Free Code to Improve Your SEO Ranking

[Alston]

Search engines can penalize our sites, or at least fail to give them full benefit, for duplicate content.

Sometimes what search engines perceive as duplicate content isn't the same content on more than one page. It is content on one page that can be reached by more than one URL.

All of the URLs below will reach the same page:

• https://best-health-insurance-quote.com/index.htm
• https://best-health-insurance-quote.com/
• https://www.best-health-insurance-quote.com/index.htm
  

Since the URLs above could each reach different content, the search engines could index the content more than once. They could also dilute the link juice passed to them.

Google is getting smarter and more powerful every day. They are probably making fewer and fewer mistakes as each hour passes. However even today sometimes Google and the other search engines need help.

Backlinks are votes.

If half of John F. Kennedy's votes went to "John Kennedy" and the half went to "JFK" and no one consolidated the votes, Nixon would have won in 1960.

The code that fixes this problem can be found on this blog post about the canonical url tag

 

[BlockO]

when you say to install the code on every page, does it have to be every page?

I have a small issue in that my blog is the only page on my website that I am unable to add html coding. will that make any difference?

 

[valdet]

What's even more important than cannonical tag, is doing the proper 301 redirect from now-www to www version of your site URL.

The following two links will lead you to same page (www version), but its importance is seen differently in search engine spiders.

www http://www.insurance-forums.net
non-www http://insurance-forums.net

Do rectify that, one needs to apply the proper .htaccess directives

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.insurance-forums.net
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.insurance-forums.net/$1 [R=301,L]

Val.

 

[Alston]

when you say to install the code on every page, does it have to be every page?

I have a small issue in that my blog is the only page on my website that I am unable to add html coding. will that make any difference?

Ideally you would put the code on every page unless you use a content management system that lets you make global changes by changing one file. WordPress is an example of a content management system.

You can make the changes in the header.php file of most themes. This will affect all the pages of your blog.

I'll type up some instructions when I get a chance.

You just have to remember to reinsert the code if you change themes or upgrade to a newer version of the same theme.

Changes made on the theme level are not affected by upgrading to a new version of WordPress. I don't think that plug-ins have any effect either, but I don't have much experience with plug-ins.

I know enough UNIX to make simple changes to an .htaccess file, but I'm not an expert. My current understanding, however, is that making changes in your root .htaccess file has the advantage of being able to affect all of your pages with a couple of lines of code.

I don't think that you can achieve ALL of the objectives that the canonical tag can achieve by changing an .htaccess file, however, it can definitely help and it requires less code.

 

[ksigmtsu]

There is no harm in doing both.

 

[somarco]

Seems like you can make a change (301 redirect) at the server level. I believe my son did that for my primary site when he helped me tweak it.

 

[ksigmtsu]

That's what val said above, you can do the 301 redirect directly in the htaccess file or go do it in your cpanel interface.

Ultimately cpanel is appending htaccess, its just easier for someone that doesn't know how all that works to use the cpanel instead.

 

[Alston]

I don't believe the code that Val suggested is a 301 redirect.

Redirects and rewrites go in the same file so they are easy to confuse.

@Val
Do you need
"RewriteEngine On"
above the code you shared or is "RewriteEngine On" implied?

I speak Unix like a tourist.

 

[BlockO]

I speak Unix like a tourist.

when it comes to Unix or any other type of coding, I wouldn't know whether to wind my ass or scratch my watch.

about two hours ago, matt cutts tweeted about his new youtube video, which happens to be right on subject here. I have to admit though, I only understood about 3 words of it.

 

[valdet]

That's what val said above, you can do the 301 redirect directly in the htaccess file or go do it in your cpanel interface.

Ultimately cpanel is appending htaccess, its just easier for someone that doesn't know how all that works to use the cpanel instead.

cPanel adds a blank .htaccess file by default. There are a lot of things which can be tweaked through cPanel interface which is easier (password-protecting certain locations of your site, redirects, blocking particular IP's/countries etc..) but in .htaccess you have much more freedom, providing you know the correct unix commands.

For this site, through a set of .htaccess directives, I was able to shave off more than 1.5 seconds of page speed, manage caching of static objects in a more effective way, set a certain expire for javascript/images/css etc...

I don't believe the code that Val suggested is a 301 redirect.
Redirects and rewrites go in the same file so they are easy to confuse.
@Val
Do you need
"RewriteEngine On"
above the code you shared or is "RewriteEngine On" implied?
I speak Unix like a tourist.

Yes you need to have Rewrite Engine On before on .htaccess. Most servers have mod.rewrite.c enabled by default

The command I quoted above, is a 301 redirect. The [R=301] directive is a rule which indicates a permanent redirect

Val.