Thread: How htaccess files are used?

How htaccess files are used? and how they are benefited from SEO point of view...

htaccess files are use to redirect pages, If you have one url which is open in two way one is with www and other is without www so search engines count them as a two different url so with the use of htaccess you can convert your non www url to www url so when someone open page without www it will automatically redirect to www.

Same way when you change URL and previously you do many submissions with your old url so after change url you will not get benefit of your submission but if you do 301 permanent redirection in htaccess file for old url to new one than you will get benefit of your old submission. In this way it is help in SEO

htaccess file is a simple ASCII file.The htaccess file is a configuration file which is used on Apache based web servers to control many features of the server.

The .htaccess file to redirect users to pages that you have modified, deleted, or moved. The .htaccess file is associated with Apache Servers. Not all web hosting services allow modification of this file. Before following this guide, contact your web hosting service provider to confirm that addition and/or modification to this file is allowed.

.htacess is also used in URL rewriting which has huge SEO benefits i.e. if you are using a CMS which generates page IDs, .htaccess can be used to translate these IDs into more SEO friendly page names which is quite good for usability and search engine rankings.

You can redirect an old domain to your new domain with the htaccess file.

Just add this line:

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

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It definitely helps with the optimization for Google but I think Google might be introducing a new algorithm soon that will eliminate this advantage for a lot of web masters out there.