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Your .htaccess is kind of like the front door in your home or the directory you see once entering an office building.  It helps you find the right path to the room you’re looking for, a direct route to the person you are visiting, or to navigate to the nearest restroom if you have to go.  However, in many cases when it comes to SEO, .htaccess is more like the attic.

It’s where you store items you use once a year like holiday decor, things you don’t want to throw out, and all the junk which could land you a runner-up position on the show hoarders.  When you have to open your .htaccess (much like an attic), you remember all of the things you’re supposed to do, but you put it off and let the clutter continue to pile up.  That is where you run into a lot of SEO issues that can prevent your rankings from growing.

By not having a clean and direct .htaccess, you make search engines have to work to find the right pages and versions of your website.  Think about showing up to an interview and being 10 minutes late because the directory was wrong, and the security desk kept giving you wrong instructions to find the HR team, then the administrative assistant sent you back downstairs to start over again.  Now that you know what the .htaccess does for SEO, here is how we used this to increase a client’s positions from the lower part of page 1 in Google to the upper.

Our team is working with a client on SEO, and they have tons of content and backlinks, but their positions had plateaued and they couldn’t figure out why.  It turned out to be a tech SEO issue with one of the big fixes being .htaccess.

During the first round of cleanup, we reduced the file by more than 1,100 redirects and instructions.  We also reset other directives to properly point to the correct pages, or versions of the pages.  From there we reduced redirect chains by stripping them out, and reset the options that needed to remain.  This was only round one.

After this round of cleaning, the results helped the client to remove the stagnant positions, and get them to climb higher on page one.  Often times your SEO will say you need content or backlinks, but that often isn’t true when you already have them, and the content is good.

In the screenshots below you’ll see current ranking positions in the columns (Google, Yahoo, Bing), and then the search volume for the keyword phrases.  I pulled the report on 7/29/2019 with a comparison to the previous 30 days because I want to show the climb that happened once the pages and files were reindexed.  The green number next to the ranking position is the amount of spaces it moved up.  I used this tool to track, just like I do all clients.  If you’re wondering why there are some with 0’s across, we haven’t launched those sections or the content yet.  I add the tracking first so we can watch as it appears and properly monitor.

The niche is fairly competitive with lots of big money players.  The goal was to move from the lower part of the first page to the upper, and this is the way we started the progress.  Keep reading below to learn more about how .htaccess impacts SEO (without all of the other things it does).  BTW, if you’re a programmer and yelling about the explanation above, don’t continue down.  This post isn’t for you.  It is for people like me in marketing, so I changed it to be non-techie for marketing teams.

How .htaccess Impacts SEO

Your .htaccess file is going to be big, scary, and complex.  This is especially true for older sites which have had numerous designs, URL structures, and developers working on it.  Knowing how to properly implement, test, and then retest is an art form rather than a science.

.htaccess files require a lot of patience and frustration, so if you’re going through a clean up, get ready.  Here are some of the things that the programmer will be doing, looking at, and trying to fix. [Read more…] about SEO Case Study – How Your .htaccess Can Increase SEO Rankings

A client who I had a short term SEO contract with came to me after not having much success with a previous agency.  Their site had some falls and lost traffic, and the agency told them they just needed backlinks.  This could be further from the truth.  The issues were tech, content and site structure.

Tech was out of our control for the project, but we did send a detailed report with what to do (at least from a starting point).  What was under our control is the content on the pages, where it links too, and how the navigation works.  After auditing the content, it became clear that this was one of the biggest opportunities to increase their search engine visibility, so that is what we addressed first.  It included rewriting, deleting and adding.

The screenshots below are from this tool which I use for rank tracking on specific keywords and phrases.  I have it set from when I first added the keywords to be tracked (pre-implementation of the content) to today 6/30/2019 after two major Google updates.  Because the contract was short term, we did not get to implement everything I wanted too, but there is a chance we’ll be re-engaging in the future as we did generate positive results.

The niche is noticine and vaping which is highly competitive.  The competitive nature is because of the limited ability to advertise on traditional advertising platforms like Facebook and Google Ads.

Below are screenshots with the results from the content implementation.  Implementation is not 100% complete yet, so I’m excited to see as they finish and continue with new content creation.  After the screenshots you’ll find the steps we took, and how we implemented them to generate these results.  The client’s name has been blocked, even though they said I can use it, and you’ll find the results highlighted in the red boxes.

The green numbers show the climb in positions in Google, Yahoo and Bing.  The blue number is where the company’s website currently ranks in Google, which was our focus for this optimization.  The second red box has the total monthly search volume for these keywords so you can see the level of competition and traffic at stake.  Click any image to scroll in and see it closer.

Step 1: Redo product copy and provide education to the product team.

The most important role an SEO can play is to work with the client’s team, and to teach them what you know.  [Read more…] about SEO Case Study & Results – Content Redo & Site Structure

Google released another broad, core algorithm update.  This means exactly 3 things.

1. Every major website that writes about SEO will have a post about:
   1. what was penalized
   2. who the winners are
   3. why they got hit or won & what you can do
2. SEOs will be panicking, or celebrating their wins, or relieved their traffic is still there
3. You’re going to need to explain things

The very first thing you should do is to log off any and every major search engine reporting websites.  You’re looking for information, but guess what, there is none.

Nobody knows what was actually impacted by the broad core algorithm update.  It will be at a bare minimum 72 hours if not a week before we have any real and useable information.

What you’ll find on these websites are screen shots from lots of tools that show who gained and who lost, but none of them have actual reasons why.  You’ll be reading assumptions, and these normally make you worse off than better.  Diagnosing core algorithm updates takes manual digging and research on a per site basis.  That is what this post is about.  It is how to react and what to do when a Google core or broad algorithm update occurs.

(Speaking of tools, every tool I link to in this post should have an affiliate link attached to it.  If they don’t have a program, but do in the future, I will join and turn the direct links it into affiliate links.  That means I get a commission for each sale if you click and shop.  The good news is, as of today, I actually use each of the ones I link too in this post).

Now let’s start with the scenarios that occur after an update has been released.

Three things that happen when Google has a core algorithm update:

1. You gain traffic
2. You lose traffic
3. Your traffic stays the same

Let’s go into each of these and find some actionable items for what you can do to grow your traffic or recover if you lost. [Read more…] about Google Released An Algorithm Update – Step 1 – Do Not Read Anything

When creating copy for your website, it’s important to remember that spiders and robots cannot make assumptions like a human.  Fun wording and branding DO NOT help you rank in the search engines.  This confuses the spiders and takes away from your relevance.  Doing that also means you will, at some point, lose your rankings to a competitor that wants to provide a relevant experience.  This is one of the reasons websites that clearly state the purpose and the intent of the page can rank better.  But let’s explore that a bit.

I talk with a lot of engineers from multiple search engines at conferences and outside of work (like doing a shark swim in Belize), and there is one thing in common with virtually all algorithm engineers I’ve met.  They are logical.  If it doesn’t serve a purpose or have a reason for performing a task, the engineer doesn’t understand why they should have to do it.  This is one of the most important distinctions between programmers, coders and engineers who work on algorithms and ones that work on websites.

A prime example was at a recent conference where shark and alligator swims got brought up.  Someone mentioned to the engineer that “sharks have teeth”.  The engineer said “dogs have teeth too”.  In the mind of the engineer, a dog and a shark are the same because they both have teeth, which means they can both bite, both cause damage to you, and both animals can kill you.

You were probably raised around dogs and are thinking about a pet that is commonly referred to as man’s best friend.  You may also picture a killer shark eating flesh and pools of blood when you hear sharks have teeth.  But that is because you are human and can make assumptions.  Let’s think about this from an algorithm developed by engineers who follow logic.

Teeth on it’s own will generate an image, or at least a concept that needs a response.  But teeth on their own are not enough to determine the intent of the person searching for them.  That is where the engineer who programs a search engine spider and algorithm comes in.

Is it a single tooth, or a set of teeth, and what is the user looking for:

• A definition
• What they are made of
• Are they sharp, flat or a mix
• How are they used
• Do they grow back
• Facts about them
• Illnesses based on them
• What is the size
• Does it have a specific color

You pictured something inside your head, but the algorithm has to think about what it means, why it’s there and what the person is searching for.  So it uses what it knows about you.  This is one of the reasons cookies and tracking is important…so quit blocking them,,,especially if you’re frustrated with not finding good answers in search engines.).

Next it takes what it can learn and applies some filters to the search results.  But remember, the algorithm can only learn from what it knows including past search history, pages you went to (including those pages titles because you clicked through, the content, etc…).

We’ll stick with the example above and use “sharks teeth”.  By adding shark to the query “teeth” the algorithm is given a new task but still needs to make decisions about what to display and how.

Should it show:

• Images for them
• Videos for them
• Content for them
• Merchandise like jewelry, fossils or diagrams
• Diagrams and infographic information
• Audio clips
• Podcasts
• Live streams
• News articles

Maybe the intent is for content.  That takes the search engine spider to the next step. [Read more…] about How Google Thinks & Why It Matters In Your Copy