Internet Marketing, SEM, News, Sports, Videos, and Politics Blog
SEM
Redirecting All Traffic From A Subdirectory To The Root
Dec 22nd
If you want to permanently redirect all the traffic from a subdirectory to the root domain, and you’re running Apache, the job is quite simple. All you need to do is make sure you mod_alias installed, and then you can a simple command to your .htaccess file.
Here’s example code.
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old/(.*)/$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1/
That would take all the requests for files located in the /old/ directory and redirect them permanently their new location at the root. This might come in handy for someone who has a blog installed in a subdirectory and wants to promote it to the root.
You can also exclude directories, in case you need to. Use the following syntax:
Redirect permanent ^/(?!category/)(?!tag/)(.*)/(.*)/$
Redirect match supports regex so anything that can be done in regex can be done using redirectmatch. The documentation from Apache is typically obtuse.
“This directive is equivalent to Redirect, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename.”
In any event, redirectmatch is an extremely powerful and easy to use way to do redirection.
Finding The Best Link Exchange
Dec 21st
Tips on finding the best link exchanges
To publicize a Web page, it’s always a difficult task and one of the first steps you can do is to ensure that popular search engines index your website properly. One way to do this for people who have more time than money is by exchanging links with related websites. Although the practice has been frowned on to a degree by search engines, the one reason webmasters to continue to exchange links is because link exchanges have their roots in the earliest days of the internet.
301 Redirection Gotchas
Oct 16th
301 Redirection is a great thing, if you do it right. 301 redirection is a great way to move content to new locations while preserving your incoming links. If you use PHP and mod_rewrite already, implementing 301 redirects is a snap.
Either way, if you plan on moving some files, you can preserve rankings for your website content with careful planning. It’s all just part of your normal website maintenance.
I’ve been doing a lot of maintenance as we hit the fall. After all, this time of the year is a busy season for website owners!
SEOs A Bunch Of Drunken Wahoos?
Apr 16th
If you don’t know who Michael Martinez is, he’s one of the best people writing about SEO right now at his blog, SEO Theory. Today he takes a look at the SEO business, and where things are headed for some companies.
But mostly, I enjoyed his take on the SEO Conferences.
The SEO conferences are notorious party magnets and most conference insiders willingly admit that you get more and “better” information after the panels have ended for the day. What does it say about our industry that people are getting the best technical advice from other folks with drinks or drugs in their hands? Alcohol-based SEO instruction is not optimal, so there is considerable irony in the notion that you’re learning how to optimize from someone who may be three sheets to the wind and is willing to mumble something about how to steal links from Web sites.
If that is the best this industry has to offer, I can almost guarantee you that government mandated licensing, certification, and regulation are only a few years away. All the professional organizations and training programs in the world won’t stop the lawsuits, coinsumer complaints, and search engine penalties.
Haha, ain’t that the truth? As a teetotaler, I only attended one SEO Conference. I never did learn any “big secrets”, even at the bar. My sense of the event was it was more of a social event, where people are traveling on someone else’s expense account. Not exactly the type of place for small businessmen and non-drinkers like myself and my wife.
In the end, Michael’s conclusion that change may very well be forced upon the industry seems likely. If the issue of SEO Malpractice becomes big enough, the whole game will change overnight. Bad SEOs hurt everyone, the same way scammers do in any industry.
Determining Popularity Of Search Terms
Jan 21st
There’s one very frustrating problem with researching search terms. All of the keyword tools show an estimate of how many searches a term gets, but the numbers are by no means accurate. If you need to determine the popularity of a search term, you are basically on your own, due to the lack of accurate tools. That said, the tools do provide a relative popularity, so you can at least get some idea of how many queries happen.
You can always check out Google Trends, and see what they say about a given trend. Of course it doesn’t tell you numbers, but at least you can see if the query is gaining in popularity, or is falling off the map.
The single best way to learn about the real numbers of a search term is to rank for it. This point only comes after you’ve spent time and energy trying to get there, though. But in almost all cases, the number of searches I’ve seen were much lower than what a tool predicted.
Traffic Restoring From Holiday Lows
Jan 7th
It’s nice to see traffic hitting on all cylinders again as people return from their holidays. It has been a slow time for the last few weeks, with many internet segments low in traffic. But it appears things are getting back to normal, and the year 2008 is off to a great start.
2008 promises to be a lot like last year, when it comes to internet marketing. The shift to mobile surfers is on, and so is the shift towards diverse online revenues. Everyone is looking for a piece of the pie that Google seems to be eating by themselves, so see more competition and innovation.
I think Tuesday through Thursday of this week should end up producing big time traffic.
The New Year Is A Good Time For Web Maintenance
Jan 3rd
Now is the time to check all of your websites again. Why not? Chances are you have to change the copyright notice to 2008 anyway. So you might as well dig deeper and look for any mistakes you may have in your website. Plus, now is a very good time to check your Analytics account and your log files and look for emerging trends which you can capitalize on this year.
What are some of the things to look for?
1) What leading search terms people used to find your website. You can expand on them.
2) How long people stay on your site – try to extend the time.
3) Get people to perform an “action” of signing up for alerts or more
Any of these basic steps will increase your overall traffic in 2008. Make the steps early enough, and you’ll enjoy increased traffic year long.
Same Old Crap Dominates SEO Conversations
Dec 4th
I’ve been reading SEO discussions online for at least 4 years and I have to say the current conversation is quite, quite dull. The primary conversations are now repeating themselves, as very little new or interesting is being said about the subject. It’s not hard to understand why. In the last few years, almost all well-know SEO loop-holes have been closed, so there are fewer “secrets” to even share.
Add to that the fact that most of the main SEO blogs are run by people ensconced in a very small social circle and you soon realize that the current state of affairs will probably continue for the foreseeable future.
I can’t pretend I plan on discussing any SEO secrets in this blog post, either, so I admit I’m not adding to the solution, but rather the problem! 
Maybe a new discovery is right around the corner. I can’t say for sure. But if SEO continues to be as bland as it has been, I just might quit reading about the subject altogether!
Web Directories Still Ruling Internet
Nov 28th
Web directories have taken a lot of crap in recent months and years, and most of the criticism is unfounded. The issue of “selling links” has been made paramount by a mounting dis-information campaign that is not in the best interests of most webmasters. Contrary to public opinion, web directories are still a legitimate endeavor for everyone involved.
Luckily for me, most people already know this. So despite constant concern, paid web directories such as this one continue to do their thing. Web directories do not create harm, and paid web directories review every website they list for inclusion.
Web directories were around before Google, and it’s too late for Google to come in and change the rules on everybody, and implicate that some how “directories” are bad. Imagine a similar move against “Yellow Pages” type directories! Do you think Google could get away with attacking them. I highly doubt it.
So get out there and support your local web directory today!
Make sure to check out this article how a reputable directory can boost traffic and SEO. It’s well worth the read.
Better Search Engine Rank
Oct 26th
Most people nowadays have heard about how important search engines are, so naturally they’re very interested in attaining a better search engine rank. In fact, so many people are working on the same goal, that landing a better search engine rank can be quite a chore. Most people have found that getting a large number of backlinks with just the right “anchor text” is the easiest way to move their rankings up. Others concentrate on making the highest quality posts in order to ensure they will gain links naturally. Whatever method you choose, stick with it.
Better Search Engine Rankings aren’t built in a day
One thing you might need to achieve high rankings is patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were top ranks. Much of what makes a website rank high these days is related the trust of the domain, and a good bit of that trust is built by staying on-topic for a number of years. You can’t fake your trust. You earn it be getting authoritative incoming links and doing so for an extended period of time. One hit wonders need not apply.
The main thing to focus on for a new website hoping to achieve a better search engine rank is on-page optimization. That is something you can control, and if your on-page is good and your information is accurate, you will have no problem ranking and attracting more links.
Good luck.