Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - Most recent posts

notes before website redesign or moving host

Points to note before you redesign your website or moving host...

When you re-design your website, or move hosts (read more on moving hosts here), you need to follow certain rules else your visitors could receive 404 errors (page not found) and you really do not want googlebot find this error!

Ensure you:
1. Retain exiting page and folder names (including file extensions)
2. Never ever remove the old site and replace it with:
"This website is currently under redesign, back soon"
STUPID, stupid, never remove your old pages - upload your new pages over-writing the old pages.

If you follow these simple steps your existing pages will retain their page rank and traffic.

If you do need to remove a page then issue a 301 error (page moved permanently) see here how to issue such errors then googlebot and your real visitors will not receive a 404 error.

Hope that helps maintain your website page rankings for the long term

Dave.

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - Most recent posts

Moving web host is stressful!

But what if you need to move hosts?

If you are not happy with your web host, or you have found your website is not listed within your own country's search results on Google as your host has placed your account on a foreign server. Here is how to check where your host has placed your website!

So you need to move...
You will have to go through some pain! Sorry. But remember this: anything worth doing is never easy.

If you have control of your domain name then it should be a simple task of changing the nameservers (so long as your website is setup on your new host). But if your web host manage your domain for you then you need to contact them to check their procedure for transfer of the domain (costs can be charged). If you are looking to transfer to the UK then try a real UK web host which do not charge to transfer in, or out.

Make it worth the effort, ensure you choose the right host....

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Monday, January 29, 2007 - Most recent posts

Google - Importance of inbound links (links from other sites to yours)

The more Google trusts your website the more traffic you will get. So you need to increase that trust.

But how do you improve Google's evaluation/trust in your website and pages?

Simple - increase your IBL (inbound links), but ensure each link is of good quality and relevant.


Quality:
Before trading links with a website ensure you check them out. Check their PR and IBL. If its not high enough do not link back to them.
You can check this here:
http://www.microsoft-watch.org/cgi-bin/ranking.htm

Relevance:
You need to get links from relevant websites (with related content, and subject matter), you can only do this by manually checking the website yourself. Take a few minutes to check the content yourself, is it of reasonable quality? And check it is not just a website of links.

Keywords:
Ensure you use the most optimised keywords for your product. This is very important when building your IBL. You should offer your prospective link site something like the following:

Note the keywords are within the anchor text, here the words: WHY choose the UK for web hosting.
Spending a little time here to correctly choose your keywords will pay-off for a long time into the future, so take your time ;-)

Other things to avoid:
- link farms, never add your link to these sites, you could get banned as well as the link farm.
- linking to foreign sites (unless you need international traffic, link to your indigenous neighbours; read details on why you should host in your native country here).

Work on your IBL and you will see your PR rise and in turn your keyword relevance. This will eventually lead to more traffic to your website as Google sees your site as more relevant than others for your chosen keywords.

Hope you found that helpful? If not, or want to add your input then please post your comments below...

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