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I'm just after a bit of advice please?
I have a company that has rebranded recently. There is currently two seperate domains set up for them where the content is fundamentally the same apart from where the company name is mentioned.
The newer site has therefore been created with the new branding with the intention of taking down the old site at some point. However, I've always been reluctant to do this as the old site does very well for particular keywords (probably because of the age)
I've read a few things but just wanted to ask what is the best way to go about decommissioning the old site? Is it a case of going through 301 redirects. If the original domain ceases to exist will these be read?
Thanks
I think 301 redirects are definitely the best place to start off – it is an easy way of letting the Google spiders know that they should travel to your new site instead, which means you will still have the benefits of the old site for keywords, but they will move to the new content you are setting up.
But the downside of this, of course, is that if you completely take down the old site, you get nothing, and the same with if you don’t maintain its SEO updates.
This ends up being a lot of hassle, so what we tend to do is we go through an overlap period of a few months so the new site can be better established and then remove the old one.
While you are doing that, you want to be moving your links over too – so contact web masters and get them on board with the move so that you can keep all that ‘link-juice’ flowing.
Ultimately though, the age of your website does have a bit of an impact on your SEO, but if you are starting from scratch with the new one, you can craft it with SEO in mind and make it more attuned to it right from the outset.
If you fail to implement proper redirects when migrating a website from one domain to another you will instantly lose any traffic to your website you currently enjoy.
It is also important to convey your old domain’s search engine rankings to the new web address – or your website will effectively be starting from zero visibility, in search engines at any rate.
Buying old domains and redirecting them to similar content shouldn’t be a problem. Even when redirecting pages, I usually make sure page titles and content are very similar on both pages if I want to keep particular rankings.
301 Redirects are an excellent 1st step. When search spiders crawl your old site, they will see & remember the redirect. Because of this, the relevance of your old site to certain search terms will be applied to your new site.
Great. Now that you've handled traffic coming in from search engines, what do you do about other sources of traffic? Remember that 301 Redirects will only work on non-search-engine traffic for as long as you maintain the old site...
Next you'll want to contact the web masters of any sites that link to your old site & inform them of the change. This way when you retire the old site their links don't go dead, loosing you traffic. Keep an eye on the "Referrer" field in your logs to see who is currently linking to you.
Lastly, you'll want to keep the old site doing redirects for a while longer so that folks who have bookmarked your old site will have the redirect cached by their browser. "How long?" you ask... Well I'd keep an eye on the web logs of the old site. When the non-spider traffic drops off to near 0, you'll know you've done your job right...
301 is the best way i could think of.
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I'm ready to use the subdirectory format for my multilingual website.
My first question is:
For SEO, have I to translate the page name in the url or it is useless?
Example:
- Same filename
site.com/fr/login
site.com/en/login
OR
- Different filename
site.com/fr/connexion
site.com/en/login
Then, when user is on site.com: Should I redirect him to site.com/en and site.com/fr depending user's IP? Or have I to set a default local, and have my url like site.com/page and site.com/fr/page
Finally, what is the best way to get the local from user's current URL?
Parsing url to get /fr or /en, or add a GET parameter in url with lang=fr (hidden with htaccess)
Thanks :)
As a precondition, I assume that you are not using frameworks / libraries. Furthermore, I never have solved similar problems only using .htaccess (as the title of your question requests) and thus don't know if it is possible to do so. Nevertheless, the following guidelines may help you.
Your first question
In general, a web page's file name and path have influence on its ranking. Furthermore, having page names and paths in native languages might help your users memorize the most important of your URLs even without bookmarking them.
Nevertheless, I never would translate the page names or directories for pages which are part of a web application (as opposed to a informational or promotional pages).
The login page you mentioned is a good example. I am nearly sure that you do not want your site to be found because of its contents on its login page. Actually, there are many websites which exclude login pages and other application pages from being indexed at all.
Instead, in SEO terms, put your effort into your promotional and informational pages. Provide valuable content, explain what is special about you or your site, and do everything you could that those pages get properly indexed. IMHO, static HTML pages are the best choice for doing so.
Furthermore, if you translate the names of pages which belong to your actual application, you will run into massive trouble. For example, after successful login, your application probably will transfer the user to his personal dashboard, which probably will be based on another HTML template / page. If you have translated that page name into different languages, then your application will have to take care to take the user to the right version. Basically, that means that you need as many versions of your application as languages you want to support. Of course, there are tricks to make life easier, but this will be a constant pain and definitely in no way worth the effort.
To summarize: Create static pages which show your USP (unique seller position) and provide valuable content to users (for example sophisticated tutorials and so on). Translate those pages, including names and paths, and SEO them in every way you could. But regarding the actual application, optimizing its pages is kind of pointless and even counterproductive.
Your second question
I would never use IP based redirecting for several reasons.
First, there are many customers in countries which are not their home country. For example, do you really want to redirect all native English speakers to your Hungarian pages because they are currently in Hungary for a business trip?
Second, more and more users today are using VPNs for different reasons, thereby often hiding the country where they currently are.
Third, which IP address belongs to which provider or country is highly volatile; you would have to constantly update your databases to keep up.
There are more reasons, but I think you already have got the idea.
Fortunately, there is a solution to your problem (but see "Final remark" below): Every browser, when fetching a page from a server, tells the server the preferred and accepted languages. For example, Apache can directly use that information in RewriteRule statements and redirect the user to the correct page.
If you can't alter your Server's configuration, then you can evaluate the respective header in your CGI program.
When doing your research, look for the Accept-Language HTTP 1.1 header. A good starting point probably is here.
Your third question
You eventually are mixing up two different things in your third question. A locale is not the same as a language. On one hand, you are asking "...to get the local from...", and on the other hand, you say "...lang=fr...", thus making the impression you want to get the language.
If you want to get the language: See my answer to your second question, or parse the language from the current path (as you already have suggested).
If you want to get the locale, things are more complicated. The only reasonable automatic method is to derive the locale from the language, but this will often fail. For example, I generally prefer the English language when doing research, but on the other hand, I am located in Germany and thus would like dates and times in the format I am used to, so deriving my desired locale from my preferred language will fail.
Unfortunately, there is no HTTP header which could tell the server which locale the user prefers. As a starting point, this article may help you.
See the final remark (next section) on how to solve this problem.
Final remark
As the article linked above already states: The only reliable way to satisfy the user is to let him choose his language, his locale and his time zone within your application. You could store the user's choices either in cookies or in your back-end database; each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
I usually use a combination of all methods (HTTP headers, cookies, database) in my projects.
Think about humans at the first. Is the URL translation important for users in France? Some people may think what it’s fine to get translated words in the URL. Users from other locales may think otherwise. Search engines take into account user behavioral factors. SEO factors will higher if you solution is more convinient for users.
It whould be nice if users get an expected language version. A site could help them if it suggests a language version by IP, HTTP headers, cookies and so on. Some people may prefer another language, some people may be on a trip. So it's still important let them to choice a language version manually.
Please read manuals and analyze competitors sites in case of doubt.
i usally show in mostly website they give url like site.com/en and site.com/fr as you mention but it upon you how you want to show website to user. i prefer make default site.com/en and give user option to select his language.
if you still confuse then refer below link it will usefull.
See Refferal Link Here
Should you translate paths?
If possible, by all means - as this will help users of that language to feel like "first class citizens". Login routes probably won't have much impact on SEO, but translating URLs on content pages may well help them to be more discoverable.
You can read Google's recommendations on multi-regional and multilingual sites, which state that it's "fine to translate words in the URL".
Should you redirect based on IP?
This can help first time users, but there are a few things to bear in mind:
How accurate will this be? E.g. if I speak English but I visit France and then view your site - I will get French. If your target market is mobile-toting globe-trotters, then it may not be the best choice. Is looking at Accept-Language, for example, any better?
Will geolocating the IP address on every request introduce any performance problems for your servers? Or make too many calls to an external geocoding service? Make sure to carry out capacity planning, and reduce calls where you already know the locale (e.g. from a cookie, or user explicitly stating their preference.
Even if you guess a preferred locale, always allow an explicit user preference to override that. There's nothing more frustrating than moving between pages, and having the site decide that it knows better what language you understand :-)
As long as you make it easy to switch between sites, you shouldn't need a specific landing page. It doesn't hurt to pop up a banner if you're unsure whether you should redirect a user (for example, amazon.com will show a banner to a UK user, giving them the option of switching sites - but not deciding for them)
How should you structure your URLs?
Having the language somewhere in the URL (either as a subdomain or a folder) is probably best for SEO. Don't forget to update your sitemap as well, to indicate to crawlers that there are alternate content pages in different languages.
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I have an independent site and I am using Wordpress as Content Management System for that. My site has been hacked two times now. Pardon me, am a newbie, but can anyone guide me to how to protect it from being hacked? I will be really thankful.
Here are some links, maybe they are helpful for you:
http://www.mastermindblogger.com/2011/14-ways-to-prevent-your-wordpress-blog-from-being-hacked/
http://semlabs.co.uk/journal/how-to-stop-your-wordpress-blog-getting-hacked
http://getinternetmarketingstrategies.com/2010/04/how-to-secure-wordpress-blogs-prevent-the-hacking-of-your-blog/
http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/10-tips-to-make-wordpress-hack/
http://tek3d.org/how-to-protect-wordpress-blog-from-hacks
There is also a plugin, which backups your wordpress data into your dropbox account !
But you could specify what you understand by hacked ? Got it deleted, spam comments ?
Here are some links , check it out.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/security-plugins-wordpress-bulletproof/
http://designmodo.com/wordpress-security-plugins/
And also keep ASKIMAT plugin activate , it saves your wordpress site from spam e-mails.
Good luck.
This is a new kid on the block but the are getting some impressive reviews.
cloudsafe365.com - a free wp plugin that prevents hacking and content scrape.
Apparently they even clean you dirty dishes.
Insure correct File and Directory permissions.
No 'admin' user
Refresh auth and salt values in wp-config
Use complex passwords
If you did not completely remove (or rename) your old site directories, you may be leaving the hacker's backdoor intact.
Completely delete any unused plugin and theme directories.
Check your web access logs for hackers fishing for exploits.
Cheers
Security is mandatory for every websites, you can try this following ways for strong protection
Disable file browsing via .htaccess file
Use plugins like limit login attempts especially this is for limit brute force login attempts. You can completely kick off brute force logins by changing WordPress login url
Always up to date with WordPress and plugins
Don't use poor coded plugins or themes.
Use plugins like securi for monitoring whole site from malware.
Don't use pirated themes or plugins
Tons of security plugins available on WordPress plugins repository for every security vulnerabilities problems.
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I am looking to hide a site so that it doesn't show up in any search engine just wondering how I would go about this?
Use a robots.txt file: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156449
Apart from password-protecting your site, you could add these lines to robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
This doesn't hide the site but rather instructs bots not to spider the content.
You can somehow reduce your site being listed using a robots.txt. Note that this depends on the "goodwill" of the crawler, though (some spambots will explicitly look at locations that you disallow).
The only safe and reliable way of not having a site listed, sadly, is not putting it on the internet.
Simply not linking to your site will not work. Crawlers get their info from many sources, including browser referrers and domain registrars. So, in order to be "invisible", you would have to not visit your site and not register a domain (only access it via IP address).
And then, if you run your webserver based on IP address, you still have all the spambots probing random addresses. It will take a while, but they will find you.
Password protecting your site should work, effectively making it inaccessible. Though (and it is beyond my comprehension how that happens) for example there are literally thousands of ACM papers listed in Google which you cannot see without an account and logging in. Yet they are there.
Use a robots.txt, deny from all search engines.
They don't all respect robots.txt so check your server logs regularly and deny from ranges of suspected robots/crawlers:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/access.html
You use a robots.txt file. Place the file in the root of the site with this content:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
most proper search engines uses bots or crawlers to websites and index them. you could Robot File method
Have a look at nofollow Wikipedia
You need to read about robots.txt file you are supposed to copy in your site's webroot – http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html.
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I have a WordPress site and the following link is accessible: www.domain.com/wp-admin/ (obviously not the real domain name). Someone told me that this is a security risk. Any truth to this?
In essence, the more information an attacker has about your setup, the worse off you are.
That being said, however, the information gained by knowing your admin login page is pretty trivial - as it's the default login location for all WordPress sites. Therefore, once an attacker figured out your site was a WordPress site, he/she would naturally try that link.
As long as you keep your WordPress files up to date, the only thing you're really vulnerable (that you would be protected from if that page was inaccessible) to is an 0day on that specific page...
So, really, it doesn't matter much either way. Personally, I would deny access to that as much as was convenient - but, on the other hand, you may like having that link always open so you can login and admin your site from anywhere. I dare say you'll be fine either way, so long as you have sufficiently strong passwords.
Update: Another thing to consider, the login pages of (well-written, tested)open-source software are rarely ever the point of failure for authentication attacks. Usually, compromising a system involves disclosure of credentials using another vulnerable page, and then using the login page as it was intended to be used. The WordPress devs have combed over the code in your login page because they know it's going to be the first place that anybody looks for an exploit. I would be more concerned about any extensions you're running than leaving the login page viewable by the public.
That's simply Wordpress. Nothing inherently wrong with it. But if you are concerned overall with security, see http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress and http://www.reaper-x.com/2007/09/01/hardening-wordpress-with-mod-rewrite-and-htaccess/ and http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2010/05/24/hardening-wordpress/ etc., on protecting admin with .htaccess, removing some WP identifiable clues, changing the database prefix, SSL access, and on and on. Some things are more worthwhile to do than others, some more obscurity than security, but it's all a learning experience.
Well a lot of sites have open wp-admin , however you can put in a .htaccess file and password protect the directory, provided you are on apache.
it's not a big deal... there's a lot of stuff to avoid it being there... you could even have your whole wp install in a subdirectory of the server
Not sure for WordPress, but I know at least two e-commerce softwares (Zen Cart and PrestaShop) recommending to rename the admin directory to some other name (and not to print the URL in orders...).
Perhaps there are some known exploits using this information...
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I posted a source code on codeplex and to my surprise found that it appeared on google within 13 hours. Also when i made some changes to my account on codeplex those changes reflected on google within a matter of minutes. How did that happen ? Is there some extra importance that google pays to sites like Codeplex, Stackoverflow etc to make their results appear in the search results fast ? Are there some special steps i can take to make google crawl my site somewhat faster, if not this fast.
Google prefers some sites over others. There is a lot of magic rules involved, in the case of CodePlex and Stackoverflow we can even assume that they had ben manually put on some whitelist. Then Google subscribes to the RSS feed of these sites and crawls them whenever there is a new RSS post.
Example: Posts on my blog are included in the index within minutes, but if I dont post for weeks, Google just passes by every week or so.
Huh?
Probably (and you have to be an insider to know...) if they find enough changes from crawl to crawl they narrow the window between crawling until - sites like popular blogs / news ect are being crawled every few min.
For popular sites like stackoverflow.com the indexing occurs more often than normal, you could notice this by searching for a question that has been just asked.
It is not well known but Google relies on pigeons to rank its pages. Some pages have particularly tasty corn, which attracts the pigeons' attentions much more frequently than other pages.
Actually ... Popular sites have certain feeds that they share will google. The site updates these feeds and google updates its index when the feed changes. For other sites that rank well, seach engines crawl more often, provided there are changes. True its not public knowledge and even for the popular sites there are no guarantees about when newly published data appears in the index.
Real time search is one of the newest buzzwords and battlegrounds in the search engine wars. Google's announced/Bing's twitter integration are good examples of this new focus on super-fresh content.
Incorporating fresh content is a real technical challenge and priority for companies like Google since one has to crawl the documents, incorporate them into the index (which is spread across hundreds/thousands of machines), and then somehow determine if the new content is relevant for a given query. Remember, since we are indexing brand new documents and tweets that these things aren't going to have many inbound links which is the typical thing that boosts PageRank.
The best way to get Google/Yahoo/Bing to crawl your site more often is to have a site with frequently updated content that gets a decent amount of traffic. (All of these companies know how popular sites are and will devote more resources indexing sites like stackoverflow, nytimes, and amazon)
The other thing you can do is also make sure that your robots.txt isn't preventing spiders from crawling your site as much as you want and to make sure to submit a sitemap to google/bing-hoo so that they will have a list of your urls. But be careful what you wish for: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/the-perfect-web-spider-storm/
Well even my own blog appears in real time (it's pagerank 3 though) so it's not such a big deal I think :)
For example I just posted this and it appeared in Google at least 37 minutes ago (maybe it was in real-time as I didn't check before)
http://www.google.com/search?q=rebol+cgi+hosting