Applied .htaccess for SEO

I have found .htaccess to be a great SEO tool. There are many how-to-guides about .htaccess and how to set them up. I am not going to outline how to set them up. If you want more information about how to set them up ask your server administrator, web professional, or don’t hesitate to contact me.

.htaccess File and commentary

There are several standard components but most of these I am using to try and prevent access. I also use the robots.txt standard to block Search Engine’s from indexing my portfolio.

Blogging at its best - Reading blogs instead of writing them…

I apologize for the long gap between posts. Due to the holidays and a writers block I have not posted. I have been reading a lot of great SEO articles and I wanted to take the time to share a couple of them with you.

I came across Andy Hagaans’s Ultimate guide to link baiting - a great post about crafting an article to for linking and social media popularity.

The debate on the “No Follow” continues. - It isn’t much of a debate as much as controversy

Blogging How To’s: The extended “What Everybody Ought To Know About Blog Commenting”

Ramkarthik at Blogging Tune posted a good article entitled “What Everybody Ought To Know About Blog Commenting“, and is the first in a series about Blog Commenting.

This article points out good techniques of boosting traffic by commenting on other blogs. I agree this is a great way for exposure and popularity. As a contributor to a few blogs I can say first hand that commenting is one of the best ways to boost traffic. You can help control the links, information, and public image of your blog/company/you.

With the fallout of the “Google Smack Down” in the fall most blogs use nofollow attributes on all external links from their blog. There are some rouge blogs, and movement along with them, that fight the system and aren’t using the attributes. Linking from blog comments will have little effect besides boosting traffic. Ultimately getting more traffic is whats important. As Ramkarthik pointed out some of the visitors will subscribe to your blog feed and become some of your chief commenter’s and most loyal visitors.

I have a few rules of my own when it comes to commenting.

1. Be Polite and Tasteful
2. Always share your opinion in a polite way
3. Don’t use fowl language
4. Use good grammar (this can be hard for even me, as you can tell)
5. Spell Check
6. Only put in links when relevant to the topic
7. Keep the length short no more than two paragraphs (write your on rebuttal and link back to the original post otherwise)
8. Always make a comment that you thought the article was good, interesting, loved it, found it hard to understand your point, an interesting take, or some other nice phrase. The point of this is to make the author and reader know your stance on the article.
9. Only comment if you can contribute to the topic
10. Be Polite and Tasteful
11. A bonus: The author should always be considered the winner of any debate unless they are blatantly wrong. It can be taken as an insult to the author any other way. I learned this the hard way.

I can not state it enough that you must be polite. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing, in fact I disagree with many people (persons wearing black hats and doing SEO for one), that can lead to a positive engagement. All comments should be positive in nature and written with the best intentions. If you aren’t able to be positive then just don’t comment.

I look forward to reading what Ramkarthik has to say in future articles about blog commenting.

Happy Blogging,

Chris Estes