Written By: Sujan Patel On April 8th, 2009 | 2 Comments
A 301 redirect is used when you need to tell the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) that your website or web-page has moved permanently. This allows the engines to update their indexes with the new information. Assuming you don’t deactivate the old domain (if you are doing a domain change) then theoretically Google will pass all your backlink and PR info to the new URL once the 301 redirect has been established and recognized. This should help maintain the integrity of whatever value and rank the old domain had established.
Most useful 301 redirects for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
* 301 redirect an entire site (for example change of filename(s) or new domain name)
* 301 page-to-page redirect (for example change of filename(s) or new domain name; most commonly used in search engine optimization when many pages are indexing and ranking and you want to carryover PR [PageRank] to each individual page)
* Resolving canonical issues with a 301 mod_rewrite (this involves making sure your non-www domain resolves to your www.yourdomain.com domain. If you do not have this in place the engine may recognize your domain as being two separate domains which in turn could cause duplicate content issues or allow your Page Rank to be split between the two domains. When using a 301 mod_rewrite, the engine will be able to recognize that yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com are the same entity.
301 Redirect Scripts:
* htaccess
* 301 mod_rewrite
* PHP
* ASP
* ASP .NET
* CGI/Perl
* Ruby on Rails
* IIS
* Java (jsp)
* Coldfusion
Note:
Avoid using meta-tag refreshes and javascript re-directs. Due to abuse by some webmasters and deceptive SEO practices utilizing these methods these are deemed poorer choices and may not provide you with the desired result. You are better off implementing a 301 redirect and will have to deal with less hassles and possible complications from the search engines. Do yourself a favor and use a 301 redirect as advised by all the major search engines. (.htaccess and the 301 mod_rewrite should resolve most issues) Other scripting options have been provided for your convenience.
.htaccess 301 Redirect
You can save yourself some time by implementing your 301 redirects through the htaccess file. Instead of creating redirects on each webpage, you can just add the code to the htaccess file.
To implement a 301 redirect using htaccess:
1.Create a file on the root directory of your website, name it “.htaccess”.
2.Open the .htaccess file using notepad or what ever text editor that you prefer.
3.Add the following into the .htaccess file, save it and then upload it to your web server:
Redirect 301 /old/old.html
to http://www.yourdomain.com/new.html
NOTE:
Do not add “http://www” to the first part of the statement - place the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:
redirect 301 (this is the instruction that the page has moved to a permanent new location)
/old/old.html (this represents the original folder path and file name)
http://www.yourdomain.com/new.html (this represents the new path and file name)
Also note that you can redirect the page to another domain, an equally useful purpose for using the 301 redirect, is redirecting old pages to the new pages on the same domain; it all works the same way!
301 Redirect Using Mod_Rewrite
As stated earlier this will resolve the issue of your non-www domain and your www domain. What does that mean? When we build sites we often use www.yourdomain.com. However, many webmasters when linking to a site may want to save time and simply link to the site by using yourdomain.com. In Google’s eyes these may be viewed as separate sites. So you may have a total of 100 hundred backlinks with 60 pointing at yourdomain.com and 40 pointing at www.yourdomain.com. Or you may be viewed as having duplicate content. Ideally, you want all backlinks pointing to one version of the domain to address these issues.
By inserting the code below into your .htaccess file, it will solve the problem by redirecting anything linking to yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com, and this allows you to pass on the PageRank [PR] from one version to the other.
RewriteEngine On rewritecond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
PHP 301 Redirect
Add following code to page or script:
header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
header( “Status: 301 Moved Permanently” );
header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com/” );
exit(0); // This is Optional but suggested, to avoid any accidental output
?>
$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(” http://www.new-url.com/ “);
Ruby on Rails 301 Redirect
Simply add this code to your ruby/ruby on rails script:
def old_action
headers["Status"] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.newpageorsite.com/”
end
IIS 301 Redirect
1.In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect.
2.Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
3.Enter the page that the page will be redirected to.
4.Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”.
5.Click on ‘Apply’.
Once you have implemented the necessary changes. Test it. You should be able to enter your old URL and be seamlessly be redirected to the new URL. When moving many files (1000s) you may want to do it in small batches to make sure everything is propagating properly.
The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. The next time Googlebot, MSN, or Yahoo visit they will recognize that your webpage or entire site has permanently moved and they will make sure to update their index. As the indexes update your old URLs should drop out and the new ones will be presented. Even if your old ones are still displaying they will direct properly to the new domain. It is not necessary, but advisable to let others know (i.e. old link partners, directories, etc) that you have changed your address so they can make appropriate changes to your URL if they chose to. This is also an opportune time to review the anchor text linking to your site and have the necessary changes implemented as well. Good Luck in your endeavors.
With offices based in Orange County and Los Angeles, Single Grain search engine optimization specialists are available for SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) consultation.
On March 25th, 2009 10:00AM PST Will start of the 2nd iPhone 3.0 Beta giveaway. Single Grain has 50 more licenses to give away and it will be on a first come first serve basis. Last time we had this giveaway we ran out of licenses in 6 hours.
The giveaway is similar to last time. Heres the details:
1. Spread the word. Post this on twitter: “Single Grain’s 50 iPhone 3.0 Beta Giveaway http://tinyurl.com/c3zxra” & blog about the giveaway
2. Email us where you blogged (URL to blog post) about it and your UDID number (Here’s how you find your UDID Number on your iPhone) And we’ll email you the link to download it. Email your information here: sj@singlegrain.com
3. Give Feedback. So once you’ve installed 3.0 OS Beta leave a comment. How do you like it? Any bugs? Any particular apps don’t work? Anything will be helpful.
It’s really easy. Let’s begin. We will update this page when we run out of licenses.
Disclaimer: This is a first come first serve basis. Once you install iPhone OS 3.0 Beta on your phone you will not be able to revert back to 2.2.1 so be absolutely sure you want it. This is not the actual iPhone it is just the software. Single Grain is not liable to for any damages to your phone. If you do run into any problems we are more than happy to help. Please do this at your own risk
Update 1: The giveaway starts 3/25/09 at 10AM PST NOT RIGHT AWAY! You will not only have to post on twitter about the giveaway you will need to blog about it too. Please do both and include the URL of the blog post in your email with the UDID Number.
Update 2: Please make sure your UDID number is at least 40 hex characters. If it is not correct and you install your iphone it will not activate.
Update 3: We are almost out. Its only been 1 hours and we only have about 15 left.
Update 4: We are out of licenses. Stay tuned as we are going have another giveaway soon.
John Murphy’s Feedback:
1.) For some reason I can’t send SMS to multiple recipients anymore. It keeps giving me a “message send failure”
2.) My sound is a little out of whack. Intermittently the keyboard click and unlock/lock notifiers don’t work.
3.) MMS doesn’t work. I assume that’s an other carrier thing but who knows.
Other than that I love it and I assume these bugs will be worked out before the official release. Thanks for the opportunity to try it out!!
Written By: Sujan Patel On March 19th, 2009 | 28 Comments
Single Grain is working on making an iPhone App. We are looking for some iPhone App developers so if you are a developer or know of a good developer please contact us. In order to spread the word we having a giveaway.
So let’s get down to business… We are giving away 99 licenses of iPhone/iPod Touch 3.0 Beta. All you have to do is spread the word and give us feedback.
1. Email me your UDID number (Here’s how you find your UDID Number on your iPhone) And we’ll email you the link to download it. Email your information here: sj@singlegrain.com
2. Spread the word. Post this on twitter: “Single Grain’s iPhone 3.0 Beta Giveaway http://tinyurl.com/couock” or email you’re friends or blog about it (We’re using the honor system so please do one of these things).
3. Give Feedback. So once you’ve installed 3.0 OS Beta leave a comment or email us with your feedback. How do you like it? Any bugs? Any particular apps don’t work? Anything will be helpful.
It’s really easy. Let’s began. We will update this page when we run out of licenses.
Disclaimer: This is a first come first serve basis. Once you install iPhone OS 3.0 Beta on your phone you will not be able to revert back to 2.2.1 so be absolutely sure you want it. This is not the actual iPhone it is just the software. Single Grain is not liable to for any damages to your phone. If you do run into any problems we are more than happy to help
Update 1: Please be patient as we have a lot of people downloading the iphone 3.0 beta software. Downloads will be slower until we can move to new server. Also please specify what iPhone you have (3G, Orignal iPhone, iPod Touch 1g/2g)
Update 2: Just added iPod Touch 3.0 software. So if you have and ipod touch let me know in the email.
Update 3: We’re out of licenses…We’re gonna do this giveaway again, check back tomorrow for more details.
Written By: Sujan Patel On February 16th, 2009 | No Comments
I just wanted to post some pictures from twiist up 5. It was a great networking event at a hanger at the Santa Monica airport. There was everything that makes a good event: booze, free swagg, a DJ, and great people.
Written By: Sujan Patel On January 13th, 2009 | 1 Comment
Aaron Wall has a video on how to identity the top paying adsense keywords:
This is very useful if you are a blogger or publisher and are using AdSense to monetize, you know what keywords to include into your content. The Video is about 7 minutes long and it describes a way to easily filter/organize the keywords list using Microsoft Excel, SEObook’s Keyword Tool, Ad Intelligence. The process he describes is very simple and should be done weekly to make sure that you can make the most money for your efforts.
Written By: Sujan Patel On November 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment
Did that title sum you up in a sentence? Do you write like a shotgun, do you sit down and give it all you have got without any regard for the outcome? When you pull the trigger on a shotgun, it goes off, it doesn’t think about whats in front of it or the damage it may cause, it is simply an instant reaction. Many bloggers perform the same way, they sit down and right without any thought of what they are writing about or where they want to go with the article or the possible repercussion of their words as they spill onto the screen.
Thoughts and ideas need to be developed and built upon to form an article. Simply slapping text on the screen is not enough. Readers are often aware when you have given little thought to an article because it reflects in your work. It often results in a short, poorly written piece with little interest or emotion. Some commonly seen blog posts that are a result of no thought are “5 links of the day†or a simple paragraph explaining somebody else’s post with a link to that. These types of posts bring no interest to readers, anyone can develop a list of more than five links, but you chose not to spend the time doing so and it makes you look bad.
Devote Time to Your Blog
Devoting time to your blog is crucial to its success. Many shotgun bloggers find themselves trying to cram a quickie article in before they go to bed, usually because they neglected to write anything the rest of the day. Even if you work or attend school you should devote a minimum of an hour to writing every single day. If you give yourself an hour, you should have ample time to construct an article and respond to comments from the day before. Create a plan for your blog, give it some direction and things will naturally come easier as you move ahead. Many blogs that are not given enough time eventually sizzle and die and it is unfortunate because had the blogger worked a little harder and devoted a little more time, they would have had a potential for success.
Think of your blogs as children, they require attention, time and love to grow. You can’t just leave them off to the side or they will eventually get into trouble. You have to be passionate about taking care of your blogs or perhaps you should consider doing something else. Your writing needs time and shouldn’t be rushed, so create a schedule and go by that, your blog and readers will thank you. If you are unsure if blogging is right for you, take a look at Blogging 101, Introduction to Blogging, for a better understanding.
Written By: Sujan Patel On November 5th, 2007 | No Comments
Whether your horrible at managing your finances or you just don’t have any money to manage, these Facebook applications are probably for you. Who new that a social networking community could not only make you money but stabilize the process at the same time. Thank you Facebook!
Pay Me – This handy little app allows all of your friends to securely send you money through PayPal’s payment service. Maybe your selling something or maybe people just feel like your a good cause, either way this app will get the money in the bank.
BillTrack Bill Reminder – Use this application to manage all of your bills such as rent, internet, gas, cellphone or any others right from your Facebook profile.
Make Money-Cash for Free – Get free cash in exchange for completing surveys and other free activities. There is no purchase or credit card required, just sign-up and make some money.
Cash Cliques – Get paid for clicking on ads and referring friends that click as well. This app also gives out random cash prizes just for using it.
Stocks – Have you considered investing in the stock market? This little application the Forbes.com stock app keeps you up to date on the companies your interested in investing in.
JunkYard – Sell your old stuff to the Facebook community and make some extra dough. Everyone got some sort of junk laying around, so just get rid of it and earn some spending cash.
Debt Manager – Anybody owe you money? Don’t forget and let that debt go unpaid. This app allows you to easily add all of those unpaid debts as a reminder to collect.
Lending Club – Don’t run up your credit cards with those high interest rates. Lending club allows you to borrow money from other members in the Facebook community at low interest rates.
Dneero – Get paid to take social surveys. You will get paid via Paypal when your account hits $25 dollars or more.
Online Coupons – Obviously we all have to make a purchase at some point in time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a good deal while we are doing it. This Facebook application lists a bunch of money saving coupons for your favorite stores.
Leave your comments and let me know if any of these have helped you financially. Or maybe you have some great apps you use, share them with everyone.
Written By: Sujan Patel On November 5th, 2007 | 1 Comment
Unless you’ve been living under a heavy rock for the last few months, I’m sure you’ve heard of the webs newest social networking site called Yuwie. Yuwie is strikingly similar to the bigger sites in the social networking game, with one exception – Yuwie pays you to be a member.
At least, that’s the theory.
You see, Yuwie is still pretty new to the social networking arena, but with so many people joining and a total of nearly 130,000 members, its gaining steam, and fast. Looking at the simple chart they have on their homepage, it looks like they are averaging a few thousand new members per day. I’m sure you could discount some of these numbers due to spam and people trying to “game†them, but never-the-less they’re growing at an impressive rate.
With theoretical promises of upwards of $10,000 per month assuming you refer a certain amount of people, and since the referral levels go ten deep, they are definitely attracting the crowds of people trying to make a quick buck on the internet. A great marketing strategy, even if it’s still in its infancy. The only problem with sites like this that promise to pay big money if all of the stars align, is the heavy dark cloud left over by AGLOCO. AGLOCO had just about every webmaster and blogger in the world promoting their site, but a pending bankruptcy and unfulfilled promises of riches proved otherwise. If a site like Yuwie wants to make it without losing their “you-know-what’sâ€, then they need to have a sound strategy in place and need to be prepared to shell out some serious dough.
Yuwie pays out based on many different actions of the user, ranging from clicking other profiles, uploading pictures, creating new blog entries, recruiting new members, and many other actionable actions. This pay comes from advertising revenue that Yuwie makes on a monthly basis, and on the 15th of each month, Yuwie decides how much each user gets paid out of their advertising earnings from the previous month. After digging around a bit in the search engines, I found that most average members made a couple of dollars, while some of the more popular bloggers and webmasters were in the $50-$90 range. Not bad, but a far cry from the $10k that users hope to be making in the future as the site grows.
After checking some statistics on smartpagerank.com, Yuwie was registered back in May, making the site close to five months old and it’s reporting around 54,000 pages indexed in Google. Of course, there is no PageRank, but that’s because there hasn’t been a PageRank update for quite some time now. One of the most impressive stats is the Alexa ranking they’ve attained already. For a 5 month old site, they’ve climbed the Alexa ladder to a 3 month ranking of around 5,000. Not too shabby…
Only time will tell if Yuwie is worth signing up for. With so many other social sites out there, unless the money is really rolling in, I can’t imagine juggling another social networking site. Give Yuwie a couple more months to see what happens, and if it’s still going strong as some predict, then it just may be something to check into.
Written By: Sujan Patel On October 15th, 2007 | 1 Comment
We all know that link building is tedious, frustrating, and for the most part, no fun. On the other hand, we know that building links can bring valuable traffic, exposure, and long term success of your site. Day in and day out, I’m sure you come across articles on link building, and they are usually the same old, boring routine. This article is for those that want to work on building links, but are up to trying out a few new ways to go about doing it. Keep an open mind, as these methods, while not as common as others, are definitely worth your time and effort.
1. Testimonials. When you purchase a service, product, or whatever else from a company online, especially from bigger sites, 99% of them will allow you to send in a testimonial. If you write one compelling and believable enough, there is a good chance that they will publish it. Make sure you add your link into the testimonial, and it may be the cheapest (free) high PR backlink you’ll ever get. This method isn’t guaranteed, but it’s definitely worth a try.
2. Utilize hired help. If you have an advertising budget, and are willing to spend money to ensure the long term survivability of your site, consider hiring a consultant to do the link building for you. Pay a virtual assistant $9/hr (or whatever) and have their main goal be to get you backlinks (directory submission, blogroll exchanges, etc..). This can help you manage your time better and take a break from the dubious link building process. The money spent will be very much worth it in the long run. (Hint – elance.com)
3. Piss off someone that matters. This may sound harsh and unethical, but it’s really not, as long as you don’t cross the legal line. Sink your teeth into a popular blogger or webmaster, post about it, and watch the links pour in. Be careful not to cross the lines of slander or defamation of character. This can, and has been done many, many times throughout history. Always make sure you can justify your reason for slamming them – have sources, witnesses or friends that will back you up. This can be wildly successful.
4. Give away money. Holding a contest is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain backlinks. Make sure that in order to enter, the webmaster/blogger is required to link to your site, whether it’s a blogroll link or even a short review. Hint – the more money you give away, the more links you’ll get. Giving away $100 will probably get you several hundred, if not a couple thousand dollars worth of backlinks.
5. Be the first on the scene. With the multitude of new web startups, you can usually find out about them right away, and make sure you fire off a pre-made email interview template to them ASAP. Posting the first interview, or best interview, can garner hundreds of incoming links, even from big sites. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish, as most startups are willing to share information to create buzz.
6. Design a plugin for Wordpress. There are a lot of people out there that start blogs or sites that have the technical know how to design useful Wordpress plugins. If this relates to you, then what the heck are you waiting for? Take the chance, and whip up a brand new plugin and order a few paid reviews on it. Even the slightest success can multiply your incoming links by a lot. The funny thing is, even if your plugin just plain sucks, you’ll still have a ton of links from people that like to tell you how bad it is. Strange world, isn’t it?
7. Sponsor a Wordpress theme. With the amount of bloggers that use Wordpress these days, there are always new themes popping up. Visit one of the popular webmaster or design forums, and take a chance at sponsoring a new theme. When you sponsor a theme (it costs anywhere from $5-100), you usually get a link built in to the footer of the theme, so whenever someone uses it, it’s an instant backlink to your site. There are people that have done this and been almost unbelievably successful with it. $5 could land you several thousand links, if not more. If the theme gets super popular, your credibility rating skyrockets.
8. Write an ebook, and give it away for free. Writing an ebook may seem like a dreaded task for some people, but chances are, you are skilled in at least one area. Take this expertise and knowledge, pump it all out in paper, package it up as a .pdf, and distribute it for free. If the ebook is even slightly helpful, you’ll get your moneys worth of backlinks in no time flat. Offer free copies at one of the popular webmaster forums. This method works great, and if written well enough, can lead to even greater opportunities. (Hint – if at all possible, slip at least one relevant affiliate link into your ebook for a nice residual income!)
9. Order up a Press Release. For as little as $20-$50, you can hire someone to write and distribute a professional press release for your site. Press releases have the potential of being picked up by major media outlets (especially if your site is groundbreaking or super creative). At the very least, Google and other search engines love press releases, so natural incoming links are almost guaranteed. A professional press release also gives you an air of credibility that just may convince someone to link to you.
10. Build How -To lists. This may not seem creative in itself, but think outside of the box. We all know that “101 ways to cheat at World of Warcraft†types of articles are wildly popular, and usually result in massive amounts of backlinks from relevant sites/blogs and social bookmarking sites. So take it a step further and make an unforgettable, maybe even controversial how-to list. Example – “10 Ways To Kill Your In-Lawsâ€. You get the point….
