Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. May know what's the meaning of these parameters in .htaccess?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    May know what's the meaning of these parameters in .htaccess?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    9
    1915
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • esiow2013
      esiow2013 last edited by

      Begin HackRepair.com Blacklist

      RewriteEngine on

      Abuse Agent Blocking

      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bolt\ 0 [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:craftbot@yahoo.com [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} CazoodleBot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Default\ Browser\ 0 [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DIIbot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} discobot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ecxi [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailCollector [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GT::WWW [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} heritrix [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTP::Lite [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ia_archiver [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IDBot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search.org [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InternetSeer.com [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IRLbot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ISC\ Systems\ iRc\ Search\ 2.1 [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Java [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Link [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} LinksManager.com_bot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} linkwalker [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} lwp-trivial [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Maxthon$ [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MFC_Tear_Sample [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^microsoft.url [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Microsoft\ URL\ Control [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Missigua\ Locator [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.*Indy [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.NEWT [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Nutch [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} panscient.com [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PECL::HTTP [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PeoplePal [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PHPCrawl [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PleaseCrawl [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^psbot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Rippers\ 0 [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} SBIder [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SeaMonkey$ [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sitecheck.internetseer.com [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Snoopy [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Steeler [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Toata\ dragostea\ mea\ pentru\ diavola [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} URI::Fetch [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} urllib [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} User-Agent [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} webalta [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WebCollage [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Wells\ Search\ II [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WEP\ Search [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWW-Mechanize [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} zermelo [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.
      )Zeus.Webster [NC,OR]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZyBorg [NC]
      RewriteRule ^.
      - [F,L]

      Abuse bot blocking rule end

      End HackRepair.com Blacklist

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • esiow2013
        esiow2013 last edited by

        Now it's clear. Thanks a lot ThompsonPaul! 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ThompsonPaul
          ThompsonPaul @esiow2013 last edited by

          Thanks! 🙂

          Typically these blacklists are created and maintained by security specialists who have done testing on the different bots to determine which are legit/beneficial and which are crapbots. They then provide these lists for others to use. Often the lists are amalgamations of bots detected and analysed on a number of different sites and by a number of different specialists to act as a double-check for each other.

          You do need to be careful that you are using a well-curated list, as carelessly blocking bots can cause problems for legitimate bots. You would check out the creator of such a list the same way you'd check out the creator of a plugin you're considering using - check reviews, look at comments and responses on the post that provides the blacklist etc.

          That answer your question?

          Paul

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • esiow2013
            esiow2013 last edited by

            Hi ThompsonPaul,

            Wow! Superb explanation. One thing I just want to clarify, how would I know if these bots are "bad bots".

            Thanks a lot! 🙂

            ThompsonPaul 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ThompsonPaul
              ThompsonPaul last edited by

              As Lynn mentions, these entries form a blacklist for "bad bots". These are bots that are identified as being harmful (or at least non-helpful) to the real use of a website. Bots are essentially spiders that crawl and record the pages of your site the same way the GoogleBot does.There are 2 main reasons for blocking them

              1. Too many unnecessary bots can put a real strain on server resources, causing the site to slow down for real users. This can be especially problematic with bad bots as they do not respect the entries in your robots.txt file and so will crawl even blocked pages. This can mean huge numbers of extra pages get crawled, leading to even more load.

              2. Many (most?) of these bots are collecting data for nefarious purposes. Some are scrapers to collect your site content in order to re-use it illegally on another site, some are scanning for certain files/plugins on your site known to be insecure so they can target them for attack, etc.

              Best case scenario, these bots waste your bandwidth and can cause site slowdowns on low-powered (e.g. shared) servers. Worst case, they can actually cause harm to your site.

              There are literally many thousands of these types of bots out there, and their creators often change their identifying user agents just to get around these types of blacklists. But many have been around for some time and still use the same identifier. So having a blacklist to block the most common of them is actually very good security practice. To be totally proactive however, you'd need to update the list every couple of months.

              Bottom line - those entries are providing some security and overload protection for your site, and there's essentially no downside to having them in place even if they're not catching everything.

              Hope that helps - if any of my explanation isn't clear, just holler 🙂

              Paul

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • esiow2013
                esiow2013 last edited by

                Thanks Lynn! I'll just remove these parameters and leave this one:

                BEGIN WordPress

                <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
                RewriteBase /
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
                Rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [NC]
                Rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,NC]</ifmodule>

                END WordPress

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • LynnPatchett
                  LynnPatchett @esiow2013 last edited by

                  I dont use something like this myself. I suppose if you are having some problem with bots it might be useful, maybe someone else can chime in if they have some experience with this kind of blocking.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • esiow2013
                    esiow2013 last edited by

                    Thanks Lynn! Is this really necessary?

                    LynnPatchett 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • LynnPatchett
                      LynnPatchett last edited by

                      HI,

                      It is checking to see if the visiting user agent contains any of these strings (NC is telling it non case sensitive) and if it does to return a 403 forbidden message.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • SS.Digital

                        Forwarded vanity domains, suddenly resolving to 404 with appended URL's ending in random 5 characters

                        We have several vanity domains that forward to various pages on our primary domain.
                        e.g. www.vanity.com (301)--> www.mydomain.com/sub-page (200) These forwards have been in place for months or even years and have worked fine.  As of yesterday, we have seen the following problem.  We have made no changes in the forwarding settings. Now, inconsistently, they sometimes resolve and sometimes they do not.  When we load the vanity URL with Chrome Dev Tools (Network Pane) open, it shows the following redirect chains, where xxxxx represents a random 5 character string of lower and upper case letters.  (e.g. VGuTD) EXAMPLE:
                        www.vanity.com                                  (302, Found) -->
                        www.vanity.com/xxxxx                        (302, Found) -->
                        www.vanity.com/xxxxx                        (302, Found) -->
                        www.vanity.com/xxxxx/xxxxx               (302, Found) -->
                        www.mydomain.com/sub-page/xxxxx (404, Not Found) This is just one example, the amount of redirects, vary wildly.  Sometimes there is only 1 redirect, sometimes there are as many as 5. Sometimes the request will ultimately resolve on the correct mydomain.com/sub-page, but usually it does not (as in the example above). We have cross-checked across every browser, device, private/non-private, cookies cleared, on and off of our network etc...   This leads us to believe that it is not at the device or host level. Our Registrar is Godaddy.  They have not encountered this issue before, and have no idea what this 5 character string is from.  I tend to believe them because per our analytics, we have determined that this problem only started yesterday. Our primary question is, has anybody else encountered this problem either in the last couple days, or at any time in the past?  We have come up with a solution that works to alleviate the problem, but to implement it across hundreds of vanity domains will take us an inordinate amount of time.  Really hoping to fix the cause of the problem instead of just treating the symptom.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SS.Digital
                        0
                      • peteboyd

                        URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?

                        A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd
                        0
                      • Bill_at_Common_Form

                        Does DMCA protection actually improve search rankings (assuming no one's stolen my content)

                        Hello Moz Community, I had a conversation with someone who claimed that implementing a DMCA protection badge, such as those offered at http://www.dmca.com/ for $10/mo, will improve a site's Google rankings.  Is this true? I know that if my content is stolen it can hurt my rankings (or the stolen content can replace mine), but I'm asking if merely implementing the badge will help my rankings. Thanks! Bill

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_at_Common_Form
                        0
                      • mark_baird

                        Do Q&A 's work for SEO

                        If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird
                        0
                      • PottyScotty

                        Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea

                        Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites.  Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities.  e.g. Stirling
                        Stirling paintball
                        Stirling Go Karting
                        Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns.  At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive!  Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
                        0
                      • Omnipress

                        Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?

                        I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
                        http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
                        0
                      • authoritysitebuilder

                        Adding index.php at the end of the url effect it's rankings

                        I have just had my site updated and we have put index.php at the end of all the urls. Not long after the sites rankings dropped. Checking the backlinks, they all go to (example)  http://www.website.com  and not http://www.website.com/index.php. So could this change have effected rankings even though it redirects to the new url?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | authoritysitebuilder
                        0
                      • Townpages

                        Culling 99% of a website's pages. Will this cause irreparable damage?

                        I have a large travel site that has over 140,000 pages. The problem I have is that the majority of pages are filled with dupe content. When Panda came in, our rankings were obliterated, so I am trying to isolate the unique content on the site and go forward with that. The problem is, the site has been going for over 10 years, with every man and his dog copying content from it. It seems that our travel guides have been largely left untouched and are the only unique content that I can find. We have 1000 travel guides in total. My first question is, would reducing 140,000 pages to just 1,000 ruin the site's authority in any way? The site does use internal linking within these pages, so culling them will remove thousands of internal links throughout the site. Also, am I right in saying that the link juice should now move to the more important pages with unique content, if redirects are set up correctly? And finally, how would you go about redirecting all theses pages? I will be culling a huge amount of hotel pages, would you consider redirecting all of these to the generic hotels page of the site? Thanks for your time, I know this is quite a long one, Nick

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.