SEO News and SEO Tips from SEO Blog Expert » SEO News/Tips

What is the .htaccess File, and What Can I Do With It?

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:31:44 +0000

You may have been working on a website, or reading an article about web development, and heard about the .htaccess file, but wondered what it was, or what, if anything, you can do with it. This tutorial will tell you the basics about .htaccess, and show you a few ways you can use it on your website.

Before we go any farther, let’s explain what the .htaccess file is. htaccess is short for Hypertext Access, and is a configuration file used by Apache-based web servers that controls the directory that it “lives” in–as well as all the subdirectories underneath that directory.

Many times, if you have installed a Content Management System (CMS), such as Drupal, Joomla or WordPress, you likely encountered the .htaccess file. You may not have even had to edit it, but it was among the files that you uploaded to your web server. BTW, that’s its name, .htaccess–it begins with a period, and ends with “htaccess.” If you edit it, you need to make sure that it stays that way, and doesn’t end up with a .txt or .html extension.

Also note that some web hosts do not allow you to edit the .htaccess file–but even on most of those hosts, you can create your own .htaccess file and upload it to specific directories, and as discussed above, it will control those directories and subdirectories below it.

Some of the features of the .htaccess file include the ability to password protect folders, ban users or allow users using IP addresses, stop directory listings, redirect users to another page or directory automatically, create and use custom error pages, change the way files with certain extensions are utilized, or even use a different file as the index file by specifying the file extension or specific file.

Custom Error Pages for Better SEO

One use of the .htaccess file is to redirect users to a custom error page depending on the specific web server error they encounter. By using a custom error page, you can present them with a list of your site’s top articles, a sitemap with links to the various areas of your site, and it can include your site’s navigation system. It can also feature a FAQ, so folks who are looking for information on your site, but can’t find it, are able to narrow down the location of that information on your site without leaving, going back to the search engine, and more than likely not returning to your site.

It’s not difficult to use the .htaccess file to redirect users to a custom error page–but to do it you’ll need to know the proper error code. The most common ones you’ll use are:

400 – Bad request
401 – Authorization Required
403 – Forbidden
404 – File Not Found
500 – Internal Server Error

To use .htaccess with these codes, first you’ll need to open up your favorite text editor, create a new document, and in that document, specify the error message that you’ll be redirecting like this:

ErrorDocument 404 /filenotfound.html

If you wanted to redirect users for another error, such as 500, Internal Server Error, you would do it like this (and so on):

ErrorDocument 500 /servererror.html

Then you’d just save the .htaccess file (remembering to check that it is saved just like that, without some additional extension), and upload it to your web host’s root directory (or whatever directory you are wanting to use it in).

Using a Different File as the Index File

By adding another “command” to the .htaccess file, you can use a different file as the main index file that folks see when they come to your site. In other words, when folks visit www.yoursite.com, usually they are presented with www.yoursite.com/index.html or www.yoursite.com/index.php–but often you have created a special page that you want to use as your site’s main page–and it isn’t any of the traditional pages. Or you may want to take advantage of the latest version of PHP…there are many reasons for needing to use a different file as the index file. Here’s how you would do it, with each type of file being next in line, if the others are not in the directory.

DirectoryIndex index.php3 index.php pictures.pl index.html default.htm

For instance, if there was no file named index.php3 in your directory, then the server would look for a file called index.php. If that file wasn’t present, it would look for one called pictures.pl, and so on. In our next article, we’ll look at other types of redirection, password protection and we’ll show you how to allow or deny users with specific IP addresses from accessing your site.

By Scott Clark

Google Apologizes to Chinese Authors for Book Scanning

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:04:43 +0000

Google has apologized to a Chinese authors’ group over its scanning of books by local writers into an online search system, moving to defuse copyright concerns around the project in China.

The Chinese Writers Association posted a copy of the Google statement on its Web site on Sunday. On the same day Erik Hartmann, an Asia-Pacific representative of Google Books, delivered the apology in a news program aired by China’s state broadcaster.

China is one of several countries, including the U.S. and France, where Google’s digital library program has faced legal challenges. The apology comes after the Chinese group demanded that Google compensate local authors whose works the U.S. search giant scanned without their approval.

Google is scanning hundreds of thousands of books, often without prior permission from their rights holders, so they can be searched and previewed on the Google Books service.

Google acknowledged in the statement that it had scanned books by Chinese writers and said the company would no longer do so without local authors’ permission. It also said it hopes to reach a general agreement over resolving the tensions by March and to sign a final agreement in the second quarter.

“Due to different starting notions and different understandings of the copyright law systems in China and the U.S., our behavior has caused discontent among Chinese writers,” the statement said. “Our communication with Chinese authors has not been good enough. Google is willing to apologize to Chinese authors for this behavior.”

Google has held talks with a local copyright protection group over the book service. One Chinese author, Shanghai-based Mian Mian, has brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google for scanning her novel Acid Lover and showing portions of it online.

A Google spokeswoman said Google Books complies with U.S. and Chinese law and that the company only shows snippets of copyright books for which it does not have permission from rights holders. Authors and publishers can choose to exclude their works from the service, she said.

Google Wants You to Be Able to Leave if You Want

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:58:21 +0000

Data portability is an important issue for users and businesses alike. In this age of cloud computing, where so many web users have valuable data hosted by web services, we can sometimes find ourselves vulnerable to the will and occurrences of these services. Let’s say for example, Twitter is one of the key components to your marketing strategy, and one of your main sources of traffic. When Twitter goes down, as it frequently does, this can present quite a problem. Ever wished you could access your tweets when Twitter was down?

On the subject of Twitter, the company announced some changes to its terms of service late last week. They tried to emphasize that users “own their tweets.” But do users really own them if they cannot access them because Twitter is not working? What if you could export your Tweets into Facebook, or into MySpace? It’s not that one service is better than the other. It’s about simply having the freedom to take your data wherever you want.

Google realizes the importance of this concept, which is why some members of the company’s team have gotten together and formed the Data Liberation Front, a group that is dedicated to making Google’s products easier to get data in and out of. The group has also launched a website at DataLiberation.org, where users of Google products can find information about how to import and export data.

“Many web services make it difficult to leave their services – you have to pay them for exporting your data, or jump through all sorts of technical hoops — for example, exporting your photos one by one, versus all at once,” says Brian Fitzpatrick, Data Liberation engineering manager. “We believe that users – not products – own their data, and should be able to quickly and easily take that data out of any product without a hassle. We’d rather have loyal users who use Google products because they’re innovative – not because they lock users in.”

The group’s mission statement goes:

Users own the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to give users greater control by making it easier for them to move data in and out.

“This principle not only applies to individual users, but also to businesses, schools and other organizations that choose Google Apps to provide better tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions,” says Fitzpatrick. “It should be easy to bring legacy data into the cloud, share data between Google Apps and other IT infrastructure, and get data out of the cloud if it ever makes sense to stop using our service.“

At DataLiberation.org, users can simply browse through Google’s list of products and see detailed instructions for each one about how to “escape” to or from any of them. This list includes: AdWords, Alerts, Analytics, App Engine, Apps for Businesses, Blogger, Bookmarks, Calendar, Chrome Boomarks, Contacts, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, Maps, Notebook, Orkut, Picasa, Reader, Voice, Web History, and YouTube.

The company says it will be working on adding import/export features to more of its products like Google Sites, and Google Docs (batch-export) in the coming months.

“We think open is better than closed — not because closed is inherently bad, but because when it’s easy for users to leave your product, there’s a sense of urgency to improve and innovate in order to keep your users,” says Fitzpatrick. “When your users are locked in, there’s a strong temptation to be complacent and focus less on making your product better.”

Google’s certainly not the only company to offer data portability options, but it’s a very large one that has a huge impact on a lot of users and businesses. That’s why Google’s work in this area is so important. The company’s broad range of products that are used heavily on a daily basis emphasizes the importance of the issue on the web in general. Tired of Gmail going down? You can take your info elsewhere if you wish.

Google Reduces Restictions on Google Checkout

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:55:10 +0000

Google has made a change to its content restrictions for Google Checkout. Google Checkout now allows the sale of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours.

“Google Checkout sellers of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours must have a valid public business URL,” says Sammer Abdul of Google Checkout Operations. “The sellers may, however, choose to use either Checkout buttons or Checkout invoices to process transactions for the above allowable services based on their business requirements.”

The Google Checkout merchant help center provides a list of product categories (as well as examples), which are still considered unacceptable. Some of these are obvious (illegal goods), and some not so obvious (Travel packages and offers).
The competition is heating up among payment services, with Facebook now widely considered a potential big-player, and possibly Apple too. By not offering real estate rentals, timeshares, etc. Google is missing out on a fair amount of business. This is likely the driving factor behind Google’s decision to allow these.
On a semi-related note, Google recently announced it has made it easier to link Google Checkout with Google Base accounts. There’s a new page in the “settings” tab called “Checkout,” where you can add accounts to Checkout by entering a Checkout Merchant ID.

Contact to Google to Report about Google Search Result

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:42:08 +0000

Help us maintain the quality of Google search results

Send Report to Google about Search Result

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

How to setup a 301 Permanent Redirect

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:20:47 +0000

How to setup a 301 Permanent Redirect

In our previous post SEO Considerations When Redesigning a Website we touched on how to mitigate the ill effects of changing your website domain or file names by using 301 Permanent Redirects. Here we will give you instruction on how to set up this redirect on both Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers.

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. Situations include:

To redirect an old domain name to a new domain name – normally in the case of re-branding
When you have several domain names pointing to one website but are only wishing to promote one domain name
When access to your website is possible via multiple URLs such as http://domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com. It is preferable to select one and 301 redirect the others to the one you have chosen. This is referred to as Canonicalisation.
Merging two websites together and want links to outdated URLs to be seamlessly redirected to the corresponding page on the new site.

Here is Google’s webmaster guideline on 301 redirects: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633

Apache Web Server

The Linux Operating system most commonly uses Apache web server. There are a number of methods of redirect available:

.htaccess Method

If you have sufficient access to the web server then the very best method of redirection is the creation and upload of an .htaccess file as this gives you the most flexibility and control:

Apache .htaccess Single Page Redirect
You will need to create a file named .htaccess (no extension), add the code below to the file using a text only editor and upload it to the root directory of your website:

RewriteEngine on
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect
Again you will need to create a file named .htaccess, add the code below to
the file using a text only editor and upload it to the root directory of your website. The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com:

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Control Panel Method

If you have Administrator access to the cPanel then this is another method of redirection but you may find that you are limited with the types of redirects that you can do, for example the Plesk control panel does not allow for 301 redirects.

cPanel redirect

Log into your cPanel, and look for “Redirects” under Site Management
Put in the current directory into the first box
Put the new directory in the second box
Choose the type (temporary or permanent) temporary=302 and permanent=301
Click “Add” and you’re done

On Page Redirects

In instances where you are only wishing to redirect one or two files and perhaps don’t have the server correctly configured for an .htaccess file or where you do not have sufficient access to the web server such as in a shared hosting environment, you can use on-page redirects.

Read more info on both PHP and ASP redirects.

Microsoft IIS Web Server

IIS supports the requirement for 301 redirection and all necessary changes can be made directly through the Control Panel.

Administrator Mode

If you can log into the Windows 2000 (or higher) server and access the desktop, then this is the best method to carry out redirects in a Windows environment. The example below is based on the IIS 6.0 platform.

Choose Start / Setting / Control panel / Administrative Tools / Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
Click the cross that is next to the computer to drop down the list of the configured folders within IIS.
Next you need to drop down the web sites folder; this will display all the website that have been configured in IIS.
Locate the domain that you wish to setup the 301 redirect on. When you have located this domain right click on it and select properties.
On the tabbed menu above click home directory. Once you are in the home directory pay close attention, you do not want to mess with any other settings this could result in your website not being displayed.
Select ‘A redirection to a URL’
In the redirect website box: Enter the website address that you want the site to direct to. Once you have done this, your website will forward but it still has not been set correctly, you must click a permanent redirection to; by checking this button you are telling the server that you want the redirection to be permanent.

On Page Redirects – See Below

On Page Redirects – More Information

PHP Single Page Redirect
In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file. This code must be located in a script that is executed on the server before the page content starts:

header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html”);
exit();
?>

PHP Canonical Redirect
The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com. This code must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts:

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != ‘www’) {
header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(‘Location: http://www.’.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
?>

ASP Single Page Redirect
This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform. This code must be located in a script that is executed on the server before the page content starts:

<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader=’Location’,'http://www.new-url.com/’
%>

ASP Canonical Redirect
The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com. This code must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts:

<%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables(“SERVER_NAME”),”www”) = 0 Then
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.”
& Request.ServerVariables(“HTTP_HOST”)
& Request.ServerVariables(“SCRIPT_NAME”)
End if
%>

These are some of the methods available to ensure you preserve your Internet footprint when updating your site content.

What is GAIQ test?

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:56:48 +0000

Become qualified in Google Analytics.
The Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) is a proof of proficiency in Google Analytics. After passing the Google Analytics IQ test, you’ll be effective at leveraging Google Analytics within your organization and helping others to do the same. An in-depth, step-by-step curriculum is provided free of charge from Google to help you prepare for the test.
visit here – http://google.starttest.com/

Google Analytics IQ Lessons

Follow these lessons to prepare for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) test or to simply become a more knowledgeable Google Analytics user. The presentations move quickly; use the Pause and Back buttons to make sure that you don’t miss anything. You can click the Notes tab in the presentation to read what is being said. Access to a Google Analytics account is strongly recommended so that you can experiment and apply what you learn.