SEO Tips

Just thought of writing about the advantage and disadvantage of Statpress and Google Analytics.
My experienced with Statpress is really amazing, but same as with Google Analytics. The only thing that they differ is, in Analytics, you have a very stable host of your stats, but in Statpress you can’t never say on what will happen to your server, it depends on your webhosting ofcourse. So if you want to choose between them, I recommend use them both. If you will use both you can gather data on 2 different ways. This will give you a deeper understanding on where your traffic came from and what are the ways to improve your readership. If this two is not enough for you. You can use these 4 simultaneously: Statpress, Statcounter, Sitemeter, and Analytics.

According to this news, US authorities already shut down wordpress host with over 73000 blogs on it. This is due to “history abuse” on posting links for movie, mp3 and other intellectual property illegally. I don’t know if it’s a good judgment by the authorities, but if they want to crack down abuser, they should also shut down blogger.com, torrent sites and other forums because I believe that there are more abuser on blogger.com hosting compare to wordpress hosting. Just do couple of google search, you will actually see that most of the results will give you blogspot blogs, torrent sites, or from other forums.

I’ve been receiving some hack attempts to my site according to the server log. As a blogger you must protect your site from intruders. This post is dedicated for newbie-average bloggers or webmasters. I just want to share on how to protect your wordpress sites.

1. Update your Wordpress to the latest stable version. As of this date, the Wordpress version is 3.0. The latest version has more security features than the older one. You can check other features of the new wordpress version called thelonious, be sure to play the video.You can download the wordpress script here. See for yourself on what is the latest version. Recently I’ve blogged about the Wordpress 3.0 bug. I personally advice that you should either use version 2.8 and up or wait for 3.0.1/3.1.

2. Use very long passwords. Usually Wordpress generates system-generated passwords when you install it. You can keep that password and save it to a notepad or word documents or keep the installation email you will received from Wordpress after installing it so that you can retrieve it if your using other PC’s or if you’re in a internet shop.

3. Allow certain IP’s that can access your wp-admin. Add .htaccess to your wp-admin. If you’re not familiar with .htaccess. I have a page about creating .htaccess files. After creating your .htaccess files. First you must know your IP. You can check it using whatismyip.com. Then replace the IP below using your IP.

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “SEOPinoy Allow Access”
AuthType Basic

This technique is for people using static IP’s. But don’t worry if you’re using dynamic IP’s especially if you’re still using dial-up connection(OMG), you just have to update your htaccess whenever your IP has been changed. If you cannot access your wp-admin, then it means your IP has been changed by your ISP. Be sure to upload this .htaccess files on your wp-admin folder not on the root folder.

4. Disable access to your directories. This is somewhat very important because if you’re saving your password or anything important in your host, someone might gain access to it if this isn’t disabled. You can do these by adding these codes on your .htaccess

Options All -Indexes

5. Backup your .htaccess. From time to time someone might want to hack your site. It is very important to keep track of all the changes you’ve made on your .htaccess.

6. Disable access to your .htaccess. Ofcourse after adding the above codes to your htaccess you must protect the file that contains the codes. Just add these codes on your .htaccess files. Use file permissions 644. See below image on how to configure file permissions for a certain file. Image taken from my “how to create a phpld in 20 minutes” post.

Add these codes to your .htaccess files

order allow,deny
deny from all

That’s all folks. Will add more if I discover or observe some security features to prevent your site from hackers. Again, these information doesn’t guarantee you that your site will be hack-free. These are just preventive measures. No site is hack-free in the internet even google, yahoo, and other big internet companies have been victims of hackers.

First here’s the reason why you should create a .htaccess on your site(using wordpress script).

Importance:

- .htaccess helps secure your site from hackers. Please refer to this page.
- .htaccess helps in creating an SEO-friendly-URL’s. See below.

I’ve made this tutorial so that everyone that have problems using the mod_rewrite in wordpress or simply changing your permalinks from the default permalinks to custom structure, or the so-called SEO-friendly URL’s. Refer to the image below.

1. First, if you’re using windows operating system such as XP, Windows 7, Vista or even Windows 2000, ME and 98 (Although I think these versions are already phase out). Open your Notepad application.

(Start->All Programs->Accessories->Paint or just simply hit (windows button + r) then type notepad then hit enter.

2. Input these codes, this only applies for PHP server.

# BEGIN WordPress

# END WordPress

Then save it as .htaccess. See image below for more detailed info.

I’ve added some bonus info on where you can use your .htaccess.

SEO TIPS: How to make a redirect from URL’s with “www” to non-www or vice versa.

How to create a 301 redirect using Mod_Rewrite module. (This works only on Linux servers that have Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled)

Scenario A:

If you want your visitors to redirect them if they type without “www”. This technique is Search Engine bots friendly. They will be instructed to indexed your site with “www”. It will prevent bots from indexing duplicate contents.

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine on

Scenario B:

In my case (Seopinoy.com) I did a 301 redirect from “www” to non-www URL’s.

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

RewriteEngine on

3. Upload it to your wordpress root folder on your linux server. If you’re still not familiar with root folder, when you login using your ftp account, you can see there the wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes. I would recommend using Filezilla for newbie in this File management task. I guess we’re done here. More updates will be added if I will received more request.

I just noticed that Godaddy domains renewal price increases last July 1, 2010. From $9.69 for .com domains, it is now $11.62. And more bad news, the promo code cjc20host, OYH7 and other coupon codes aren’t working. You will get this message if you try to renew using the old promo code, “This promotion has changed due to increased prices from the registry effective July 1st, 2010. The updated price is reflected in your cart. ” I also noticed they have new view cart interface. Good thing that I’ve decided to renew 10 domains last week which about to expire this July 4. The problem now is all domain registrar have increase their prices effective July 1, 2010 because of VeriSign® the company who manage the .COM and .NET registry have announced a price increase for both of these extensions beginning on July 1, 2010. For domain owners who manage lots of domains on their portfolio this is really a big setback to them. But overall, everyone is affected because whether you own 5-10 domains, you will be spending more to renew them.

Godaddy 2010 Promo Code

Here’s the promo code for July 2010. They didn’t specify on when this code will expire. I guess you can use it as long as no major updates on the site. Enter “gdbba72965” promo code on the upper-right portion when you reach the order summary page to take 20%* off your order of $65 or more.

I will try to find more, you can visit my Godaddy Coupon Code page.

Godaddy New 2010 Interface