We have previously done a video on the .htaccess file for apache servers, and how is can help to normalize your URLs and in particular help re-direct any inbound links to the correct page.

We have since expanded on the htaccess file that we use with our sites and have added other commands that we believe help your website to perform in the search engines and improve usability.

The code includes, Rewrite conditions, Error documents, Cache Expiry and Compression.

The rewrite condition is designed to ensure your website has 1 URL per page indexed by the search bots, You can use the following code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [R,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php

RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

The first part of the Rewrite condition re-directs the domain to include the www.

The second piece re-directs away from the /index.php or specific file name back to the root.

2.) Error Doc - Tells the server where to re-direct the user to if a dead link is found or a URL is not longer active.

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

3.) Expires On - Tells a browser how long to hold the information of a web page in its cache, this improves the load time for rrevisiting users, this includes html, javascript and images.

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresDefault “access plus 7200 seconds”

4.) Compression (Gzip or Deflate) - You can use either Gzip or Deflate dependent on server capability, this example uses mod_deflate and firstly checks if the functionality is enabled then dependent of the browser, the files are compressed and minified to improve the load time of the site.

<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

</ifmodule>

Thanks for watching.

Last weeks blog we looked at 10 simple tips to get you started on your onsite SEO. If you are serious about SEO it would pay to make sure you understand all the points in last weeks blog. To move forward here are a few more suggestions:

• Make sure you use the links within your site to make use of your keywords. For example if your keyword is “SEO” then link to SEO, and not “to find out more about SEO click here”
• Following on from this, make sure you include title tags to your links. Title tags will appear when you hover your mouse over a link. Don’t spam these with keywords, but make them descriptive from a users perspective, for example “click here” wont mean anything to a user or search engines but if you have “to find out more read our SEO blog” with a title tag of “search engine optimisation blog” you give the link more value.
• While we are on links, check that your homepage links throughout your site link back only to the domain and not www.yourdomain.co.uk/index.php. If your external links are pointing to www..yourdomain.co.uk and your internal links point to /index.php you are splitting your links and they are therefore not effective.
• If you have a new site it can often take some time to get indexed through submission to Google. If you can get a link from another good quality site it is likely you will get indexed much quicker.
• Make sure your site is easy to use, navigation reflects the pages it points to, links are easily identifiable from regular text, and that they are easy to click.
• Alt tags for images are there for the visually impaired, they wont be able to see the image, but a screen reader will be able to pick up what the alt tags say, allowing the user to make sense of the site. If you images are relevant for your site then you can make use of them for SEO but don’t abuse them, a brief descriptive alt tag in your coding will mean you image will get indexed by search engines and serve it’s intended purpose.
• We create sitemaps for users, and for search engines we need to create an XML sitemap. To learn more have a look at James and Nick’s video blog.
• My last tip of the day is utilise Google’s wonderwheel for long tail keywords you can integrate into your copy and blog posts. This will give you some ideas of what Google considers relevant to your selected keywords, and support your content.

If I have missed anything please let me know, I’m sure my colleagues will be able to point out a vital element they think I have over looked. If you can get to grips with my last two blogs you have set your self up with the basics to get started. Make yourself a check list, and tick things off as you work your way through, that way you always have something to refer back on and reflect on room for improvement.

Welcome to this weeks SEO video tutorial, Google still dominates the market share for search engines in the UK with a recent report from impact media outlining a 90% share in January 2010, Yahoo is second with a 5% share and Bing third with 3%.

However we feel that this may change and have outlined 5 reasons not to ignore Bing and although they hold a tiny percentage of the UK market share, this is increasing year on year and they already hold a 10% share of search in the US.

Number 1 - In the US it is already more effective to be position 1 in Bing than position 10 in Google according to click through rates, this is pretty similar for the UK market too and it is only going to increase over time.

Number 2 - PC’s that use either Windows 7 or Vista uses Bing as the default search engine in the start menu. With the over 70% of computers being PC’s and the majority of them running some version of Windows, this is a huge opportunity for Microsoft to continue to improve their market share.

Number 3 - All the Windows based PC’s in the world also use internet explorer by default, another Microsoft product which defaults to Bing.com. Also other browsers such as Safari 5 allow you to change the quick search box in the top right hand side to Bing rather than Google. Mozilla Firefox still uses Google as its default homepage, but with Google pushing Chrome, there is always the possibility of Mozilla jumping ships.

Number 4 - You have probably seen Bing’s current television marketing campaign. They seem to be investing a large budget into targeting the UK audience, selling themselves as ‘The Decision Engine’, implying that their results are more focus on the search query rather than returning any information that contains the keyword.

Number 5 - Yahoo will be using Bing’s algorithm so essentially if you rank in Bing you will rank in Yahoo!, meaning you will be performing position 1 for a combined 8% market share from both Bing and Yahoo!.

We hope that this has been of some help and you consider optimising for Bing as part of your SEO campaign. We have also released a new homepage on crearecommunications.co.uk, so take a look and any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks for watching.

Script:

Hi and welcome to this weeks SEO video blog, we are going to take a quick look at link building and in particular what to look out for when asked to pay for links on other webmasters sites.

Firstly tho, a bit of news. You might have seen the count down on Google when you clicked ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, well after all the talk about it counting down to a new Google release or something exciting within the industry, it turned out to be a bit of a gimmick.

- video -

Very festive!

When thinking about buying links, it is important that you are very careful. Google can easily identify paid links, potentially leading to negative effects towards your SEO campaign.

So a few things to look out for when buying links are as follows:

Firstly, domain authority. Page Rank (PR) is a good way of seeing what sort of authority the domain has in the eyes of Google, it may also be worth looking at domain age and site performance.

Secondly, related content. When link building it is important that the sites content reflects your businesses keywords and SEO campaign, this will look more natural to Google.

Third, outbound links. If the site you are considering is littered with links already and covered in advertisements, it is probable that Google is already aware of this and it will have potentially lost some authority.

Fourth, quality content. Content is king, Good quality content is vital, so take some time to read through the text and make sure it isn’t full of spammy text and internal links.

Fifth, index depth. Small sites can only hold so much information, so a site with a larger search index can hold more related content, which can help to build the authority of a domain and increase the value of a link from this site.

I hope this mini list has been of some help, remember that when building backward links you should always consider quality over quantity.

Thanks for watching, please leave any questions or comments on the youtube channel or supporting blog post.

News: In November Google rolled out breadcrumbs display in SERPs. The idea is that when a URL for a listing is too long it will be replaced by a breadcrumb, to help a user understand the context of that web page. Google quotes

“Some web addresses help you understand the structure of the site and how the specific page fits into the site hierarchy. For example, consider a search for the biography of Vint Cerf (Google’s Internet Evangelist). The URL for one result, “www.google.com/corporate/execs.html,” shows that the page is located in a page about “execs,” under “corporate,” which is on the “google.com” site. This can provide valuable context when deciding whether to click on the result.

Often, however, URLs are too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information.“

Tutorial : This week we are going to look at the importance of internal linking for both usability and search engine optimisation. We have put together an example together that distributes a set of keywords throughout a simple 3 page website.

References:

http://www.crearecommunications.co.uk/examples/internal-linking.html