SEO News and Information - The Topositionseo Blog

Resolve Canonical URL Looping in Apache

Interesting… I’ve come in contact with the canonical redirect issue before. Mostly it’s an issue of Apache 1.3 and redirecting the no-www version of a website to the www version (Apache 2.0, I’ve noticed, does a much better job of not getting caught in the loop), but redirecting index.php to root when Apache calls index.php is somewhat of a problem. Luckily, Oatmeal of SEOmoz has your solution:

1. Copy index.php to another filename that is not set as a DirectoryIndex by apache, for this example we’ll be using sitehome.php
2. Create an apache DirectoryIndex directive for your document root.
   Set it to sitehome.php. Do not set the directive on a server-wide level
   otherwise it may cause problems with other folders that still need to
   use index.php as a directory index.
   Put this in an .htaccess file in your document root: DirectoryIndex sitehome.php Or if you aren’t using per-directory context files, put this in your httpd.conf
   <Directory /your/document/root/examplesite.com/>
  DirectoryIndex sitehome.php
</Directory>
3. Clear out the contents of your original index.php file. Insert this line of code:
   <? header("Location: http://www.example.com"); ?>

Budget SEO on a Budget

From SEOmoz - budget options for SEO on a budget:

The Ultra-Low-Budget Option

1. Buy Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” - $23.10
2. Buy Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book” - $79.00
3. Buy an old copy of Dreamweaver ~ $81.00
4. Build and Promote yourself - Free in $$, Expensive in Time

The Link Lover’s Option

1. Buy a month of service from Andy Hagans ~ $1000
2. Get Greg Jarboe to send out a one-shot Press Release ~ $700
3. Get a Yahoo! Directory Listing - $299

Consulting Options

1. Get a Site Review & Link Recommendation Report from
   1. Barry Welford
   2. Alan K’Necht
   3. David Wallace
2. Simply implement the suggestions :)

The Slightly over $2000 Options

1. Scottie Claiborne’s Site Review - $3000
2. Debra Mastaler’s Custom Link Building - $2500
3. Patrick Gavin’s Link Building Services ~ $2000

The “Link Bait” Option

1. Get one GREAT idea for a tool, service, resource or page - bounce
   it off some folks in the forums (or privately through email to an SEO
   you trust)
2. Hire a developer who can help you build it - my choice is to use Craigslist - post with a budget of $2000

3-Page Search Engine Optimization Technique

While we’re on the topic of tried-and-true SEO techniques, Ammon Johns’ 3-Page Search Engine Optimization Technique still carries with it much relevance in today’s SEO world.

The Blog and Ping SEO Technique

It’s not exactly new news, but I stumbled upon it again today and thought I’d share. It’s called the “blog and ping” technique, and it only works for Yahoo! Though if you extrapolate the idea you can see what kind of broader uses it has. It works like this:

1. Start a blog
2. Create a Yahoo account
3. Add your blog’s RSS feed into your My Yahoo account
4. Make a few posts in your blog
5. Ping Yahoo
6. Repeat

Simple enough, right?

SEO Book’s Free SEO Toolkit

Even while managing the formidable Threadwatch, Aaron Wall has been hard at work with SEO Book’s free SEO tools. There’s four sections, which I’m sure any SEO can benefit from:

1. Link Analysis Tools
   • Back Link Analyzer
   • Link Harvester
   • Hub Finder
   • Reciprocal Link Checker
   • Link Suggest Tool
   • Link Popularity Comparison Tool
2. Keyword Research / Generation / Analysis
   • Keyword Phrase List Generator
   • Keyword Misspelling Generator
   • SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
   • Google Suggest Scraper Tool
   • Keyword Density Analyzer
3. Competitive Research Analysis
   • Myriad Search
   • Competition Finder
   • Search Engine Saturation
   • Page Comparison Tool
   • Google Rank Checker Tools
4. General SEO Tools
   • Spider Tester Tool

And, yes, they’re free!

Search Engine Market Share - November 2005

A recently surfaced comScore report has Google at 40, Yahoo! at 30, MSN at about 15 percent of U.S. search engine market share:

• Americans conducted 5.15 billion searches online during November 2005, up 9 percent from November 2004.
• Google Sites garnered the most searches in November 2005 with 2.05 billion searches measured, followed by Yahoo! Sites (1.52 billion searches), MSN-Microsoft Sites (728.8 million searches), Time Warner Network (446 million searches), and Ask Jeeves (336.3 million searches).
• Yahoo! and Google continued to battle for supremacy in the toolbar search arena. Yahoo! Sites received 48.5 percent of toolbar searches, edging out Google’s 46.4 percent share. While Yahoo!’s competitive edge is noteworthy, toolbar search activity represented only 12 percent of total searches in November.