Simple Code to Redirect 404 Errors in Your Blog – Improves SEO?
I’ve always kinda wondered about 404 errors. Whether they are important to keep up with, how they affect SEO on a blog and the best way to handle them. It’s one of those things that I always put off since they didn’t seem to be making much difference.
At least that’s what I thought, but I was wrong!!
So I’ve been doing some research and experimenting lately. And finally came up with a very simple solution to redirect 404 errors to any page of your wordpress blog.
I’m going to show you a little piece of code for a 301 redirect that is even simpler than installing a WP plugin, and works like a charm.
This is why I started to care about 404 errors
I was checking out my Google Webmaster tools the other day, and I saw the amount of crawl errors on my blog. Let’s just say it was enough to make me freak out, just a little. I had several links that were leading to 404 errors. And the worst part was, many of them were from months ago.
Also, I am currently going back and SEO optimizing my blogs to the fullest and consolidating my categories to make life easier for my visitors. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do, but was worried about having a bunch of dead links.
So I knew I needed to get on top of this, and figure out a solution that not even a non-techie (me) could handle by their self.
WordPress plugins?
There are several WP plugins that handle 404 errors and can redirect them. But I just wasn’t satisfied with any of them. Plus I like to figure things out on my own and at least experiment. Some of the plugins were too complicated for what I wanted, and others were messing up my theme.
I love plugins, don’t get me wrong. But you don’t want to go and install as many as you can. Too many WordPress plugins can slow down your site. And some of them, might not play nicely with each other, or with your theme. So I started experimenting with the coding, and found exactly what I wanted.
How do 404 errors hurt your blog?
First off, if you don’t have too many 404 errors, then you’ll probably be fine. But still, it’s worth taking caring of them when you see them.
Let me explain why.
When someone clicks on a link that no longer exists or maybe spelled incorrectly, they’ll be lead to your 404 error page. Almost all WordPress themes have them, and usually it’s a plain page that says
404 error – this page no longer exists
Unless someone changed it to something different.
1 – this causes not the best experience to the visitor and you could lose them forever. Now some 404 error pages might have other suggestions for them or other links to your site, and etc…. but there’s still something better for SEO purposes.
Keep reading…
2 – Google and other search engine spiders will crawl and find these dead links. This creates the crawl errors that you’ll see in your Webmaster Tools. Now I’ve heard that your blog won’t get penalized too badly, or any at all for the 404 errors. But I think differently.
Instead of the spiders crawling links that lead to a 404 error page, they could be spending more time crawling your other content. Plus 404 e r r o r pages aren’t filled with content, that’s never a good thing. Makes sense to me at least.
You could block 404′s in the Robots.txt, but then they won’t know they exist and this could possibly create a different kind of error. This is what I’ve heard in forums. Never tried it before on my own so don’t know for sure. I’d rather redirect them.
3 – You’re losing link juice, opportunities to make more money and even loyal readers. On your site, all links pointing to other pages in your blog that no longer work -either because the link is misspelled, or the page no longer exists, are going to the 404 error page. Same thing goes for other blogs/sites that linked to yours, but leading to your 404 error page. That link juice is going to a page that you don’t care about and is being wasted.
You’re losing money and loyal readers because instead of leading them to a page that you want them to see, they are being lead to a blank 404 error page. Which doesn’t really help anyone out.
Finally, the 301 Redirect Code
First off, for those who don’t know already, a 301 redirect means it’s permanent. And yes, it passes link juice.
Now you need to go into your WordPress dashboard under appearance, then editor. You should see your blogs 404.php. If you don’t have one, then you’ll need to make one by going to your cpanel in your hosting and upload it to your blog’s files with a ftp.
There’s actually 2 different codes
Make sure you save a copy of the original 404.php page, just in case the codes below don’t work with your blog!!
#1 — This code below will redirect all of your 404 errors to your homepage. Just completely replace your 404.php with the code below.
————————————————————————————————————————
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: ".get_bloginfo('url'));
exit();
?>
————————————————————————————————————————-
#2 — This code will redirect your 404 error to any page that you enter in the blank url spot. Maybe a money page that you want to get ranked higher or whatever you choose.
————————————————————————————————————————-
<?php
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://url");
?>
————————————————————————————————————————-
There you have it, you now have some options to redirect 404 errors to your homepage for a wordpress blog, or any other page that you desire even without using a plugin. It was actually really quite simple to do. And now you’re probably thinking, why did I wait so long?
Have any input on this matter? Then please don’t hesitate to share by leaving a comment. And if you found this post helpful, then do me a favor and share it with others by using one of the social buttons. I’d appreciate it.
How to Quickly Get FREE Passive Backlinks to Your Blog
The other day I was thinking about all the time, money and energy I have spent in the past to get quality backlinks to my sites and individual blog posts. SEO can become a huge Headache sometimes, especially if you don’t have too much extra time or any money to spend on it. But without backlinks, you’re site won’t ever reach it’s full potential. Or get much free traffic from the search engines, ever.
You write content for your blog, then you have to work on SEO and work on building back links for it. That’s a very tedious job for anyone to do by their self, day in and day out. And you’ll probably wind up giving up after a few months. If you think about it, that’s not a very efficient method at all.
Of course, when your first starting out, and have a very limited audience, you will need to put in some work to get the ball rolling, and to organically get backlinks to your new blog posts just like what Daniel had said when he had answered my question awhile back in this article.
It finally hit me though, that getting free passive backlinks continuously to your blog and posts, would just make more sense than having to go back yourself and working on them manually. That way, others would be continuously doing your back linking for you, and you can move on to something else.
Here’s the best methods that I could find and personally have done some experimenting with myself to get passive free backlinks to your blog.
Create Killer Content – I’ll admit, sometimes just to keep up with a consistent schedule of publishing a post every few days, I’ve written some very simple posts just to get something out there. But guess what, those posts probably scared more people away from my blog rather than helped the cause.
If you spend the time to actually create content that is very valuable to your readers, then not only will you get traffic by word of mouth, but you will also start getting backlinks from other bloggers pointing to your great content. Keep this up and you’ll soon have started the snowball effect, and you won’t really have to even worry about getting backlinks anymore.
Which is better? Writing a simple blog post and then spending hours on getting backlinks and traffic to it constantly. Also remember, you’ll continuously be getting only new readers to your blog not any loyal readers since you have low quality content. Or, taking a little more time to write stellar content and creating a loyal fan base that will eventually do the promoting of your posts for you. It’s your choice.
Link baits – These are usually very long and thorough posts that will be used as a continuous source for others to refer to. Such as lists and tutorial type of posts. I have a few of these on my site and they for sure brought in the most organic traffic and backlinks. The effort I put into these type of posts is definitely worth it. And I still to this day, get links pointed to them from other bloggers and even from many mentions on forums.
Social Media Buttons – This is probably the most passive way of getting backlinks and traffic to your blog. All you need to do, if you’re using WordPress, is to find a good social media plugin. And there’s a ton of good ones out there. Not only will you get backlinks from the social media sites, but also a lot of traffic.
Make sure there is a way for people to easily bookmark your site on the most popular social media sites, and you have one on every single of your blog posts. Like my blog, I have them to the left of every post. To many times I see newbies without these on their blog, and they probably are losing a lot of traffic and backlinks because of this. Remember, people are lazy, make it easy for them by being able to push a simple button to share your blog post.
Act Like an Expert – If you become known as one of the experts or authority figures in your niche, then people will more than likely link to your site as a reliable source for information on that particular topic. For instance, anyone who wants to start a blog or wants information about blogging, people link to and lead others to, Problogger.
Not everyone will be able to be as well known as Problogger. But like even myself, this blog still gets links back from people that are new to blogging and internet marketing since I do know what I’m doing. And to some of them, I probably am seen as an somewhat of an expert. Even though I am far from being one.
Know what in the world you’re talking about on your niche. Do your research and experimenting before you even try to act like an expert in any niche, or this could have the reverse effect.
Give something away for free – Go grab yourself some free Master resell or Private Label Rights products and give it away for free. Make sure you also brand those products with your blog and even can throw in some affiliate links. Or just use your imagination. There’s a ton of FREE things you could give away.
You could create something of your own, a simple landing page, software, or even a really good ebook. You could even hold some type of contest. Giving something of value away for FREE will get a lot of attention and will have other bloggers linking to you. Many top experts use this method all the time.
Blog about the latest trends and hot topics – If you’re one of the first to blog about something new, or currently trending, then other bloggers will use your post as a source. Some will even link back to you. Chances are, if you’re one of the first to blog about something, then you’ll show up in the search engines much easier than waiting until 1000′s of other bloggers write about it too.
I once wrote an article about the Social Network Movie, and even though all the top sites on the internet also wrote about it, my post was in the top 5 listings on the first page of Google’s results for a good while. Just because I was the one of the first to write about it. This helped bring me new visitors, but also some new back links.
It might take a little more work and effort at first to implement the methods above. But after that, then the backlinks and traffic should be continuously coming to your site and blog posts on their own. Think how many free passive backlinks you could get if you did everything mentioned above on a consistent basis. You would become a force to be reckoned with in the Internet marketing world.
I believe it all begins and is built around great content that is so valuable, it will make people want to link to you and share your information. This is something I am going to be working on going forward. I know my writing skills are still pretty weak, but they are slowly getting better and better. You should see some of my first posts, an English teacher would freak out.
Got any other good methods that weren’t listed?
The Complete Guide to Traffic is Finally Here
Do you want to learn how to get more quality traffic to your sites? Or maybe you’re new to internet marketing. If so, then you just might want to take a look at The Complete Guide to Traffic which was just released. (HUGE Introductory DISCOUNT, read below) This course will walk you step-by-step through every method there is to generating traffic to your sites and offers. Not just through videos and tutorials, but they even include tests after each module to make sure you understood all the information.
You gotta watch their video
There’s no course out there that even remotely compares to the Complete Guide to Traffic.
-OK, you do have 2 other options. (A) Hunt around on the internet gathering bits and pieces of FREE information scattered throughout the entire internet. It’s FREE, but could take years to find and gain all the knowledge you need to know about traffic. Also, how do you know the information you find is correct? (B) Spend 1000′s of dollars on several different courses or hiring a coach and expert.
The better option would be to get a complete course with all the information in one place that is easy to follow and is inexpensive. The Complete Guide to Traffic offers just that.
Don’t Procrastinate, Only 5 Days left for Discount!
If you think this one of those sales tricks, it’s not. I had received an email from Paul Smithson, the creator, and he said that the $300 introductory discount will end this Friday. Get the Complete Guide to Traffic Discount here now!
You should definitely check around for yourself before you make a final decision. There are quality courses out there that can teach you a SINGLE method of traffic generation but cost around $30-$100 per course. While The Complete Guide to Traffic will thoroughly guide you through 30 different methods of getting traffic so there’s really no comparison. This guide is so good they do offer a one year guarantee. Tell everyone about the discount now! They’ll owe you big time for saving them $300.
Updated 2011 Dofollow Article Directories List – Free Backlinks
Wanna get ahead of your competitors and be found in the search engines? Then adding article directories with high page rank to your backlinking strategy is a must. I’ve a compiled an updated 2011 list of the best and most powerful Dofollow Article Directories that you should use. They will bring you instant targeted traffic and powerful backlinks to your sites.
There are thousands of different article directories on the internet. However, one thing I’ve learned from experience, they are not all equal. Not even close! There’s actually only a small handful that’s even worth your time. A few things to look for right away are, their pagerank, dofollow, categories and if it’s a well trafficked site.
Many people still think the more backlinks the better and submit their content to as many article directories that they can. However, quality always out beats quantity. One backlink from an authoritative article directory like Ezine Articles will be more effective than 1,000 back-links from a bunch of lousy article directories. Use the list below consistently and you’ll soon be getting a lot more targeted traffic from the search engines.
High Page Rank Article Directories List – All Dofollow!
Page Rank 7
Page Rank 6
Page Rank 5
PageRank 4
PageRank 3
- GoArticles
- Easy Articles
- FourPx Articles
- Articler
- Article Resources
- Article Rich
- Talkinmince
- All Best Articles
- Web Site Design
- Amazines
- Article Directory
Page Rank 2
Dofollow or Nofollow, how to know for sure?
Here are two tools every webmaster should install, the Alexa Toolbar and FireFox Search Status bar. You’ll be able to see information for any site instantly and be able to tell if the links are dofollow or nofollow. Just in case you didn’t know already, a dofollow link passes on link juice to the following site and the search spiders will follow it. While a nofollow link does the total opposite.
Are you using the right Article Spinner?
Article spinning is the most effective way to utilize article marketing to the fullest, unless you have the money to hire a free lancer to write your articles for you. Don’t waste your time writing original content and submitting just a few articles. It will take a good while to see any results from them in the serp’s. The best article spinner can turn 1 article into 100′s of original articles in a short amount of time. This tool can help you to aggressively build quality backlinks and climb to the top of the search engines much faster.
Any Good Nofollow Article Directories?
If you’re writing content and submitting to article directories specifically for backlinks, then only use dofollow sites. But there are plenty of good nofollow article directories too. They are well trafficked and can bring in a lot of nice instant traffic to your sites, and your articles will rank well in the serp’s too. Here’s a couple nofollow article directories you might want to checkout, Article Base and Search Warp.
High Quality Content is Good
The better the content you submit to high page rank article directories, then the better chance they’ll get published on other people’s blogs/sites. Most article directories allow anyone who’s looking for content to take and use their articles for their own use. But, they do have to keep the article in original form which means your links will still be on there and result in more backlinks to your sites. Also, I’ve found if it’s a really beneficial and well written article, then more people will link to it as a source.
The reason high page rank article submission sites are so effective is there’s always continuous new content being added. The search engine spiders love content and visit the article directories constantly because of it. The higher the quality and page rank of the article directories you use, the better your articles will do in the search engines, usually.
Add a few good backlinks to your articles
Even though you’re using article directories with high page rank, make sure to add a few backlinks to your articles. A good spinner is a great way of doing this and makes it easy to get a good link wheel going connecting your articles and websites. If you do the proper on-page-seo, keywords in titles, url, and scattered naturally throughout your content, then you should rank pretty well in the serp’s. But adding a few good backlinks will help you move up in search engine result pages much quicker.
I’ll try to keep this article directories dofollow list up to date and I hope it will help you with your seo efforts. Share this post with anyone who you think it may help out by using the buttons below.
New Article Submission Software – What Makes it Different?
I had just received an email the other day from Edwin Brian about his new product called Article Demon. This is a new article submission software, which there’s already a gazillion of on the internet. However, ArticleDemon looks as though they have found solutions to the problems other article submitters tend to have.
A couple nice features Article Demon claims to have are, being able to submit your content to different article directories as though if a human was doing it and has an advanced rewriter that spins unique versions of your articles. So basically it’s an article submitter and spinner in one.
Article Demon pretty much automates everything for you, usually these type of IM tools end up being worthless. But Edwin’s other 2 creations, BMD and BCD were quite successful and most people were pleased with them. Have any of you purchased ArticleDemon yet? If so, it would be really cool to hear about your experience with Article Demon. Just leave a comment below. I haven’t had the time to check it out yet, but am a little anxious to see it’s true capabilities.
It would be great if this little demon software worked as good as it claims to be. I know articles can be one of the most powerful ways to get backlinks, but it also can be the most boring and tedious work. Especially, having to rewrite your articles before you submit them to other article directories.
Click Here to Watch Article Demon Video
Here are some of the Features for Article Demon:
- automatically submits articles to 300+ directories
- unlimited amount of backlinks from your articles
- creates accounts and pen names for article directories automatically
- you are able to add unlimited number of article directories that uses certain script into it’s database
- article status checker let’s you see if your submitted article’s are published
- able to schedule your account creation, pen name and article submissions
- Article spinner and (rewriter) built right in, create thousands of unique versions using spin syntax
- Mass synonym function built right in able to replace any synonyms for even more unique content
- spun article previewer able to see articles as you rewrite them before submissions
- project mgmt. built right in to handle multiple niches
- 100% unmanned submission with visual aid services
- infamous Anti-bot installed, allows human like submissions
What makes Article Demon different than most?
To me, most automated article submission tools are a waste of time. Same goes for most of the article spinners too. There are a few good ones out there but they usually charge a high monthly service fee, so only the ballers can afford them. Article demon has a fair one time price, plus they throw in a few bonuses, and supposedly a introductory discounted price if you get it now. Article Demon spins and rewrites your articles, but also has the synonym function to make sure they are unique. They’ve added a proxy rotation support in case the directories ban your IP address, which I’ve never seen on others before. Plus all of the features it includes to enhance human like submissions separates it from the rest.
I will write a more in depth article demon review once I’ve got my hands on it and get some firsthand experience with it. I know I sure get tired of writing similar content over and over when submitting to certain article directories for backlinks, so just maybe ArticleDemon will be the answer.
Location & Placement Affects the Power of a Backlink
Backlinks may play the most important role in SEO, other than killer content. If you want to be found whenever someone looks up something in the search engines, then you need to get backlinks to your sites and blogs. However, I’ve found that the placement and location of the back-links can make a HUGE difference. I’m talking about whether you’re link is located in the footer, sidebar, comments, or in the content.
If you didn’t know already, then you probably can guess that a link that’s in the content is more powerful and will give you much more link juice than any other type of backlink. Why is that?
Let’s talk about one particular search engine, Google, the Big Daddy of all the search engines. If you look deeper into the Google Algorithm, then you will learn that Google likes links that are in place to help the reader. So relevant contextual links that serve as a reference and source to the content, makes Google happy. Also, it’s believed that content surrounding a link helps the search engine spiders know what the link it’s following is about, which makes it a more relevant backlink.
That’s not all, many pro seo’s say search engine spiders crawl and break up the page in different sections of importance. For instance, the header and content are the most important parts of the page, with the sidebar and footer being at the bottom of importance. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, what part of the site plays the biggest part on what keywords you show up for in the serp’s? The title tags and your keywords in the content, right?
Of course not everything is so black and white when it comes to SEO and the search engine algorithms. But from what I’ve researched and experimented on my own, the importance of backlinks depending where they are located on a site really does seem to make a huge difference.
Here’s my experience with link placement
Back in the day I tried a few things out and plus I was ignorant, so I did whatever the heck the experts told me to do. I was told to do a lot of blog commenting and link exchanges with relevant blogs to get more back links to my site. I had acquired numerous backlinks from many of the top blogs for my niche in the top commentators section, usually located on their sidebar or footer. I also left a lot of blog comments on dofollow blogs. Not only that, I managed to get placed on several blog rolls with decent Pagerank with a one way link back to my site. I really didn’t notice any changes after several months. I didn’t gain any pagerank either. After awhile longer many of these links were taken down. I figured I would lose pagerank or positions in the serp’s from losing these backlinks, guess what happened? Squat, I lost no placement or pagerank and nothing really happened. Some of these links I had were on PR 5 or better sites and of course all the links I acquired were all dofollow.
Then, I started to do more article marketing, getting backlinks from guest posts and only worked on getting contextual links. Sometimes I could almost see my sites or pages moving in the serp’s the very next day for the anchor text I was using. It sometimes only takes a few good backlinks in the middle of the content from a trusted site to give you page rank and move you in the search engine results pages. Try it out for yourself.
What’s the best way of getting contextual links or backlinks in the content?
Article marketing is a good way, but the best way is writing valuable content on your site so others will link to you. But if you’re not the best writer or want to speed things up, then you can do guest posting. Which basically is the same thing as someone linking to you in their content. However, not all of us have the time or skills to write guest posts, so the other alternative is to hire someone to do that for you.
I want to add, getting back links on blog rolls, from blog commenting and link exchanges may help your site out. And of course, each site will give different amounts of link juice than others. Back when I was purposely trying to get these type of back links they really didn’t do much for my sites. Do some experimenting on your own and see what gives you the best results. But I guarantee you’ll eventually see that links in the content are the most powerful backlinks of all.
How to Tell if a Backlink is Dofollow or Nofollow
When I first started getting into internet marketing, SEO and building backlinks, I had no idea if a link was dofollow or nofollow. I really didn’t know the difference between either one and just assumed every back-link was helping my site out.
I later learned that a Dofollow link means it allows the search engine spiders to follow the link and pass on some of it’s page rank (PR) to the following site. While a Nofollow link tells the search engine spider to not follow it and passes no pagerank to the following site.
If you are trying to build backlinks for your sites and blogs, then you want to be looking for dofollow links. But if you don’t want to pass on any page rank, link love or have the spiders follow a link to other sites, then make your outgoing links nofollow.
So how can you tell the difference?
I installed a handy Firefox Add-on about a year ago and I use it everyday. It allows me to instantly see the page rank, Alexa and Compete stats and much more. Plus it will highlight Nofollow links for you, very handy. You will be able to instantly see the stats and information on any website you are viewing.
Another toolbar I use and have it placed right next to the Firefox add-on is the Alexa toolbar. That way I can see a websites Alexa rating instantly and find out more information about a site with just a few clicks. Not only that, installing the Alexa toolbar yourself on your own computer will also help lower your Alexa rating for your own sites and blogs.
Both the Firefox Add-on and Alexa toolbar are FREE to download and install. Plus you can pretty much position them wherever you want them to be on your screen. I have mine right next to each other on the bottom right of my screen.
If you aren’t using these very helpful add-ons or toolbars already, you might want to give them a try. They save me a lot of time and let me see the stats and information on any site almost instantly.
What’s More Important for Backlinks the Quality or Quantity?
When I first got into internet marketing, I use to try getting as many backlinks as possible to my sites. I really had no idea what I was doing, I was just going by what I read and picked up on my own. Just look around the forums and the internet today and you’ll find many people are still trying to get as many backlinks as possible. You can find many SEO services online that offer packages that deliver thousands of back-links to your site or url.
But what kind of backlinks produce the best results? Is it the quality or quantity of the links that matter?
I had been experimenting with this for several months awhile back, and I learned the quality of the backlink will easily produce better results than the quantity of them.
I had a few sites and inner pages that had O or no backlinks to them, obviously they weren’t indexed either. I acquired more than several thousand backlinks to each url, whether by myself or thru someone else. I’m talking several thousand links from various new blogs, directories and low quality articles directories. (Not Ezine articles or other quality directories) This was through a couple month time frame. It wasn’t like I had a brand new url and threw 3,000 backlinks to it the next day.
Anyways, I was waiting for weeks to see any changes to the url’s or at least get indexed. Most of the sites or pages, nothing happened. Normally when I get high quality links from PR 4 or higher sites, I will usually see a change in the serp’s for the site or page that received it, sometimes in as little as a week or longer. It usually starts out jumping around in the search engine results pages, like page 3 then back to page 12, but at least I’ll see something going on.
Now after about 4 to 6 months, the url’s I threw 1000′s of backlinks to, none of them had done squat. I got a few visitors from the thousands of links but that’s about it, even after a PR update.
After spending a lot of time and effort into getting all of those backlinks, I was a little disappointed and frustrated. I didn’t actually do this for a experiment at first, I really thought this was going to leap me to the Front Page of Google. At least I learned that the quality of a backlink is what counts, not the quantity of them.
So then I acquired a few quality backlinks from social media, quality article directories and other relevant sites. After a little time, they were just about all indexed and in the serps. After a PR update, most of them also gained pagerank.
How do I know it just wasn’t the 1000′s of low quality backlinks that kicked in after a long period of time? Because I now do the same exact thing to my new sites or inner pages I want to get ranked or indexed. All you need to do is obtain a few quality links from either trusted sites, article directories and get a few social bookmarks, and you should be indexed and in the serp’s after a short period of time. Usually just a few good bookmarks from the right social media sites is enough to get indexed and maybe even page ranked.
Don’t waste your time going after thousands of low quality backlinks. Just get yourself a few high quality links from trusted sites, article directories like ezines, social media sites, and you’ll be good to go. Continue to get more quality links to your url’s slowly over time.
