Saturday, September 20th, 2008
As I wrote in a prvious post, duplicate content on your own website can come in the form of “www.mysite.com/†vs. “www.mysite.com/index.html.†The search engines see this same page as two different ones, but with identical content. As I also mentioned, most search engines are smart enough to figure out that these two pages are the same one, but still, they do share Pagerank.
What to do? That’s easy too. Just open up your .htaccess again and type in the following code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
You can do this with other pages that have the same problem as well.
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
There may be cases when you would like to see what your webpage HTTP headers look like. Why? Well, because they are kind of important. As Wikipedia states, the HTTP headers define what the returned data looks like.
Still you ask, “Why in the world do I care about that?” Ok, I’ll keep going. The main reason I look at the HTTP headers is to find out what the HTTP status code is. The reason the status code is important to me is because this is the code the search engines use for a multitude of things.
Let me give you a little example, and this related to my previous post regarding the sudden drop in Google rankings. As I was doing research into what the problem may be for this particular website, I came across an issue where someone had recently put custom “404 Not Found” error pages up on some of their websites. Everyone knows that custom “404 Not Found” error pages are cool, but what some people don’t know is that if those 404 error pages show a “200 OK” (successful HTTP requests) code, the site may be in big trouble, SEO-wise. The reason for this is because there are going to be many “404 Not Found” error pages on a dynamic website. If you have your custom “404 Not Found” error page showing a “200 OK” response code, the search engines will think that all the instances of this page are duplicate. You know as well as I do, that spells trouble.
What’s worse is if you set your homepage as your “404 Not Found” page. Your homepage is going to return a response code of “200 OK.” That’s not good, because now you have multiple instances of your homepage…all duplicate content.
It’s my opinion that the search engines are smart enough to figure this out. The page (such as your homepage) with the highest Pagerank will prevail. Still, I have some websites that I am working on that have multiple instances of the homepage and they all have Pagerank, which isn’t good, because the duplicates are taking the Pagerank from the real page. Now, again, that’s my opinion.
Here are two tips:
- How to check your HTTP headers – visit this website or just Google “Website header check”
- How to set a particular page as your “404 Not Found” error page in your .htaccess file – Just place this code in the file: “ErrorDocument 404 /404.php” without the quotes. The 404.php file is the actual error page in this case.
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Monday, September 15th, 2008
Today has been an interesting day. We have been taking a look at our websites and searching for duplicate content using Copyscape. After today’s findings, we might just go with Copyscape’s premium service.
Now, let me just tell you that duplicate content is everywhere. Actually, someone has probably written this sentence a million times. What we were searching for today was blatant and far reaching content theft. We found a few instances of one of our homepages and general website idea taken for someone else’s use as well as many instances of interior pages taken. Needless to say, we made screen copies of these cases and sent them to our attorney’s office. These are serious and can’t be ignored.
I would like to talk about two things you can do to help out a more subtle form of duplicate content, on your own website.
The first form of duplicate content on your own website is in the form of www vs. non-www. If you go to your website and type in “www.mysite.com” and then type in “mysite.com,” you may see the same page appear. In the search engine’s eyes, these are two copies of the same page. How do you fix this? It’s easy. Just open up your .htaccess file and type in the following code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mysite\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
When someone types in “mysite.com” to visit your website, they will automatically be forwarded to “www.mysite.com.” The search engines will be forwarded as well.
Another form of duplicate content on your own website comes in the form of “www.mysite.com/” vs. “www.mysite.com/index.html.” The search engines see this same page as two different ones. What to do? That’s easy too. Just open up your .htaccess again and type in the following code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
When someone either types in “www.mysite.com/index.html” or follows a link like that to your website, they will be automatically be forwarded to “www.mysite.com.”
Now, here is the disclaimer. I used this on my server setup and it worked. Please check with your own hosting company to see if something similar will work for your too.
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Sunday, July 20th, 2008
I decided that today would be a good day to start configuring Joomla.
I logged in and began at the “Site” section of the Global Configuration area. I took a quick look and noticed that there wasn’t all that much to configure. Here is what I did:
- Changed the editor from Tiny MCE 2.0 to no editor. I don’t like giving others access to HTML on my sites.
- Changed the Global Site Meta Description to Fiixer. (Just a fill in word to get rid of Joomla)
- Changed the Global Site Meta Keywords to fiixer.
- Switched the Search Engine Friendly URLs and Use Apache mod_rewrite from no to yes. Search engine friendly URLs using Apache mod_rewrite is pretty simple if your server and system support it. Some people say doing this enhances your website’s indexing and ranking in search engines. Basically, it changes “index.php?a=aboutus&b=andaboutyou” to “index/aboutus/aboutyou.” It’s cleaner and gives your visitors a chance to remember your URLs. It’s up to you if it’s worth it.
Joomla 1.5 Global Configuration page.
Next, I visited the “System” section of the Global Configuration area. In this section, I mostly kept everything set as it came, but did change two areas:
- Changed the New User Registration Type to “Author.” (I think this gives the registered members the ability to submit articles and web links, but they must be approved by an administrator)
- Turned Cache on. (speeds up page loads on heavy traffic sites)
In the “Server” section of the Global Configuration, I left everything alone.
Ok, that was fairly painless.
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Friday, January 11th, 2008
Network Solutions defends frontrunning-to stop frontrunners
Network Solutions has been heavily criticized for its new policy that automatically registers domains to itself once a user searches for it. The company has now responded, saying that the policy is a “security measure” meant to protect customers from real domain frontrunners.
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Best Of
An overview of professional step-by-step tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works.
Social Blogging Platform Profy Launches in Alpha
Today, we get a new blogging platform from Russian/San Francisco startup Profy.
Google Processing Over 20 Petabytes of Data Per Day
Google currently processes over 20 petabytes of data per day through an average of 100,000 MapReduce jobs spread across its massive computing clusters.
Understanding Search Engine Penalties
Why is your celebrity blog being penalized? Find out here…
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Sunday, May 20th, 2007
I found something pretty interesting this morning while reading my latest issue of “Revenue Magazine.” I really don’t have too much to say about it, besides that it’s an interesting idea.
Like.com has launched a new type of search…a search based on images. Well, they call it “Visual Search.” Basically, their techology recognizes image features and allows you to drill down on those features to find exactly what you are looking for. Probably good for those of us who sometimes can’t put things into words.
I gave it a try on a pair of sneakers on their homepage. I refined my search on a design on the side of the sneakers. The results were mixed…I was offered various textures and designs, but nothing exactly like the design I was looking for. I suppose they have some work to do, but I offer them the best of luck.
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Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
This is pretty cool. If you remember a while back, I mentioned that we have several data feeds that a variety of websites draw from…mostly the new “Classified Search Engines” like Oodle and Vast. Both of these websites give us a bit of traffic, with Vast picking up pretty quickly. I think this idea is great. I have a good time checking out their sites and watching them grow. I have a knack for seeing behind the scenes at what they are talking about and watching what works and what doesn’t.
I have had this email tucked away for a few months and kept meaning to put it up…it consists of a few links that list our classified listing on Oodle. Right now, there are not too many because the person placing the ad must place a photo with it. They also need to list their city as one picked up by Oodle. So here they are:
Pet Classifieds
Free Classifieds
Motorcycle Classifieds
Boat Classifieds
Auto Classifieds
Over time (especially this Spring) these numbers should really pick up…
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