How To Do A Simple 301 Redirect And A WWW Redirect And It’s SEO Implications

Experts working in SEO often find themselves cast  in the role of an IT professional. Therefore it is my understanding, that without basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP  one should not call himself an SEO specialist. One of the most common of these are the redirects. If you Google it and go to the Wikipedia page you won’t get much smarter in how to actually do it or what it means from an SEO perspective. During my work I had to do many redirects but here we will discuss only the most common ones.

If you are using an advanced CMS (Content Managment System) like WordPress , than just search for a plugin. There is no need to get down this deep if you can avoid it. Ifyou can’t avoid it however the following tutorial will show you howto redirect a static HTML webpage and a dynamic PHP webapge the proper way to preserve all the Linkjuice.

What you need

Total commander for FTP access and Notepad or PSPAad (I prefer PSPAd but it’s a bit more complicated) for writing a single snippet of PHP code. If you don’t know what FTP server or how to access it  then please watch this video tutorial before we begin. It’s only two minutes long.

1., Open your Notepad and then simply copy the following code in it:

<?php
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://adultsblogging.com/”);
?>

2.,As you can see it is a simple PHP script. Don’t forget to substitute whatever is after Location:  with your web address you wish to redirect toCurrently it would redirect to me.Now click save as and then save it as index.php it is important to not to forget the extension from the end of it otherwise it will not work.

3., Now that you have the file  simply access your FTP server and open the directory /public_html this will bring you to the root of your domain. Meaning if your website is called yourdomainname.com then you are right at the homepage level currently. There probably folders named /cake, /bunny or /whatever sub pages (yourdomainname.com/cake) you have. Forget them for now.

4., Create a backup of all the files inside the /public_html folder before you do anything!

5., Find the file named index and delete it and replace it with the file we have created before. This will redirect your  yourdomainname.com to the web address you specified earlier. There you go! You just did a simple 301 redirect of a static HTML webpage. Make sure you back up everything and only delete the index file if you are not planning to use it again.

SEO effects

The best thing about a 301 (also known as permanent)  redirect that it keeps as much as 90-99% of the linkjuice of the redirected page and redirecting it to where you like it. If you redirect it within the URL like www.yourdomainname.com is redirected to www.yourdomainname.com/cake then the domain authority and Pagerank transfer will be really fast, however transferring between URLs ( to yourdomainname2.com) can take time.

PHP Canonical Redirect or www redirect

This is the second most often forthcoming redirect. This a bit more complex and your old and home-brew content management systems sometimes require a redirect like this. They are most often written in PHP. What this redirect does, is that it will make your website available both with and without the www. prefix.  It is very easy just  do the same as we did before.

1.,  Use this code and this time you don’t even have to change anything in it:

<?php
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’]);
}
?>

2., Instead of deleting the the index file this time just insert this code into the index.html or index.php file at the very top before everything else. You just did a PHP Canonical Redirect! How great is that.

It is important to note , that if you are not sure about this or too much is at risk, then you should seek an expert’s help. Sadly we often don’t have this luxury.

SEO effects

Same as before the link juice is transferred without problem authority and Pagerank is unaffected after a brief initial transition. Some might claim to a redirect a www-less version of the webpage is much better from a usability standpoint but it is wrong. The best user experience is guaranteed , if your visitors, direct traffic can reach you using both with www and without.

302, 307 redirects and any other forms of redirects should be avoided at all cost except if you are planning to lose the domain authority and Pagerank and accumulated Linkjuice on purpose. It was largely helpful to save the traffic from spammed websites and websites with unnatural link portfolio but since we can easily disavow links in WMT(Google Webmaster Tools) it is rarely used nowadays.

Javascript redirect should be avoided as well as it does not pass Linkjuice or DA or PR at all.

WHY A GOOD SITE IS THE BEST SEO METHOD

This might come as a surprise to many people, but the best method for SEO is building a decent site.

Adult webmasters often ask me what needs to be done in order to rank their site #1 for the search term they’re targeting. The answer will always be the same: build the best result possible for that keyword. The reason why people use search engines is because they work, and the sooner webmasters understand that, the better.

SEO isn’t a complicated game: it’s just something that requires a lot of hard work. Sure, there are specific elements of search engine optimization that are a little on the technical side, such as canonicalization, sitemaps and non-www. redirects, but the vast bulk of this won’t make a difference to your ranking if your site isn’t providing a good user experience. When someone searches ‘buy train set’ on Google, they want to buy a train set. They don’t want to sell a car, nor do they want to lease a wheelbarrow. Thus, the best result that could possibly be put at the top of Google is one that gives the user what they want: a site or page that gives them the ability to purchase a train set.

Spam sites have pretty much died over the last few years. They rarely give the user what they want, and as such, Google disregards them as a place for people to go. There are a few that slip through the cracks, sure – but you yourself would not use a search engine if you couldn’t find what you wanted with minimal effort.

So as I always tell: focus on building a website that is designed with the target audience in mind. There are several direct SEO benefits of this too. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Time on Site

Google claims to not use your Analytics data as a way of working out how long someone spends on your site, but I guarantee that they look at various other metrics in order to see whether or not they’re giving decent results for a keyword search. Time on site can be used by Google, but they get it through another method. For instance, say someone searches ‘buy train set’ on Google: every single time someone clicks in the first result, Google will take note of the time that they did that. If they get 1,000 people doing this over a month and within the space of 20 seconds, every single one of them returns to their Google search to click the second link, upon which they spend an average of 4 minutes on before returning to Google, chances are the second result is a lot better than the first, and you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll switch those results out. Note that this will be done over a long period of time and a large number of user data points. Google might also look at other indications of someone’s success with a search term, such as looking for an unrelated phrase searched quickly after the first. As an example, if I typed in ‘buy train set’, spent 1 minute on the site before returning to Google and typed in ‘[My Bank] Login Online’, there’s a good chance I’m going to check my bank account to see whether or not I can afford one of the train sets they have. I don’t know if the big G goes as far as the latter example, but the former is certainly being done.

Sharing & Linking

If you build a good site, people are more likely to talk about it. When people talk, they link. The chances may be slim, but if the competition is limited, you can be sure that your site will come out on top if it does get recognized. I recently published a post on Google’s piracy update and why it might be a good thing for the adult entertainment industry. It eventually got circulated on Twitter by a few performers and professionals that offer services: a few retweets here and there produced around 250 hits to my site via Twitter. The time on site was a little on the slim side (because I doubt many people actually cared to go elsewhere) but to Google, the sharing of this link is a good indication that I produce something worth talking about. Can my competition say the same? No. So by building a decent post with useful information, I’ve produced backlinks and ‘social buzz’ (which is rare in the adult SEO industry, believe me!) without having to trade, buy or bargain for them. Simply producing something people took an interest in was enough.

Return Visitor Searches

If I run a decent website and people like it, chances are they’re going to come back. The adult industry is an interesting one, because it’s highly likely someone will delete their search history or run incognito/privacy mode. This means that when they want to come back again, they either have to remember the domain name or search it. When searching for a specific domain name such as “Adults Blogging” in Google, what you’re telling Google is that you want this site in particular. Again, I have little doubt that this is used as a ranking metric by search engines: if they see users caring about this specific website, it weighs slightly in its favor.

It’s Good For Business

A good site that doesn’t look spammy and does a decent job at giving the user an experience they expected is just good in and of itself. A professional looking website with lots of content, a clean design and the ability to show the user what they want is going to result in a higher likelihood of them actually buying something. Now this isn’t directly applicable to a lot of sites, but you know yourself if you go somewhere that looks a little sketchy, you’re not going to feel comfortable handing over cash or clicking on a link. An effective SEO strategy is also going to be an effective business strategy. Put simply, if you ever make a change that disadvantages the user in order to improve your SEO, you’re making a bad decision.

The bottom line here is that in recent years, SEO has become more about building a decent website for users instead of building a decent website for search engines.

The Secrets of Guest Posting, How to be a Successful Guest Poster

Services, even online marketing services, are a team effort.

It’s a team effort and the quality of the output is dependent of everyone involved. Including the client!

Here are some tips you can use to maximize the effectiveness of your guest posting:

• before you start the guest post process

• after the guest post has been published

I also included a special section at the end, pointing out how the client can help with the guest posting efforts.

Before you start guest posting!

1. Scan and scavenge your client’s site

Identify linkable content on the client’s site, which you can use in your guest post, and secure permission to use it from the client. Whether it is an infographic or a custom image or just a testimonial, they can all help your link-building efforts.

2. Use Custom images

Stock photos are  great but custom images are even better. For $5 you can get custom images online and you would not believe how much they can help. (Man – where/how can they get custom images? And why are they so much better than stock?)

3. Forget evergreen content, be creative

Evergreen content is low-quality content. End of story.  (WHY?) Take the time to sit down and come up with timely (?), awesome, linkable content ideas. Involve your writers or even involve the client. (How should they come up with new ideas? Check trending issues within their industry)

Who else would know more about “cosmetic dentristry,” for example, than a cosmetic dentist? Online marketing services, like any other services, are a team effort. Use your client’s knowledge to write guest posts that go beyond just the basic information.

After the guest post is published

1. Promote via Social Media

The life of a guest post does not end once it is  published. Sites that accept guest posts love it when the author cares about the content. Find relevant communities and groups on social networks and share your guest post. This can greatly extend the life-time of the  post. This sends more traffic to the blog that published your post and the social media helps you get more linkjuice out of your links as well so it’s a win-win for everybody.

2. Commenting

Another aspect of actually caring about your guest posts is commenting. Get into the conversation that your guest posts starts, or start one yourself! Blog owners love itwhen they see that you actually care. You definitely want to respond to everyone who makes a comment, whether they agree or disagree with your post. This puts you miles above hit-and-run guest posters and makes you stand out as a dependable conscientious writer

3. Interlinking

It is a common practice to include relevant  links to authority sites within the guest posts to make linking to the client appear natural.

Include your own guest posts from other reputable sites as  links! It’s a smart way to further increase their linkjuice and if the blog owner checks it, he will see that you are an accomplished author who can be trusted.

How can the client help

The client in general can hep you the most if he lets you associate yourself with him and lets you work closely with him and his website.

1. Providing company email address

If you can guest post with a company email address, it will increase your effectiveness in certain industries ,especially tight-knit niches with few target options and/or very serious, professional niches.

2. Guest posting in the client’s name or using the persona of an industry expert

Try to refer to yourself as “blogger for xy company” or “on behalf of xy company” or “blogging for xy company, a well-know industry leader”. Such a tactic can tremendously increase your effectiveness of getting the  guest post published.

After all, high-quality guest posting is meant to showcase the expertise and insight of an industry leader, and the opinions of people at the peak of their professions. If you can represent these people and their opinions in leading publications you know you are doing guest posting right.

3. Setting up authorship for you on the blog

If your client can temporary set you up as one of his bloggers (complete with authorship and social media profiles), that can be very beneficial in certain niches, where opinion leader bloggers are authority figures.

Success = Invitations

If you do a number of these, you will likely be a successful professional guest poster, and after a certain time you will notice the strangest of all things.

You will get invitations from leading publications to guest post! You will no longer  have to “knock on every door” and beg for websites to publish your posts – instead you will be a coveted opinion leader, an authority figure among bloggers, a well known guest blogger.