301 and 302 Web Page Redirects

What exactly is a redirect, and how do they function?

Why do web page url's change? Site owners change their domain names, will restructure their web sites or launch a new way of delivering, and these are just some of dozens of reasons that url's can change.

If you change the name of your URL, your site visitors and search engines will also have difficulties finding the new page. If your page was indexed with a high ranking then how are people going to locate it? Redirection is one solution. With redirection, site owners can have the ability to send a request to the search engines letting them and visitors know where the new page is locate d.

Server-Side Redirection

This is where your web server does all the work of pointing from one place to another.
When servers complete a redirection, the server will send out an update code about the request in which it processed. When you run into a code called "404 Not Found" error, that's a type of update code a server will send, which results in the showing of that "404 Not Found" web page.
The two type of codes that go out regarding redirection are 301 and 302 redirects. These numbers you may have run across or heard of regarding redirection and hijacking situations.

Use this code For 301 redirecting in PHP:



301 Redirect in HTACCESS:

• Moving a page:
RedirectPermanent /old-file-name.html http://www.new-domain.com/new-directory/new-file-name.html
• Moving a directory:
RedirectPermanent /old-directory http://www.new-domain.com/new-directory/
• Moving an entire site:
RedirectPermanent / http://www.new-domain.com/

A 301 ASP Redirect:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%Response.Status="301 - Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", " http://www.newsite-url.com" >

302 Temporary Redirect (not recommended)

The 302 'temporary redirect' guidelines from W3C, state that 302's are used when a page has been 'temporarily' moved to a new location on the web or within the site and but the site owner still wants visitors and search engines to keep the old site address rather than making note of the new one.

In other words, say one day kosmossupersite.com gets Slash-dotted or receives very heavy traffic, way too much to keep serving up things as normal. So, you decide to temporarily send people off to a mirror site, mirror.kosmossupersite.com. You want people and search engines to reach the new location but not record the address as a permanent change. You'd do a 302 temporary redirect like this:

Kosmossupersite.com --- 302 Temporary Redirect ---> mirror.kosmossupersite.com
Do that, and it's the site doing the pointing whose URL should be retained for use in search listings. This though is not recommended because this is a common spam practice and search engines will potentially black list a site or at least penalize those pages for performing any type of temporary redirect.

Use this code for 302 redirecting in PHP
:


302 Redirect in HTACCESS:

• Redirecting a page:
Redirect /file-name.html http://www.domain.com/temporary-directory/temporary-file-name.html
• Redirecting a directory:
Redirect /directory http://www.domain.com/temporary-directory/
• Redirecting an entire site:
Redirect / http://www.temporary-domain.com/
Try to avoid a 302 redirect on your site if you can (unless it truly is only a temporary redirect), and never use them as some form of click tracking for your outgoing links, as they can result in a "website hijacking" under some circumstances.
404 Page Not Found:
Search engines prefer 301 redirects when a page or site has been moved.

If your removing a page permanently they would prefer a 404 Page Not found error.
Code:


Meta Tag Refresh Page Redirects (not recommended)
Meta tag redirection is a page-based method of pointing from one place to another. In other words, it's something you put on the actual web page.
For example:

The below code would have to be placed within your Meta Tags of your old page.
< equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http://www.kosmoscentral.com/seo-articles/reciprocal-Links-Management.html">

What you're telling a search engine is that the new page will load automatically in 5 seconds, because the old page is forwarding to the new location. Just copy and paste the code in and change the time frame from 5 seconds to what every you wish and the destination url.
When placing redirects on old pages, we also recommend you tell your visitors exactly what is going on.

7 Advanced SEO Tactics

If you're like most online webmasters, then you have probably read one article after the other about search engine optimization. Most of them rehash the same old information and you end up wading through tons of fluff. However, this isn't one of those articles. Listed below are 7 advanced SEO tips that you won't find on every digital corner.
1. Syndicating Articles that Link to Your Sitemap

As you probably know, syndicating articles is one of the best methods for obtaining one-way backlinks.


They are also valuable pieces of search engine bait because search engine crawlers are frequent visitors to many high-profile article directories. If you want to get the spiders quickly crawling your site, simply submit an informative article to a site like EzineArticles, GoArticles, or ArticleCity.

However, there's another article marketing strategy that isn't mentioned much in marketing circles. This tactic can get the crawlers searching deeper into your site and indexing more of your pages. Simply link to your sitemap within the resource box. This will send the spiders straight to a content buffet where they can quickly slurp up all of your pages.


2. Translating Your Website Into Other Languages

Are you marketing in just one language? If so, you are missing out on 64.8% of your marketing potential. This is because 64.8% of the world is surfing the internet in a language other than English. By becoming a multilingual marketer, you immediately open up a stream of new markets. Google alone crawls web pages in 35 different languages.

One of the best ways to attract worldwide traffíc is to translate your site and register it with both English and foreign-language search engines and directories. If you are a seasoned SEO, you'll be happy to hear that the competition in foreign search engines is much less than in those of the United States.

In addition, online foreign language markets are currently growing at a much faster rate than English speaking markets.

You have the opportuníty to tap into this market while it's in an exponential growth phase.


3. ROR Sitemaps

As you probably know, sitemaps are important for making sure your site can be completely spidered and indexed by the search engines. Unfortunately, many of these sitemaps are specific to one search engine or another. For this reason, there have been a number of Google and Yahoo site map generators produced in recent years.

However, there is an alternative that is even more exciting. These are ROR sitemaps and they are readable by all search engines, not just by Google or Yahoo.

ROR is an exciting new sitemap tool that uses XML feeds to describe your website. These sitemaps are structured feeds that enable search engines to complement text search with structured information to better interpret the meaning of your site. With a ROR sitemap, search engines can better understand your products, services, images, newsletters, articles, podcasts, and anything else that you want to describe.

For example, if you are selling products, a ROR file enables you to document your product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, affilíate programs, and any other

relevant information. Search engine crawlers like the Googlebot have an enormous job to do. It's time we start helping them to better understand our content.


4. Keyword Phrases that Convert

Selecting the right keyword phrases is the single most important aspect of any SEO campaign. Unfortunately, many webmasters target the wrong keywords. Too many of us target very general keywords like "real estate" or "internet marketing". Although these terms get lots of visitors, it is unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffíc produces very low conversion rates because it does not target prospects.

You will be much more successful, if you target keyword phrases that are 3-4 words long. These terms are much less competitive and have been proven to convert much better than keywords that are 1 to 2 words long.

Who do you think is more likely to buy; someone who goes to Google and searches for "ipod" or someone who searches for "4gb black ipod nano"? Obviously, the person who searches for a more specific phrase is much closer to making a buying decision.


5. GoogSpy

Would you like to get an in-depth view of how your competitors run their business? Well, you can do exactly that with an online service known as GoogSpy. GoogSpy is a free research tool that will tell you what keywords your competitors are bidding on.

This tool tracks over 500,000 keywords every day from Google and then loads this goldmine of information into the GoogSpy.com database. Using this tool, you can browse by company or by search term.

This tool is extremely powerful. Unfortunately, many people take it for granted. This service basically hands you a business strategy on a silver platter. Maybe we should just keep this one to ourselves and enjoy the benefits of being one step ahead of our competition.

For example, let's say you wanted to do some in-depth research on Overstock.com, one of the largest companies online. You would simply go to googspy.com and type in overstock.com. You will then be shown thousands of words that this company bids on. These keywords are proven profít generators. Research like this would normally cost thousands of dollars, but they are providing it free of charge.

If you want to find keywords with high conversion rates, simply type in words such as buy and purchase. You will be shown keyword phrases that are bid on that include the words buy or purchase. These are very lucrative keyword phrases because the person who types in "buy sony playstation 2" knows exactly what they want. They're not just looking around, they are in buying mode. These are the type of keywords you want to bid on. Using GoogSpy, you can uncover these hidden gems in seconds.

Other high-converting keyword phrases include brand names and product names. Type in the keyword "camera" and you will find thousands of different brands and product names for cameras. These keywords are some of the best keywords because of their high conversion rate.


6. Internal Links Within Content

The navigation of your site is a crucial element of your search engine optimization campaign. Each link within your navigational structure should correlate with a keyphrase that you are trying to rank for.

However, you can also include internal links within your content. For example, let's say you have written an article about online marketing. Within the article are a number of keyword phrases. Some of these phrases include "link popularity" and "web site traffíc". If you have other articles within your site that pertain to these topics, then you should definitely link those keyword phrases to those articles. By doing this, you can increase the link popularity of other pages within the same site.

There are very few sites that take advantage of this optimization technique. By doing this, you enable the search engines to find and index much more of your site. These internal links also contribute to a higher ranking because of the anchor text that is used.

Many people only think of inbound links from outside websites when trying to raise their link popularity. However, the internal link structure is also a major ranking factor.


7. Using Your Log Files for SEO

Your server logs reveal very important information about your site. If you learn to use them properly, they can quickly help to maximize your site's traffíc and conversion rates.

One of the most valuable pieces of information found in your log files are search phrases. The log files will tell you exactly which keywords people are using to find your website.

Once you have optimized a page, the log files will tell you how people are finding that page and what keywords they are searching for to get there. If you find that people are using keywords that you hadn't thought of to get to a certain page, it would probably be in your best interest to further optimize that page for those keywords.

You might also want to create a new page optimized for that particular term. This is especially true if a new page would enable you to serve better information on the phrase being searched for.

In addition, by looking at how your site is found organically, you can determine whether the same keyword phrases belong in your paid search campaigns. Only choose the ones that are highly relevant. You will find that these keyword phrases have the best conversion rate.

Pay Per Click - Paid Ranking and Advertigment

PPC is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business.

The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. (The ranking order in Google is a combination of the bid amount and the popularity of the ad)

The ads are purchased through PPC advertising suppliers, and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google's program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves and many smaller search engines. Yahoo's program is run by an acquired company called Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other syndication partners.

Tips for Success

1. Advertise on a large number of relevant search phrases.
2. Build unique ads for each search phrase.
3. Send visitors to the most appropriate page of your website
4. Track your results.

How many inbound link is better for a website

When a web site has a decent number of quality one way inbound links from other web sites this will greatly improve search engine ranking and the indexing of the site.

We are often asked "How many inbound link equate to a decent number of links?"

Answer to this question depends on how many inbound links of your competitors have directed at their web sites. The larger the number of competitor sites and the number of one way inbound links that each of these sites have, the more one way links are required!

Link building services provide your web site quality relevant one way links that you need to boost your search results. When link building services are used as a part of search engine marketing and optimization service then its batter you will have a full compliment of required services to target competitive search terms and gain new online business.

All you need to do to check that your site optimization program and link building services are delivering results is to check the stats of your web site and see the increased number of enquiries and sales that come from search engine traffic.

what is search engine marketing

In Short for search engine marketing, SEM is often used to describe an acts associated with researching, submitting and positioning a website within search engines to achieve maximum exposure and traffic of your Web site. SEM includes mainly things such as search engine optimization, paid listings and contextual advertising. These search-engine related services and function is used to increase exposure and traffic for Web site.

The Obligatory Google "Site May Harm Your Computer"

Over the weekend, the blogosphere, journalists and Twitterers were all a-flutter over a Google glitch. It seems for an hour on Saturday morning, every site in the Google results were labeled with "This site may harm your computer."

Yes, that's right. Google made a mistake. And you know what? The earth still rotated on its axis and the apocalypse did not happen (except for a little bit at last night's Superbowl).

My dad had a saying about technology: "Computers are only as smart as the people who run them."

You see, I'm not sure if you're aware, but Google is staffed by imperfect humans and not some advanced robot-human-alien hybrid that can do no wrong, despite their "Do no evil" mantra.

So move along people, there's nothing to see here. At least, not anymore since they quickly fixed that buzz-creating glitch