Thread: Role of .htaccess in SEO

Wondering if .htaccess file in my hosting directory can plan any role in SEO. How useful it can be? I saw some web site owners by using .htaccess they had made their links search engine friendly. Who this can be done?
Any help will be gladly appreciated. Thanks!

Are your pages html or something else?

It can play a big role in SEO.

You can use a redirect to point your site to either just the www.domain.com version or the domain.com version. This eliminates the duplication that can occur and points all your links to the one version. This is not as much as an issue as it used to be as Google now recognizes that they are the same site.

If you run a dynamic site that uses URLs that look like www.domain.com/index.php?id=157&category=23&item=76 you can use Mod_Rewrite to rewrite the URLs to become something like this www.domain.com/shoe-store/sneakers/vans

Its pulling the actual variable names out of the database and sticks them in their spot. You end up getting page address that have keywords in them instead of codes. Its also better from a usability stand point as your visitors can see from the URL what your page is about.

Here is Nintendo's great Mod_Rewrite post on DP it covers all the dirt you'll need to know. That thread has only seen 60,000 page views. Not bad for a Wacko

axemedia added 10 Minutes and 29 Seconds later...

holy shit batman, what a pain in the ass it was to stop the vb code from turning those url examples into links

Originally Posted by axemedia

holy shit batman, what a pain in the ass it was to stop the vb code from turning those url examples into links

Robin, just use the "noparse" bbcode tags around urls if you don't want them to activate. I've done it for you.

I get to be batman right?

I think html pages does not need to be search engine friendly, as they already have. Only dynamic content pages which are coming from database and using scripting languages like PHP need to be converted into search engine friendly.

Yes, .htaccess file plays an important role into converting dynamic pages in search engine friendly.

(I hope I am allowed to share valuable tutorial even though it is on my site)
Here is a useful resource in this regard where you can learn .htaccess file use:
Host-Mirror.com - Use of .htaccess file

Thanks!

Originally Posted by hostabove

(I hope I am allowed to share valuable tutorial even though it is on my site)

It's highly relevant to the thread and has resourceful info. So yeah, by all means, get linky.

Its to good and informative and i really thanks for sharing the inforamtion.

.htaccess is only for linux server, are you aware of it????

htaccess is essential for creating 301 redirects, for example from non-www to www.

I also would like to know about .htaccess.