If you are a GoDaddy customer you will want to read this.

Part of our weekly SEO routine for clients is to check search engine Webmaster tool accounts, in doing so we usually find something interesting, disturbing or exciting. This week, we noticed that a domain that we permanently redirected to a new one back in December was showing as a top inbound linking site to the domain in which is was supposed to be redirected.

We asked ourselves, “How could this be?” Was the site moved to a new host without our knowledge? Was the domain being redirected properly?

And so our investigation began.

Our Findings:
This client is a GoDaddy customer and back in December we had permanently forwarded the domains in GoDaddy’s Domain Control panel which at that time issued a proper permanent redirect telling the servers and search engines that this was indeed a permanent redirect (otherwise known as a 301 redirect).

Today, when we checked the server headers it said that the redirect was a temporary redirect (otherwise known as a 302 redirect). We went a step further to investigate some of the other domains that also had been setup as permanent redirects in the GoDaddy system. And to our dismay, they are all showing as temporary redirects.

We logged into GoDaddy to make sure the permanent redirect settings were correct for our domains AND…they were.

We then called GoDaddy to understand why the domain settings marked to permanent redirect (301) were showing as a temporary redirect (302) in our third party checking tool.

The GoDaddy tech support person told us that “all of their forwarding now only issues a temporary 302 redirect” and if we wanted “to make it a permanent 301 we would have to do that at the hosting level.” They also could not tell us what type of redirect would be issued if we actually selected temporary redirect as an option or why there are two choices if they both do the same thing.

There are three situations for when you would use redirects:*

1. If you are launching a new site and switching to a new domain.
2. If you have deleted, removed, changed or are planning to change web page URLs.
3. If you have a list of URLs that are derivations or misspellings of your company name/main site domain that you want to forward to your main site.

*Redirects can be configured for site domains and specific web pages/URLs.

There are two types of preferred redirects for these situations:

a) 301 which is for files that have been permanently moved.
b) 302 which is for files that have been temporarily moved.

Why are redirects such a big deal?

In the SEO world, redirects affect everything. A redirect tells servers, search engines and browsers how to handle the domain when someone requests it. If a page is deleted, a site is relaunched, or a page is renamed it is important for both SEO and usability to make sure you have those old pages going to either a new relevant page or appropriate URL.

If URLs/domains are not configured properly you can lose valuable search engine visibility. Keep in mind that people and sites are linking to your content and inbound links are one of the key influencing factors to search engine rankings. Use of 301 redirects should be used to preserve search engine rankings and any inbound links to that particular URL. This way search engines will index the new address instead of keeping the outdated URL. It is the best option to avoid negatively impacting search engine ranking.

The reason you don’t want to use a 302 redirect is this signals to the search engine that the old URL should be maintained in the index as an active URL, it just has been moved for now. This causes none of your new URLs to be indexed.

If a search engine doesn’t know where to go and runs into a dead-end URL/page this can impact your search visibility not to mention your user experience if they follow a link to a URL that no longer exists.

How do I fix my forwarding domains in GoDaddy to be properly configured for permanent redirection?

Note: If you are redirecting a domain, you DON’T want to just switch the DNS to your main site – this will cause a mirrored site and create a duplicate content issue for you. Search engines will not like that and you may get penalized for it by search engines.

1. The first step is to remove or turn off the forwarding in your GoDaddy domain control panel. Go to Domain Management and find the domain, and go to Forwarding and click on Manage next to it. Edit to turn off.

   

2. If the web site you are redirecting to is hosted with GoDaddy, add the domain as an additional domain to the root through the Hosting Control panel.
3. If the web site you are redirecting to is NOT hosted with GoDaddy, change the DNS records in the Domain Control panel to point to the IP address of the site you are redirecting to. Add the domain as an additional domain in your host’s control panel. Or your virtual hosts file.
4. Add the following code to the .htaccess file for the main site. Make sure to create a RewriteCond and ReWriteRule line for each domain you are redirecting. Make sure to redirect both the www and non-www version of the domain if needed. And always immediately test your .htaccess to make sure there are no errors. .htaccess can be tricky, better to be safe than sorry. So always backup your .htaccess before making any changes.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^newdomain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,r=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.olddomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [nc,R=301]

It is wise to speak with an SEO consultant prior to making your site live to the redirects of old pages and domains are appropriately handled. If you are relaunching a site or looking to increase your online visibility? Give us a call regarding your SEO.

Link building can get a bad rap sometimes. Often people think it’s just spam, but really link building is a very beneficial component of a successful SEO campaign. Some companies buy links or hire companies to post automated links (which is heavily frowned upon by search engines and degrades the Internet experience, in my opinion). Why would you want a computer to do your work, when you can get better results by posting legitimate quality links?

Here are four pieces of advice to getting your comments and links approved:

1. Be real. I find the most successful way to get your back links approved is to be your authentic self. Go ahead, state your opinion on the topic, as long as you can tie it to the topic of your link or keyword. This way you’re posting a real comment as if there was no link there. Saying “Great Post, I will bookmark your site and read more.” is not a real comment, it’s spam.

2. Be relevant and respectful. Always make sure that the blog or article you’re posting a comment to is related to the link you’re posting. Once you find a relevant site, read the article and leave comments that reference something that was mentioned in the article.

3. Be a social non-spammer. If you think of link building as providing the author and readers with helpful information or added value in your commenting versus trying to get a link, you will likely see an increase in the number of approved comments. In my experience, being myself has worked to my advantage when link building. Occasionally my efforts are misinterpreted as spam since I’m including a link. On the other hand, there are occasions when people comment back and a conversation begins, which to me is very valuable because you are building a trust with the individual whose blog or news source you are leaving a comment on. They know you are leaving a legitimate comment and the fact that there is a link there is fine by them because they either like that your comment was real and related to their post or know that you may be working an angle by link building, but they are okay with that since you are adding value.

4. Don’t take it personally. It will get frustrating at times when your comments and links are not approved. Experiences like these can teach you about your link building approach and technique. For instance, you may find that you need to shorten your comment or try another approach, or maybe the topics don’t relate like you thought they did. There are so many factors that can determine if your link gets approved or not, but the bottom line is to not get discouraged and to keep it real.

photo love to: seattleclouds.com

Google launched a new feature to their search engine yesterday called “Google Instant” that allows users to start entering their search and based on past searches will “predict” what you are looking for. They claim it to be a “search before you type” feature that will make it much faster for users to find what they are looking for. After previous attempts at launching a similar feature in 1999 and 2003, they have decided that Instant is the winner.

Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful. – Official Google Blog

Is it really instant?
It’s not really that instant. It actually causes several problems. For instance, let’s say you are a Librarian in the New York Public Library which houses 11 million books. Imagine if every visitor who came through your doors asking you for help started their search with one letter and then added the next and then the next and so on and so forth, very much like a “hurry up and wait” scenario. That is what is happening with Google Instant. Each letter now acts as an individual query, pinging the search engine database on every keystroke. Which now means, it is not really that instant for new searches since there will be no prediction and the information you are looking for may actually be delivered much more slowly to you.

Also, there is a usability issue with prematurely hitting the enter button that causes further interruption in getting results quicker. There might be a vulnerability within Google’s automated query detection system. How will they determine which is an actual search query by the user or a script? I’ve been punished already for prematurely hitting the enter button, to which Google greeted me with the “Sorry, we think you are sending automated queries” screen and forced me to enter a captcha code in order to view search results.

Is it really a positive game changer for search engine users? What about Adwords advertisers?
In the past 24 hours, Instant hasn’t made my searching easier or quicker it feels more like the old “paperclip assistant” interruption on Microsoft Word than it seems to be productive.

In USA Today, Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy Didit, compares Google Instant to a manic companion who incessantly interrupts you as you’re trying to say something, never allowing you to finish a sentence. Google has set out to “influence what you’re seeing and distract you to view their recommendations,” says Lee. “You start to lose the individuality of what the searcher set out to look for, and you end up with search lemmings.”

How will Instant impact search advertisers using the Adwords program? If indeed, users get sidetracked during their search that means more irrelevant eyeballs on ads which means potentially a higher cost to the advertiser and less targeted visitors to ads.

Is Google Instant going to kill SEO?
No, as long as folks are using keyword based search engines SEO will still be relevant. Google Instant is a user interface change, not an indexation change, you still need to be indexed to be shown. The bottom line is you still should include SEO in your online strategy. Google won’t instantly (pun intended) know what you are relevant for so it is important they know how to appropriately index and categorize your web properties as well as where to rank you in search engine results. If you’re worried about how Google Instant will impact your SEO initiatives, don’t be. As long as you adhere to best practices and provide relevant, targeted content to users you should be fine.

In an article in Adage this morning, Google executives noted that natural search results, and techniques companies use to land higher in Google search results, won’t change. Johanna Wright, director of product management for Google Instant, said one difference is that they will direct users to “page two” results faster. “As you continue typing and narrowing your search, the instantly changing and refreshing results below the search box will be giving you more relevant results,” she said. “So if you previously looked on the second page, now those same results come to the top of the pile for you.”

For SEO and marketing professionals it may in fact prove beneficial as a research tool. “What may be useful is seeing the most common searches and getting results faster than using a SERP rank tool,” said Nathan Burgess, Senior Account Executive at BlissPR, a B2B public relations firm. Burgess also believes Instant may drop site bounce rates, and hits/refreshes to Google’s servers on bad searches and may educate the normal user on how to best use search.

Perhaps, this new feature will indeed change how our brain thinks and uses search. It is too early to tell. But, thinking back on all of the things that are “instant” doesn’t paint a great picture in my mind of quality. Instant coffee (taste), pudding (taste), polaroid pictures (still have to wait for it to develop and the pictures fade with time), fast food (unhealthy). So while Google Instant is merely a few hours old (at least in the public eye) we’ll have to see if it can give “instant” a better name.