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What does a Server Side Include do?
Server side includes allow you to (dare I use the word) include a remote file in the current page. The server constructs the page on the fly. When a browser or search engine spider comes through they see the whole page as one unit.
Why Should I use Server Side Includes?
They make it extremely quick to update navigation and other common page elements by only changing one file.
Are Server Side Includes Evil?
Server side includes were a bad thing in the past. Slower server speeds would sometimes cause errors when a spider spidered the page. With faster server speeds the server side include is no longer a problem. On sites with a large amount of traffic SSI will slow down your server speed ever so slightly.
What do Server Side Include Requests look like?
<!--#include file="navigation.htm" -->
if the SSI file is in the same directry as the file calling it, or
<!--#include virtual="/globalnavigation.htm"-->
if the SSI file which is to be included is in the root directory. Using virtual causes the server to look for the file location based on the root URL.
How do I use a Server Side Include?
To use server side includes you must change your file path to .shtml .shtm or something with the .s at the begining to tell the server it needs to construct the page. Place the include file in the code where you want it to show on the page.
Note: you can controll the layout using an external CSS sheet if you like.
Why Changing Filepaths is Bad
The problem with changing filepaths is that you can lose much of the inbound link popularity you have built up with your site. Any links to the root domain will still be there, but interior links fall away. Blindly changing filepaths is extremely bad:
- You lose link equiyy.
- People who were linking to you end up owning a bunch of broken links.
How do I Use SSI without Changing FilePaths?
Our good friend .htaccess is here again to save the day.
Here is the .htaccess file you should use to allow a server to parse .shtml and parse other file extensions as .shtml
AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .htm (.htm is whatever extension you are using)
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
301 redirect is a catch phrase often used in SEO where nobody really explains how to do it. Many people feel too dumb to ask "how do I do a 301 redirect?" because they feel they should just know what one is.
Use a 301 redirect to move a site from
http://www.oldurl.com/uncool/ (root of the old homepage)
to http://www.newurl.com/cool/
Create a .htaccess file in your root directory. If one already exists then you can just add this line of code to it.
Redirect permanent / http://www.newurl.com/cool/
in addition you can use a 301 redirect to move any given page.
Redirect permanent /bla/bla.html /newspot/bla.html
301 redirects are used to permanently move a site to a new location. Search engines do not apply penalties to 301 redirects the way they apply them to many other types of redirects.
When you create a .htaccess file make sure you transfer it in ASCII and not binary. You will probably want to CHMOD the file to 644 for security reasons as well. .htaccess is an Apache technology and not a windows server technology. Learn more about .htaccess
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Scumbag of the Year Award
I know its a bit early to give this one out, but there is a guy who has taken autoclick software to a new level. His new software, which goes by the name of Google Clique, is based on the Holland Engine - the mass email spam software.
- Holland Engine was the originaly written to allow spammers to conceal thier orginating IP from mailservers and to keep it from apearing in email headers.
- Holland Engine is the core of LincolnSX, the most powerfull mass-emailing software, running at rates of 5 Million emails per day per machine.
- Holland Engine will actually tunnel through the internet and connect to the desired IP address from, not your IP but rather from another, the one at the end of the tunnel. It is this tunneling that makes LincolnSX so valuable, and now we bring it to you with Google Clique.
- And for you technicaly challenged, NO, THIS IS NOT PROXY/SOCKS, and maybe you should be looking elsewhere if you are looking for such an amatuer solution.
Notice he is selling software for $1,000 down and is too damn lazy or cheap to hire a proof reader. Granted I am a horrible speller, but I am not trying to get you to spend a grand as down payment for software that steals. This is from his "interview" with Google.
I take this two mean one of two things, either they were feeling me out to see if this was for real or they are just oblivious as to how serious this software really is.
He also plans to launce a product by the first of April which goes by the name of Reaper. Reaper will aggressively autoclick on a competitors site to get them removed from Google AdSense program.
here is his WhoIs data.
I finally made my new page on Yahoo! Search at Search-marketing.info. This blog format is so much better than that huge evil site. I could literally work on that site for 10 hours a day and it would take me months to make it as kick ass as I would like. This site is more of a post and forget it...less maintenance.
New Yahoo! Search operators
- site: this allows one to find all documents within a particular domain and all it's subdomains.
Example: site:yahoo.com
- hostname: this allows one to find all documents from a particular host only.
Example: hostname:autos.yahoo.com
- link: this allows one to find documents that link to a particular url.
Example: link:http://autos.yahoo.com/
- url: this alllows one to find a specific document in our index.
Example: url:http://edit.autos.yahoo.com/repair/tree/0.html
- inurl: this allows one to find a specific keyword as part of indexed urls.
Example: inurl:bulgarian
- intitle: this allows one to find a specific keyword as part of
Try out the new Yahoo! Search
Bonus tips on using the new Yahoo! Search for your link building needs. You can do multiple advanced link things with Yahoo! Search. For example
link:http://www.search-marketing.info inurl:partners -inurl:search-marketing.info
Would show you sites that link to my other site with parnters in their url. In addition you filter page title instead of url by using intitle: or you can change the word partners to
or just about anything else that would show you the links are out of a textual context. This is a quick way to evaluate how and where to get some of the easiest backlinks that your competitors are enjoying. A good example for the intitle: might be a word like reciprical...
Another trick on the same concept. Using Yahoo! Search advanced features you can filter the domain to be .edu. If you have an exceptionally well thought out resource you can use the .edu filter and see who is linking to some of your competitors and search for certain words on that page. These .edu links are heavily weighted in Google search results...
An example of this trick might be that I could find out education sites that link to a search engine that no longer exist and update them. If I still get too many results I can search to see those that also have the words "Search Engine Watch" on the page, or further qualify the page by looking for more words in the URL. I could possibly help convince the professor that I know enough about search to ask him to link to me. There is no substitute for tact, but most people will not know how you came to their site. I never automate link requests, but I believe in making them easy to find.
I recently started posting again over at The Search Engine Journal. If you have not visited recently, The Search Engine Journal is working with the Kelsey Group to promote a new Paid Search Survey which your feedback will help improve. If you buy pay per click advertising, feel free to participate.
The Kelsey group is one of the main data aggregators of information about the growing local search industry, and this quick survey is looking more at general paid search practices.
Bonus: Getting Cheap Feedback
Survey Monkey is free for up to 100 responses a month. Their more full featured survey costs as low as $20 per month.
If you do not appreciate how valuable feedback is, or how hard it is to get feedback then juist look at how few comments are posted on this blog. Yesterday I had over 1,000 page views and 0 comments.
If you look off to the right side of the home page I now have a rather simple and easy way to contact me. Instead of throwing a NOSPAM string in my email or using the [at] technique I can now safely hide my email address from spam bots thanks to this free email address hiding script.
Those who spend most of their time reading marketing books get exceptionally annoyed when they see piss poor marketing. Thus I truely appreciate this cool hiveware product. Hide your email address today!
(Yet another cool thing found at Search Engine Blog. I emailed Peter and dared him to use the word "sesquipedalian" in his blog - we will watch attentively and report our findings.)
Ethical Search Engine Optimization
What does that mean?
What does it mean to be ethical? Does that mean you produce the best results for clients? Does that you mean you follow all search engine guidelines? Is it possible to deliver the best returns to your customers at the best price while following all search engine guidelines?
Certainly ethical search engine optimization can not be a "yes" to all the above questions. That my friend would be a panacea.
When refering to search engine optimization ethical is an empty tag. Ethical search engine optimization is like the empty statement "Support the troops." It is the leaders and their policy that makes the war.
How can search engine optimization companies working for companies with giant sweat shops claim they are ethical?
I have never got a single page banned, but I am not a fan of the ethical tag. Neither is Chris Ridings:
I am not ethical within the search engine related industries because within those "ethical" is a tag. It's a tag that says "I'm better than them", but never goes on to say why. It's a tag that practically never comes with a definition of exactly what ethical means within the industry. Nowhere does it say in black and white everything that is and isn't allowed. Nowhere does it define the decision process for solving the gray areas.
One could say that the tag was meaningless, but that would be wrong. For within the search engine marketing world "ethical" itself stands amongst the kings of marketing speak.
Continue the discussion on ethical search engine optimization at SearchGuild.
The about page is the best page of every and any website you go to. It lets you know if it is a bunch of spineless corporate tirds running a site or a normal human.
I am neither...
Who Are You?
Aaron.
Could You Be More Specific
Yes.
What is Your Full Name?
Aaron Matthew Wall.
What is This Site?
A daily journal of SEO news and tips from a kid (sidebar: at least at heart a kid - old people suck) who is really interested in search.
Why Are You Interested in Search?
I am fascinated with the concept of helping people find their purpose in life. Giving people access to information does that. Search engines do that.
Do You Have Any Ulterior Motives?
Yes.
What Are They?
I would like to help sculpt social policy to increase the functionality of the world around me and the enjoyability (is that a word?) of life on Earth. For example, I would like to make available HONEST FEEDBACK about the effects of antidepressants.
Where Did You Come From?
Ask again later.
Are You Smart?
All indications say no.
What is With These Answers?
Ask Jeeves gave out a new magic Ask Jeeves Ball. I like to play. Its fun...
Is There Anything You Are Sure Of?
I have not used deoderant today (I am sure I say this most days.) I guess in a sense that means I am sure that I am not sure.
Recently Yahoo! announced its Content Acquisition Program. Search Engine Watch did a review of the changes.
Yahoo! is to increase the size of its search database through the use of more aggressive crawling, Site Match, and human editors looking to find ways to include portions of the hidden web.
Yahoo! recently rewrote much of the Inktomi core which will allow them to
- better process 3 and 4 word querries
- easily change the algorithm in the future
- easily turn stemming on or off
AltaVista and AllTheWeb are now using the same indexes as Yahoo!, though they are still powered by their own algorithms.
When Yahoo! reviews a site for Site Match they store data that the page has been quality reviewed. These sites may receive a ranking boost for being reviewed. This move alone would make paid inclusion seem exceptionally biased. Yahoo! is offsetting this by randomly reviewing other sites in its index.
Many people are concerned as to how this website review boost will effect the purity of the index, but any bonus that may be given will not be too large or Yahoo! would earn a bad reputation and a bunch of negative press in a time period where they are trying to aggressively expand their distribution.
Yahoo! believes they can offset some of their additional charges by opperating more transparently with webmasters when issues related to search come up.
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