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.
Related posts
Tags: code, content, Duplicate, duplicate content, htaccess, html, HTTP, pagerank, REQUEST, RewriteCond, RewriteEngine, RewriteRule, search engine, search engines, website, www
Posted in SEO, Websites | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Ok, this is a pretty simple thing to do and it has some important benefits.
Have you ever visited a website or a web page only to find that annoying “Not Found” error message? If so, what did you do? You probably got ticked off, hit the back button and visited another website. Can you imagine someone coming across a “Not Found” error page on your website? Well, if you don’t have a custom 404 “File Not Found” page set up on your website, that might just be happening.
Here is what you need to do to fix this problem and keep your visitors on your website.
The first thing is to create a web page with some sort of message on it. Something like, “Whoops, looks like the page you are looking for isn’t here. Please click this link to visit our home page or our search page…” You get the idea. You can save the page as “404.php” or something similar and upload it to the root of your web server.
Oh, I forgot to mention this. In order to do what I am suggesting here, you need to be running an Apache web server and your web host has to allow changes to your .htaccess file. I am sure there are other ways to create a custom 404 File Not Found error page and get it up and running, but I am only talking about one way here.
Now, open up your .htaccess file and place this code into it somewhere. I like to place it right on top:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
I am using .php extensions for this stuff just because of habit and preference. You can use .html or whatever you wish.
Well, that’s basically it. You can now save your .htaccess file and upload it to the server and go see if it worked. Try typing in some page that you know isn’t there. If it works, please read my previous post about “How To Check Your Web Page HTTP Headers & Response Codes” for some important information.
Good luck.
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Tags: 404 php, Apache, apache server, apache web server, code, Codes, custom, custom 404, error, error message, ErrorDocument, File, file upload, header, headers, HOST, htaccess file, html, HTTP, link, php, php extensions, Response, response code, root, search, search page, server, web host, web page, website
Posted in Websites | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Do you remember my article from yesterday about the sudden drop in Google search ranking for my friend’s website? Well, I just can’t stop thinking about it.
From what I have been reading, it seems as though my conclusion may be correct. At least I am hoping it is. If I ever conclude anything semi-concrete while thinking about Google, it’s a good day for me.
Ok, I found this very helpful and thorough website that pretty much described the exact problem my friend is having. It’s titled “Google Proxy Hijacking” and tells the whole story.
Here is what struck me as I think about this some more.
- My friend’s website has been live since 2004.
- The site seemed to be in the Google sandbox for the entire 4 years.
- For his most competitive keywords, he was ranking past page 20 on Google.
- About two months ago, he made some changes to the homepage copy as well as an HTML overhaul.
- About a month after that, the site ranked number 3 for his most competitive keywords.
- The site ranked on page 1 of Google for about a month.
- The site now sits at page 25 for its most competitive keywords.
Here is my theory. I think the website has been proxy hijacked for a number of years. This is what caused the poor rankings for such a long time. When the homepage text and HTML changes were made about 2 months ago, Google visited the site and found it unique. Google ranked the site well, due to this new unique content. During the month, Google noticed the proxy website was now a duplicate of my friend’s website once again and dropped the website’s ranking.
Does that make sense? From what I read on the website I linked to, it does.
Here are the similarities with what we are experiencing and what the author wrote on the other website:
- My friend’s website has never been banned.
- We did a quoted Google search for supposedly unique content on my friend’s website and a proxy website showed in the search results.
- The proxy URL looked like this: proxysite.com/cgi-bin/pxy/nph-pxy.pl/000010A/http/www.friendssite.com/
- The proxy site was an exact duplicate of my friend’s website.
Now, I am not sure if this is what caused my friends ranking to drop, but all the factors are there. The keywords we are talking about are very competitive, but the fact that his site showed so well in the search results for a month shows me that the potential is there.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
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Tags: content, Duplicate, google, google ranking, google search, Hijack, hijacking, homepage, homepage copy, homepage text, html, HTTP, keywords, Proxy, proxy url, proxysite, sandbox, search ranking, URL, website, www
Posted in SEO, Websites | 4 Comments »
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.
Related posts
Tags: code, content, content theft, copyscape, Duplicate, HOST, htaccess file, html, HTTP, link, REQUEST, RewriteCond, RewriteEngine, RewriteRule, search, search engine, search engines, server, website, Websites, www
Posted in SEO, Websites | 1 Comment »
