Do you have a existing website (www.oldsite.com) and want to move your site to your new domain (www.newsite.com)? Maybe you have two websites you want to merge into one website? If so, you will want to learn more about htaccess which makes sure any visitors to the old website domain will be redirected to your new website domain.

We recently had to do this for an interior design firm who dissolved their partnership and knew people were still being directed to portions of their old website url. Those who had known their original company name would enter it as keywords within search engines like Yahoo and Google and still see old web pages listed. It’s also quite possible that their current clients haven’t caught on to their company’s name change and are still using their bookmarked web address. Also worth mentioning are all those 3rd party sites that have links to their website. They, too, would have no way of knowing that they changed their site domain name.

Solution: URL redirects (also known as URL forwarding, domain redirection and domain forwarding) help any incoming links to the old URL be directed to the new URL.

1) Domain Forwarding: Where did you register your existing domain?

Login to the account that manages your domain. Select your old domain and find the option to Forward the domain to another domain URL. If anyone tried to visit the main index page of your old site they will automatically be redirected to your new site

2) Always Backup your .htaccess file

You don’t want to damage your website and you don’t know what default settings your web host installed on your .htaccess file. Backup, Backup, Backup!

If you use FTP software such as CuteFTP or WS FTP, your .htaccess file may be hidden. Access your .htaccess file through your Web Hosting File Manager. You should find it on your website’s main directory (usually within an htdocs, httpdocs, www or public folder).

3) Create a new .htaccess file if one does not exist

You will be creating a plain text document (For PC-users, use Notepad) and name and save it .htaccess (don’t forget the file starts with a period).

4) .htaccess and 301 Redirects

A 301 Redirect sends visitors who may visit an outdated page of your website to the new page… especially helpful for updating search engine bots.

Type the following command in your .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 oldpage.html to newpage.html

In our client’s circumstances, we used the following command line for the .htaccess file on their old website (OldWebsite.com):

Redirect 301 / http://www.NewWebiste.com/

When people try to visit OldWebsite.com/contact.html they would be redirected to NewWebsite.com/profile.html.

On the client’s new/current website (NewWebsite.com), we used the following command line for the .htaccess file so that anyone trying to find a page that no longer exists is redirected to the homepage:

ErrorDocument 404 /home.html

** Make sure to upload your .htaccess files as an Ascii file. Remember, if you upload it using FTP software, the .htaccess file might disappear from view but exists (just hidden).

Have you downloaded my article, “Gain Back Your Time and Increase Your Revenue with a Virtual Assistant (V.A.)?” The interview styled article asks Emma Crabtree, a Virtual Assistant herself, the questions:

• In-house administrative assistant, secretary, virtual assistant… So, what’s the difference?
• What things can a Virtual Assistant do to make life easier for small businesses?
• Can anyone benefit from a Virtual Assistant?
• What are the key interview questions to ask your potential Virtual Assistant?

To continue the brainstorming on what YOU could delegate to your VAs, here are some of the tasks I delegate to my VA:

• Customer service: responding to customer emails and potential customer inquiries by phone or email
• Editorial service: an eagle eye for proofreading my spelling, grammar and punctuation but also review the tone and style of my articles are consistent
• Maintain my Web sites: Access database updates or copy edits and additions
• Internet research: fact checking
• Reminder service: follows-up and follows-through on to-do’s, phone appointments, etc.

Worried about being penalized by search engines for “content mirroring” when it comes to syndicating your articles online?

Reader Asks Maya: “Finally, I have several articles written but haven’t posted them to any article directories to gain some exposure for my expertise. Is it true that your website could be labeled for content mirroring by search engines and penalized for duplicate content?”

GoogleWebmasterCentral.Blogspot.com says, “Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.”

According to Stephan Spencer over at PracticalEcommerce.com, “Google’s supposed ‘duplicate content penalty’ seems to be on everybody’s minds these days.” Of course, Stephan’s post is focused on duplicate content found in many ecommerce websites but I believe his point-of-view very much relates to writers of articles.

Stephan isn’t the only one that recommends edits the copy (in his case, for products on ecommerce sites), but experts like Jeff Herring, TheArticleGuy.com says “The solution is to just tweak the article on your site a bit. Change the intro or conclusion, mix around the order of the tips, add/subtract some words, etc. You want the two versions of the article to be about 20% different from each other. At the same time, don’t freak out about this, because it is only a very small portion of what google looks for. So just make sure the two articles are about 20% different and forget about it, so you can concentrate on writing, posting and marketing more articles.”

I asked IdeaMarketers.com their take on this issue. Marnie Pehrson had the following response on the subject, “It’s my understanding from what I’ve read on the subject that the issue of duplicate content mainly comes into play when you have the same article on 10+ sites. The extras get dumped into Google’s supplemental index and it only looks at the ones on the most reputable sites that have had the article for the longest time. The duplicates are in essence ignored so you’re wasting your time submitting the exact same article to more than 10-12 sites (from a search engine perspective). This isn’t to say that if you have your article prominently placed on several high traffic sites that you won’t benefit from the sheer number of visitors who visit those sites and read your article. In other words, search engines aren’t the only game in town for producing traffic to one’s site. But bottom line… when we’re talking about search engines, the advice given above about making it somewhat different is good if you intend to submit the article to several article directories and have it on your site.”

It’s a question that popped in my noggin this morning. Working on Giftpile.com to increase their organic listings… back in Nov 2006, we targeted keywords: ‘honeymoon registry’ and was organically listed consistently in 8th - 9th place on Google. Today, Giftpile.com is organically listed in 5th place. Whoop! Whoop! So I was wondering what would happen if I temporarily halt their PPC (’Pay Per Click’) Google Ad and any other PPC - Yahoo Ad, MSN Ad???

So I ask myself:
Does having a PPC Google Ad help in organic listings or *hurt* your organic listings?

Bob Bly recommended I ask you this question to the team at Perry S. Marshall & Associates author of “The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords.”

Bryan Todd, a coach at Perry S. Marshall & Associates responds:

“Very good question. Strictly speaking, one does not influence the other. Your ranking on Google’s organic side is a function of the quality of your site and the # of clicks you get there only. The value of doing AdWords at the same time is that you can choose what page to send the traffic to, and make changes to it as you please. Not so with organic traffic. So unless both sides are taking visitors to identical pages, I’d do both.”

Is This Your First Website?
Lessons on How to Divvy Up the Space

Emma of Red Box Virtual Office asked Maya, “Please have a look at my very first website. Any feedback will be greatly received, though don’t be too harsh! It’s my first!”

Working on my Website, but who will Host it?

Reader Asks Maya: “I have a web designer who asked me to research and choose the web hosting company to manage my webiste. How do I choose?”

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First: Congratulations! You have chosen a web site as a marketing tool for your business. You are committed in giving your clients and potential customers what they need and are looking for to make it easier for them to do business with you.

Now the dilemma… When you Google, “web hosting” you get over a million results. How to choose?

What kind of website are you designing and developing?
Are we talking about 5-20 pages? Is your site an informative site with lots of content? Are there anything database driven pages? Is it a membership portal? Is there a shopping cart or ecommerce features? What technologies (Flash animation, Music players, Training videos, etc.) are you using for the website?

You visit a Web Hosting company that offers you a package of features but you don’t necessarily know how these features benefit you. Let’s dissect each feature one at a time:

1. Disk Space
One web hosting company may offer you 5GB of Disk Space while another offers you 100GB. What does this mean? They are asking you, “How big is your website?” … this includes your graphics, web page content and pages, databases, audio files, video files, etc.

Use this Disk Space Guide:
a simple web page averages 50KB of space
1 MB = 1,000KB (translation: 20 pages)
1 GB = 1,000MB (translation: 20,000 pages)
if you will be running a small database (Access, MySQL) usually you only need 1-3MB of Disk Space and you can always upgrade
if you have an ecommerce site that holds 1,000 products… you may consider at least having 50MB of Disk Space

2. Monthly Data Transfer
One web hosting company may offer you 100GB of Monthly Data Transfer while another offers you 1,000GB. What does this mean?

It’s all about your web site visitors. Do you expect to run an online marketing campaign where you expect more than 40,000 page views/visitors hitting your website for the month? How many web visitors do you predict will be visiting your website on a monthly basis?

Use this Monthly Data Transfer:
500MB = 20,000 page views
1GB = 1,000MB = 40,000 page views

If we have hosting that allows 200MB of data transfer per month and your site transferred 500MB, then the host may stop half our visitors from viewing our site. It’s better to purchase more than enough (1GB).

3. FTP Accounts
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. You have to ask yourself the following questions:

• Who will be updating your website?
• Do you want to control permissions to access only certain directories on your website or have one FTP account that you can all use that accesses everything on your website?

4. Website Development Features

A question for your web designer or web developer, “Will you be using ASP, ASP.NET, or PHP as their programming languages?”

• ASP and ASP.NET are programming languages used on Windows-based web servers.
• PHP is a programming languages typically used on a Linux-based web server.

5. Application and Database Features

If you are using a content management system to manage your website or have an E-commerce site where you will be selling your products, you will need to ask your web designer or web developer, “Will we be using MS Access, SQL, or mySQL as our database? And how many DSN (Data Source Names - in short, allows your web page to connect to your database that stores information and then publish that information onto your web page) do we need?”

6. Email Accounts

Do you need 50 email accounts or would you like an unlimited option? How big will your mailbox space be to store all your emails? Does your emails handle autoresponders? Are you given an online Control Panel to check your emails? What type of Spam Filters and Virus Scanners do they use for your security?

7. Customer Service and Support

• Can you email customer support 24×7? By email? By submitting a support ticket? By online chats? 24×7 support is useful so you can work fixes and upgrades to your website while the majority of your web visitors are sleeping.
• Do they provide a 1-800 (toll-free) line to Technical Support?
• If you call Technical Support, how long are you waiting on hold? Can you leave a voicemail and have them return your call? But most importantly, do they return your calls?
• Does technical support actually understand web development jargon (it can be really disappointing when you, the customer, with minimal web development expertise, knows more than the “technical support” person over the phone)?
• How long are most trouble tickets or inquiries handled?

8. Security

• What security measures does your host implement to prevent from hackers?
• What happens if a web server becomes corrupt? Are there server backup and recovery strategies?

Either develop a habit to backup your website on a consistent basis? Or invest in a web hosting company that offers a good backup and recovery option for your website.

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