A Technical SEO Cheat Sheet

Handy Bits To Help You With Your Technical SEO

Can’t remember if a canonical link is self closing, or how to add a 301 redirect? Here’s a quick cheat sheet to help you out.

HTML

noindex:

nofollow:

Note: They work together too: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />

Canonical:

Using .HTACCESS

How to add a .htaccess file

1. Check you are using an Apache server.

2. Use FTP or your file manager in cpanel to add a file named .htacess to your root directory.

3. Add the following text to the file and save.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

Redirect Old Domain To New

Add the following with the new domain as the URL:

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Redirect WWW to Non-WWW

Consolidating versions of the site with a 301 redirect can help preserve link value and increase the effectiveness of link building:

Improve the flow of link value
Increase effectiveness of link building

To redirect www to non-www:

rewritecond %{http_host} ^YourDomain.com.au [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.YourDomain.com.au/$1 [r=301,nc]

Note: It is important to include “RewriteEngine on” and “Options +FollowSymlinks” before this section.

301 Redriect

A 301 redirect:

Sends users to a different URL, defined in the .htaccess
Tells Search Engines content has moved permanently
Is the recommend method of redirecting content

To perform a 301 redirect add the following to your .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 /old-url.html /new-url.html

404 Error Page

Create a custom 404 page called 404.html and place it in the root directory. Next add the following to the .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Rich Snippets

Rich snippets appear in the search engine results and can have a big impact on click through rates.

Authorship

Authorship is the image that appears beside search results. This is limited to individual authors of content and cannot be used as a company. To add authorship to your posts:

Open a Google Plus Account
Click edit profile > Go to About Me > Add The domain to which you are a contributor to
add the following link in your content:

<a href=”[Google Plus Profile URL]?rel=author”>Add Any Text Here</a>

You can test using rich snippets testing tool.

What Do You Need?

Let us know in the comments below or on our Google Plus page and we’ll add them to the list.