Which front page link to use?

[TWD-Tony]

There are a couple of things that frighten me about this... Firstly "I don't want to use a 301 redirect..." - WHY?
And secondly "cloaking page for an affiliate program" - If Google has indexed that page and worked out that is is indeed a cloaking page then you are on a slippery slope and could be another reason for your supp. results in the SERPS.

If you are cloaking then you are risking a penalty from Google and by not using a 301 redirect you are basially showing duplicate content to Google for your index page (Google sees www.yourdomain.com , http://yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com/index.html as different but identical pages) and this would trigger a penalty too.

Also think about your anchor text on backlinks (if you haven't already) - don't just use the link www.mydomain.com use something like excellent thingymybobs at mydomain.com which gives the spiders something to chew over

[mikemac]

Thanks Tony

Back on the first page of this thread I said I don't want to use a 301 redirect basically because I have never used one and don't know how. I purchased the Traffic Blueprint video series and registered in this forum to help with a new web site that I will be launching soon, not for my existing web site that I have had since early 2004. But since I have I'm starting to realize that I just may be able to get some of my other pages on my old domain listed high with the search engines. My front page of my old domain has been in the top spot for a search phrase that is hardly ever searched for for a couple of years.

Also back on the the first page of this thread Matt was telling me that I can use Google Webmaster Tools to fix the mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/index.html dilema.

Originally Posted by matt1biz

You can solve this issue by using a 301 redirect on your index.html which will transfer visitors as well as any link or PR benefit to the domain root.

You can also solve the www issue by verifying your site through Google webmaster tools where you can select a preference for www. or not.

Google Webmaster Tools should fix the problem without having to use a 301 redirect, shouldn't it Tony? I haven't got the Google Webmaster Tools yet.

I will delete my cloaking page for that affiliate program as soon as I log out of this forum. I haven't advertised the cloaking page for a couple of years, I just added it to my sitemap page a couple months ago just to see what would happen.

Yeah I just about always use a text link on backlinks, mostly in forums so far. But my backlinks are usually the 3 words in my domain name. Again using the blablabla.com example my text links would be bla bla bla . I noticed in Peter's video series that he mentions to change the text links up periodically. That kind of contradicts what I have always read. Most so-called gurus tell you to use your domain name words in your text links. Is Peter saying to still use your domain name words in your text links but to intersperse some other words with them periodically, like this Get the best thing since sliced bread at bla bla bla ?

Mike

[matt1biz]

Okay let's assume my domain name is blablabla.com. My report page was titled blablabla Report and my sitemap page was titled Site Map for blablabla. I also had blablabla in the meta descriptions for both my report page and my sitemap page. So I have taken blablabla out of both my title and my meta descriptions for both my report page and my sitemap page. Is that what you mean Matt?

I doubt that's making a difference, as long as the page titles and descriptions are different you'll be fine. Targeting your domain name as a keyword is a waste though, you should be ranking for that anyway. Try adding a keyword that people will actually search for, title tags are prime real estate, you need to use them carfully.

And I've added a link to my sitemap (plus all of my main pages like an index) in the footer to 3 of the 5 pages that shows Supplemental Result when using site:www.mydomain.com.

That's great, but is there any reason you can't put a link to it from the footer in all pages? Apart from an SEO perspective where it'll raise the importance of the sitemap in the eyes of a search engine, it's also good practice from a usability point of view.

The 5th page that shows Supplemental Result is a cloaking page for an affiliate program so I can't add the links to the footer on that one.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, when you say cloaking are you displaying different content to the search engines than you are to human visitors? Cloaking in SEO terms is a definate no-no.

Does it matter if the same keyword phrase is being targetted with more than one page on my domain?

Not really, though it is a waste, it's best to have different pages targetted to different phrases, that way you'll be able to target a wider range of keywords.

I'm using the meta tag revisit after 30 days with all my pages so we'll see what happens in a month.

Search engines don't actually pay any attention to that tag, they visit when they want - Unless robots.txt disallows them.

Google Webmaster Tools should fix the problem without having to use a 301 redirect, shouldn't it Tony? I haven't got the Google Webmaster Tools yet.

Googl webmaster tools with solve the www./non-www. problem, but not the domain.com/domain.com/index.html problem It's still worthwhile adding a 301 to fix that especially if you have links going to both URLs

Yeah I just about always use a text link on backlinks, mostly in forums so far. But my backlinks are usually the 3 words in my domain name. Again using the blablabla.com

I suggest doing some keyword research to check that you're targeting terms that people actually search for. This is a good free tool to start with.
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Once you know what terms your're targetting then use them in your anchor text in both internal and external links where possible.

I noticed in Peter's video series that he mentions to change the text links up periodically. That kind of contradicts what I have always read. Most so-called gurus tell you to use your domain name words in your text links. Is Peter saying to still use your domain name words in your text links but to intersperse some other words with them periodically,

Not really. It's best practice to vary your anchor text, either changing the phrase slightly or targetting different terms altogether. Using your domain name in anchor text is pointless, people don't tend to search for domains unless they're well known, and as I said, you should be ranking for that anyway.

As I said, it's best to vary anchor text as it keeps your link profile looking natural,

Imagine your site is a clothes shop,

Designer Clothes
Mens Designer Clothes
Ladies Designer Clothes
Designer Shoes

As you can see all the search tersm are those that people actualy search for, there's no mention of the domain and the text varies from link to link. Try to use at least 4 different sets of anchor text to point to each page.

For example your homepage could be targeting general terms,

Designer Clothes
Mens Designer Clothes
Ladies Designer Clothes
Designer Clothes In London

Intenal pages can then be optimised for more specific niches

Designer Jeans
Levis Jeans
Black Jeans

As you can see each page on the site should target a particualt 'goup' of keywords, this enables you to vary the anchor text, target a wide range of keywords and also deliver the content that you promise the visitor.

[TWD-Tony]

To create a .htaccess file is quite easy, all you need to do is open notepad / wordpad and copy the following into it (this is for a LINUX server by the way) :

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html?
RewriteRule ^index\.html?$ http://www.yoursite.com/ [R=301,L]

Don't forget to change "yoursite.com" to your actual site... Once you have done this save the file as .htaccess (notice the ".") and upload it to the root of your website (alongside the index page).

Doing this will cure 2 evils - it will redirect http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com and it will also redirect yoursite.com/index.htm to yoursite.com

You CAN use the Google webmaster tool to cure the www / non www problem but this will only obviously work for Google and not the other SE's.

[mikemac]

Originally Posted by matt1biz

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, when you say cloaking are you displaying different content to the search engines than you are to human visitors? Cloaking in SEO terms is a definate no-no.

Yeah I guess I'm not exactly sure what a cloaking page is. My page that I'm calling a cloaking page was on a subdomain called /marketing-training.html and when viewers clicked on it it would take them to my affiliate site for a particular program. Would you call that a cloaking page? I've already deleted it.

Originally Posted by matt1biz

Search engines don't actually pay any attention to that tag, they visit when they want - Unless robots.txt disallows them.

Okay I might as well get rid of the revisit after 30 days meta tags on all my pages then eh?

I've also been using the "robots" content="index,follow" meta tag on all my pages lately too. Is it also a useless meta tag?

And I've been using <META http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache"> for close to 3 years now because I once read that if you edit your pages and your viewers haven't cleared their cache they will still see the un-editted version. I can't remember if that was just if the viewer was going to the page from a bookmark or not. About a quarter of my traffic is from bookmarks. I read that this meta tag will fix the problem. Is this still true?

Thanks
Mike

[mikemac]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

To create a .htaccess file is quite easy, all you need to do is open notepad / wordpad and copy the following into it (this is for a LINUX server by the way) :

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html?
RewriteRule ^index\.html?$ http://www.yoursite.com/ [R=301,L]

Don't forget to change "yoursite.com" to your actual site... Once you have done this save the file as .htaccess (notice the ".") and upload it to the root of your website (alongside the index page).

Doing this will cure 2 evils - it will redirect http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com and it will also redirect yoursite.com/index.htm to yoursite.com

You CAN use the Google webmaster tool to cure the www / non www problem but this will only obviously work for Google and not the other SE's.

Well coincidentally Tony I just happened to click on the .htaccess file in my file manager a couple of days ago. I use Host Gator.

When I clicked on the .htaccess file my Norton Anti Virus popped up a security alert. Also coincidentally I copied the security alert. This is what it was.

-----------------------------------
Norton Anti Virus
Security Alert
Mediun Risk
Norton Internet Worm Protection has detected and blocked an intrusion attempt.

Intrusion: HTTP Cobalt Raq Apache Disclosure.
Intruder: HOY7I1(xx.xxx.xxx.xxx)(1825).
Risk Level: Medium.
Protocol: TCP.
Attacked IP: gatorxxx.hostgator.com(xx.xx.xx.xx).
Attacked Port: http(80).
---------------------------------------

Note that Norton is saying that the intrusion came from my IP address and attacked the Host Gator IP address.

This same thing happened in January of this year when I clicked on the .htaccess file. The only difference in January was that the Attacked IP was my domain name on the Host Gator IP address. So at that time I went to the Host Gator Live Support and the support person told me the .htaccess file is the primary security file for the web hosting account but recommended that I e-mail abuse because he had not heard of Norton giving errors about that file. So I e-mailed abuse and they got back to me with this "Norton will give false postives sometimes. I checked your .htaccess and it is fine."

I did a Google search for HTTP Cobalt Raq Apache Disclosure but I couldn't make head nor tail of what the search came up with.

And everything seems fine on my end too. I use an updated Norton anti-virus, SpywareBlaster, SpyBot, Ad-Aware, Moosoft The Cleaner (for trojans and worms) and Zone Alarm. I keep my versions up to date (well as much as a can seeing I'm still using 98SE), my definitions up to date and I run my utilities about once a week. A couple of days ago I even checked my running processes and registry files with HyJackThis and periodically I double check my system at Gibson's Research. So I guess it's just a false positive.

But because I've already got a .htaccess file in my file manager does that mean that I already have 301 redirects to my www.mydomain.com ?

Thanks
Mike

[TWD-Tony]

If you could copy and paste the contents of your .htaccess file I will be able to tell you more about what you have got in there and what you have not.
It's very unlikely that you have .htaccess setup to redirect your domain to www.yourdomain.com the .htaccess file can be used for all sorts of other things too - password protecting directories for example.

Just ignore that Norton error for now, your PC is safe - the "HTTP Cobalt Raq Apache Disclosure." error that Norton flagged is a strange error... I would be interested to see what you have got. I have heard of this exploit before but never seen it in "the flesh" as it were...

The Cobalt "worm" as described by Norton is in fact a well known and documented "back door" into password protected parts of a website hosted on Cobalt Raq servers - which Hostgator DO NOT use as far as I know, but if the code is in the .htaccess file it sounds like someone in the past has attempted to exploit your server by hoping your site is hosted on a Cobalt server.

Just on a side note - Hostgator have a TERRIBLE record for website & server security... I had a few personal accounts with them many years ago and the server was hacked several times in just a few months - I even had to point their technical support in the right direction to secure it They had ignored even basic security measures...

[matt1biz]

Yeah I guess I'm not exactly sure what a cloaking page is. My page that I'm calling a cloaking page was on a subdomain called /marketing-training.html and when viewers clicked on it it would take them to my affiliate site for a particular program. Would you call that a cloaking page? I've already deleted it.

No that's not cloaking, cloaking would be if when visitors visited that page you used something like a meta refresh to automatically transfer them to another page.

I've also been using the "robots" content="index,follow" meta tag on all my pages lately too. Is it also a useless meta tag?

Again, it's not really doing much, the only thing that will stop google from indexing as if it's prevented from doing so by .htaccess, otherwise if it knows about a page it will index and cache it.

[mikemac]

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

If you could copy and paste the contents of your .htaccess file I will be able to tell you more about what you have got in there and what you have not.
It's very unlikely that you have .htaccess setup to redirect your domain to www.yourdomain.com the .htaccess file can be used for all sorts of other things too - password protecting directories for example.

Hi Tony

Well now today Norton does not give me the security alert pop-up when I go to my .htaccess file. Strange. Here is what's in my .htaccess file.

------------------------------------------
# -FrontPage-

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
AuthName www.whymostfail.com
AuthUserFile /home/whymostf/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
AuthGroupFile /home/whymostf/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp
------------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

Just ignore that Norton error for now, your PC is safe - the "HTTP Cobalt Raq Apache Disclosure." error that Norton flagged is a strange error... I would be interested to see what you have got. I have heard of this exploit before but never seen it in "the flesh" as it were...

The Cobalt "worm" as described by Norton is in fact a well known and documented "back door" into password protected parts of a website hosted on Cobalt Raq servers - which Hostgator DO NOT use as far as I know, but if the code is in the .htaccess file it sounds like someone in the past has attempted to exploit your server by hoping your site is hosted on a Cobalt server.

Like I say Tony none of the security utilities that I use are showing anything wrong. And abuse at Host Gator said my .htaccess file is fine. So I can't show you anything about the HTTP Cobalt Raq Apache Disclosure. This whole thing about the false positive has me baffled.

Originally Posted by TWD-Tony

Just on a side note - Hostgator have a TERRIBLE record for website & server security... I had a few personal accounts with them many years ago and the server was hacked several times in just a few months - I even had to point their technical support in the right direction to secure it They had ignored even basic security measures...

Wow that's the first I've heard of that. There sure are a lot of people recommending Host Gator now though. Even Peter Hale or David Bullock
recommend Host Gator either in the Traffic Blueprint video series or the e-mail follow ups (can't remember which now). That's how I made it to this forum, on their recommendation. Host Gator has a bunch of different servers now so maybe they are more secure now? Me hopes.

Mike

[mikemac]

Tony there is also a _vti_inf.html file and a postinfo.html file in my file manager put there by Host Gator. I just looked back at the Live Support transcrption and he said "Those are usually because the FrontPage extensions are on and enabled in the CPanel" and "If you dont' want to use FP, then remove the extensions using the tool in the CPANEL."

But when I open the _vti_inf.html page it say "Do not delete this page."

Should I remove them or will I possibly need them in the future?

Oh I just tried to open the .htaccess page (not the file) this time and got the same Norton security alert again.

Are the signature files shut off completely in this forum now Tony?

Mike