to reduce requests. Minify these files and gzip the whole site.
  
  Use this Google tool to analyse your page speed https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
  
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:01:12 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/should_minifying_code_be_part_of_the_seos_quotto_do_listquot +Devin Peterson
  
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