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Right I have done some research... As this was bugging me...
Remove:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Default\.aspx$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^pagename=About-Us$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/About-Us/ [R=301,L]
And replace it with:
```
<code>RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^pagename=About-Us$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^Default\.aspx$ http://www.domain.co.uk/About-Us/? [R=301,L,NC]</code>
```
Test it and let me know...
Keith
Hi Uds,
I wouldn't say it's worth moving them... I suspect the links are all in the footers any way? (which pass less juice).
If you have 50 sites on one host from the same C block all linking back they are not going to pass as much juice as say 50 links from various high quality sites.
Keith
Hi Pieter,
They are google local listing results, on a mobile device the number is displayed as a call button.
You will need to setup a Google Places account (which is now integrated with Google+) and get it to rank in order to show up with a call button in the SERP's.
I did a blog post on Google Places Optimisation that you might find useful.
Keith
The short answer is no, there is no issue with targeting the keywords on each site but you will have to put twice the work in... A better option would be to use the same site and build more domain authority to that site and target some different keywords to increase traffic.
Or are you trying to appear on the first SERP page multiple times using different domains?
I would not worry about it... That's like saying "For next day delivery lease make sure you order before 3pm monday - friday." - which is completely legit.
It's when you have two pages that are almost the same you run into issues, or two urls for one page 
Or you are copying content from other sites.
A 307 Redirect is the HTTP 1.1 successor of the 302 redirect. While the major crawlers will treat it like a 302 in some cases, it is best to use a 301 for almost all cases. The exception to this is when content is really moved only temporarily (such as during maintenance) AND the server has already been identified by the search engines as 1.1 compatible. Since determining if the search engines have identified this essentially impossible, it is best to use a 302 redirect.
Hey Debora,
Any luck?
Keith
Are you looking to redirect a single url or many similar URL's ?
I agree with the above but make sure you have a varied back link profile, build some links for your brand, some naked URL's, some links to other pages etc.
Keep your anchor text keyword % down as low as possible.
Hey Ahmad,
OSE (open site explorer) only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources another reason could simply be that Roger (the SEOMoz crawler bot) has not yet crawled sites with your links on.
You should attempt to build an organic (looking) link profile... If all your links are anchor text for "engraved wedding glasses" it looks unnatural and spammy.
There is no golden number of links that triggers googles algo, but don't build stupid amounts in one go, a few per day should be fine I'd say no more than 20 and ideally gradually increase more per day as your site authority grows.
If you are asking why your ranking has not increased... My answer would be due to the quality of your inbound links, most are from low quality forums, directories or low authority sites.
The quality of the inbound link matters greatly.
Hi,
You have a robots.txt file here: http://www.soobumimphotography.com/robots.txt
Can you write this again in English so it makes sense?
"I called Godaddy and told me if I used any plug ins etc. Godaddy fixed .htaccss file and my site was up and runningjust fine."
Yes google xml sitemaps will add the location of your stitemap to the robots.txt file - but there is nothing wrong with your robots.txt file.
I would try and vary them if possible... Spending the most time on your sites product description.
This could also help your listings / website stand out from the rest.
Maybe someone posted a link into IRC or shared it on twitter / facebook etc... Could of been a Bot or someone could of scanned your site for vulns... there could be 1000s of reasons why this happend.
Jumping from about 40 to around 150 is not exactly massive... And it's not bad new for your Adsense?? Unless bas news for you is possibly making more money?!
I would stop obsessing over Analytics stats and work on more productive things, like getting more traffic
If the above rules Rewrite rules work correctly (always check) then it will redirect both Google and humans.
Passing googles page rank from your old page to the new (well most of it anyway).
Was your site down during this period?
I would recommend setting up pingdom.com (free site monitoring), this will email you if your site goes down - I suspect this is a hosting related issue.
FYI, I can access your robots.txt fine from here.
Hey Wendy,
I was just reading an article on exact match domains and thought it might be of use to you http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline
Sorry, I completely misread this question (I missed the part where you said you had to .htaccess files!).
Yes put one .htaccess file in the root dir, add the blog rewrite rule to the bottom of the file.
Let me know how it goes.
Keith
A branded root domain = google.com, nike.com , apple.com etc any domain that uses a brand name and not a dictionary keyword's like "cheap-cars.com" or "cheapcars.com".
SEO's define a root domain as the domain name on it's own with no sub domain etc so google.com not www.google.com
Yuk mod_rewrite...
Try:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/ [R=301,L]
You may wish to add $1 on the end
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
Let me know if that stops it looping...
Keith
Hey Davinia,
Check the screenshot attached, as you can see I searched for "medical call center" and in the first organic result it's parsed the domain for that keyword and made the keywords bold in the domain name.
Google's parse domains for for keywords, it's pretty basic stuff... You don't need to have a hypen (dash) in there as a delimiter any more (although this used to help years ago).
I was not simply suggesting building links to the home page will help (which it obviously will if done correctly), what I meant was there is little point building a page that as the same keywords as the domain and then building links to that page.
As the domain in question has the exact match keywords Wendy can use the home page to rank for those keywords without the need for an additional page targeting the keyword "medical call center".
Keith
Hey Jeroen,
If you are going down the ccTLD route I would host each sites it's respected country, it's possible Google will apply some weight to the geo location of the IP address (you should also set the location in WMT).
But more importantly hosting in the same country is going to improve site load times which will help out (a tiny bit atm) with google and improve the user experience.
Hosting in another country is not going to get you "penalised" by Google but it's not going to send a signal (from the geo location of the IP address) that you are located in Germany - this may or may not affect your rankings.
I recommend you watch this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
Hope that helps...
Keith
If Wendy has a keyword heavy domain why not just build the links to the home page?! I would avoid repeating the keyword again in the URL if the domain already includes them...
I could understand this strategy if the domain was branded and did not include the target keywords, but that's not the case here.
Keith
The short answer is yes, google have reduced the weight of this (apparently) if i was picking a brand I would probably try to include a partial match for one of the head terms without it looking spammy if possible... (like SEOMoz.org).
Spammy keyword match domains (no1-cheap-car-insurance.com) don't look as pro a branded domain IMO.
Obviously this is only one ranking factor out of many...
Hope that helps,
Keith
If the bot is in another country and you have blocked the range it's pretty obvious... What kind of "backup" are you looking for?
If you are asking me if I have a geographical list of bots for each search engine then no, I don't. But this might be of some use to you http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/TbpNyFiJvjs
Good luck with the whole site design / copyright issue, any chance you could PM me a link I would like to see what they have done... (just curious).
Hi Claudio,
See here: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=yahoo+listing+pending&l=1
For a basic listing please allow up to 20 days...
Hope that helps...
Keith
Well if those external links coming in passed link juice and they no long link due to a 404... Then you will lose link juice... So this could potentially affect rankings.
I would either 301 the broken links to the new most relevant page or better still contract the external sites web host and ask them to change the link to the new address (depending on the amount of links).
By blocking large ranges of IP address you could end up restricting access to legitimate users, bots etc.
For a start how do you even know what site is harvesting your data is in the said country, sure they might be hosting there but the boxes that are ripping your content might be in the US they could then have some web heads in some other random countries serving up the content.
People copying / stealing / cloning your content is pretty common it happens to a lot of my sites - it's just the way it is your not going to be able to stop it you might as well just focus on making your site more authoritative.
Instead of removing UK ranking signals, would it not be better to add some US ranking signals in addition - in an effort to rank for both .co.uk and .com?
Out of interest why do you want to rank on google.com if you are targeting "blackpool hotels" are you getting a lot of US clients?
I would of thought it would be mainly UK searchers you're looking to target?
Also have you tried using SEO Moz's ranking checker to confirm a US search position? (It could be google personalising your search).
If you PM me your domain and keyword ill check for you.
No worries Pip, glad you found your answer - can you mark this question as answered?
Thanks
Keith
This is because the .htaccess file you lost contained rewrite rules for Apache.
Solution:
Create another site using "Fresh Store Builder" and copy the .htaccess it generates to your existing site.
Failing that contact their support and ask them for the .htaccess file.
Moving forward, always take a backup of your websites to prevent this happening again.
Keith
Generally speaking it's a lot harder to rank on google.com than it is for a geo location like google.co.uk - perhaps you are sending stronger signals to google that you are a uk based company?
FYI if you are only trying to rank in the UK then anyone going to google.com gets redirected to .co.uk any way.
IME crap links still rank if everyone else in that niche has a tone of bad links as well (remember google need relevant search results for its users), but chances are little or no value will be flowing from thiose links. This is just my opinion... I have no evidence to back it up. Build some good links and see what happens....
Well put the rest of the content in a different directory then and disallow that, thats the only other solution I can think of...
I would not use YoutTube personally, check out what google have to say here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/
And this is also a decent guide on how to get video into search(also explains about securing your video content): http://www.distilled.net/blog/video/getting-video-results-in-google/
Hope that helps,
Keith
Name the page you want indexing something and you can use the following:
Disallow: /en/
Allow: /en/index.html
Always test robots.txt in google webmaster tools.
Hope that helps,
Keith
OSE only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources.
Majestic index shows more links and has a larger index - this could be better for you, personally I would rather see all link data possible for a domain.
Google Webmaster Tools is always going to show more links, Google for obvious reasons have a lot more power to crawl the Internet and store large link databases (GWMT is typically more complete IME).
That is why there is such a difference in back link figures between these services.
I use all these services + bing webmaster tools link checker (it allows you to check back link profiles of other domains, not just the ones you own like GWMT).
Hope that helps,
Keith
I would go with a custom design if you can afford it, maybe a template will cover you for now...
Personally long term I would work on changing the URL's so they are human readable but for now to "fix" the issue I would advise you use rel=canonical here is a guide... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
Looks like a 403 permissions problem, that's a server side error... Make sure you have the correct permissions set on the blog folder in IIS Personally I always host on Linux...
Use this:
**User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/wp-admin/
Disallow: /blog/wp-includes/
Sitemap: http://nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/sitemap.xml**
Any FYI, you have the following error on your blog:
Warning: is_readable() [function.is-readable]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(D:\home\nile-cruises-4u.co.uk\wwwroot\blog/wp-content/plugins/D:\home\nile-cruises-4u.co.uk\wwwroot\blog\wp-content\plugins\websitedefender-wordpress-security/languages/WSDWP_SECURITY-en_US.mo) is not within the allowed path(s): (D:\home\nile-cruises-4u.co.uk\wwwroot) in D:\home\nile-cruises-4u.co.uk\wwwroot\blog\wp-includes\l10n.php on line **339 **
Get your web guy to look at that, it appears at the top of every blog page for me...
Hope that helps,
Keith
Fair enough, I would use a combination of brand name and your naked URL.
Optionally chucking in the occasional anchor text link (vary this) is not going to hurt either and it will help your rankings... (providing your back link profile is currently clean).
Hope that helps...
Keith
I gave you an example of a basic robots.txt file that I use on one of my Wordpress sites above, I would suggest using that for now.
I would not bother messing around with crawl delay in robots.txt as Peter said above there are better ways to achieve this... Plus I doubt you need it any way.
Google caches the robots.txt info for about 24hrs normally in my experience... So it's possible the old cached version is still being used by Google.
Are you actually building links to rank for a phrase?
What is your goal from link building??