Most webmasters have a certain schedule that they follow when it comes to recurring tasks like moderating blog comments, writing new content or managing the SEO side of the website. Broken links should be part of this regular schedule, they are however often overlooked by webmasters.

A broken link in this context means a link to a page that does not exist (anymore) on the website. The website usually responds with a 404 error page in this case.

Every link is a vote for that website and every webmaster should make sure that all the links pointing to the website are put to good use. Bad links can hurt a website’s rankings and reputation.

This article is a basic how to that will explain the following concepts:

• Direct webmasters to locations where they can see broken links pointing to their websites
• Explain how broken links can be turned into working links using htaccess

How to display all broken links that point to a website

The answer in this case is Google Webmaster Tools. Webmasters need a Google account and a verified site to see the broken links that point to their domains and websites. The data is populated over time and it is a good idea to visit the section regularly to react whenever new broken links pop up.

Do the following after you have logged into Google Webmaster Tools. Access the registered domain, click on Diagnostics in the left sidebar and then on Crawl Errors. Crawl errors displays all kind of errors and restrictions, the data that is important when it comes to broken links is under the Not Found tab. If you see no crawl errors there congratulations, everyone else might want to read on.

The not found links are links on the domain the webmaster selected in Google Webmaster Tools. Each row displays the link url that websites link to, the detail (error code), number of pages that use that link and the date it was last checked by Google.

Redirect broken links with htaccess.

Please note that this article is not about explaining what htacess does. Before you start you should ensure that your web server supports htaccess. If you are unsure ask your web hoster or server administrator.

The .htaccess is usually located in the root directory of the website. It is possible that other htaccess files exist in subdirectories. It is basically a text file with directives for the web server.

The basic command to redirect link is

Redirect permanent localurl newurl

or

Redirect 301 localurl newurl

All that needs to be done is to basically add the urls from the not found section of Google Webmaster tools in the localurl section and the newurl that the link should now point to in the newurl section.

Please note that the localurl begins with a / and not with http://www.yourdomain.com/. A valid redirection of a link pointing to http://www.yourdomain.com/brokenpage.html would look like the following:

Redirect 301 /brokenpage.html http://www.yourdomain.com/validpage.html

This tells the search engines that the location of brokenpage.html has been permanently changed to validpage.html. The 301 redirect ensures that the linking power is attributed to validpage.html now.

We need to address a special case, pages with blank spaces. The localurl needs to be enclosed in “” if it contains a space. A broken link to http://www.example.com/broken directory/ needs to be redirected this way:

Redirect 301 "/broken directory/" http://www.yourdomain.com/validdirectory/

There is another question that needs to be answered: How do you decided where to link to? The best practice is to link to the right page on the website if the link has been misspelled. This should also be done if it is possible to guess where the link should be leading to. But there are cases where a link points to a no longer existing page.

You can either redirect to the homepage of the site, a special “broken link” page that explains why the visitor landed on that page or the closest alternative.

How do you handle broken links on your domains and websites?

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Several WordPress blogs have been hacked in the last two months leaving webmasters and system administrators puzzled. Network Solutions, one of the hosting companies affected by the hack discovered how the attacker gained entry and managed to manipulate the websites to service malicious contents or cloaked pages.

According to an article at The Register the culprit was the wp-config.php file. This file stores the database login information that are needed to connect to the database powering the blog. Many users seemed to have configured the configuration file so that other Network Solution customers had access to it.

I used this example to show that WordPress webmasters need to be extremely careful when it comes to securing their blog. This little guide will give some tips about passwords and the login process that can help the webmaster secure the blog further.

Every WordPress user has certain rights on the blog and a username and password. It is generally recommended to select a secure password which consists of at least 12 characters comprised of upper and lower case chars, numbers and at least one special character. Examples of secure passwords are j5w3f_45f!rRd3A and Pec,33.!4eas3ffF.

These passwords are hard to memorize and it is a good idea to use a password manager like Last Pass to store them for you. Last Pass can not only store them but also automatically log you in.

The first step to a secure WordPress blog is to select a secure password. Another option is to use an editor account for writing articles and an administrator account for administrative tasks. The first user that is generated during WordPress installation is always an administrator.

The login process is another element of the WordPress site that needs better security. Every attacker knows that the login for most Worpdress blogs is handled at example.com/wp-login.php/ and they write their attack scripts accordingly.

Stealth Login is a WordPress plugin that can protect the blog by renaming the login paths and enabling a stealth mode that is preventing users from accessing wp-login directly.

It is possible to use any phrase for the login path, the extension suggests login by default which can be changed for extra security. A webmaster could then log into the blog by opening example.com/login/ in the web browser.

This prevents brute force attacks and is usually considered a good security addition. Stealth Login can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository or installed directly from the Plugins section of the blog.

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Wordtracker is one of the online services that webmasters use for keyword research. The service basically allows webmasters and search engine optimizers to enter a keyword and get estimations of how many times that keyword and related keywords get searched by users in search engines. Many webmasters optimize their websites and blog posts according to the results posted on keyword research sites. It is a bit more complicated than to simply pick the top performing keywords as additional research is required to estimate how easy it is to rank for these keywords. Yes, estimations are a big part of the SEO world..

The Wordtracker SEO Blogger add-on for the Firefox web browser brings the keyword research capabilities to a Firefox sidebar. Webmasters can display or hide the sidebar with a single click on the Wordtracker button that is being added to the Firefox status bar after installing the add-on.

The sidebar is divided into two sections. The first offers a search form where the keyword that the user wants to research can be entered. A list of matches will then be displayed in that section detailing the keyword and the number of searches according to Wordtracker. Each keyword has an Add link next to it which can be used to add that keyword to the second section of the sidebar.

Added keywords are displayed there including their usage on the current website. This can be interesting for users who write articles in their web browsers. It is also helpful to analyze a page on a website to get a count on the keywords that are used on that website.

SEO Blogger is an interesting Firefox add-on for webmasters who regularly do keyword research at the Wordtracker website. The keywords are limited to the first 30 results which means that it might take a few searches before all possible keyword combinations are discovered.

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Webmasters who add advertisement to their websites face the difficult challenge of having to choose a design and location for them. Design might not always be offered as a choice especially when implementing banner ads or intext ads but popular advertising schemes like Google Adsense offer a wide variety of shapes and colors for the ad units. Some webmasters keep the default settings, others look at other websites they visit to see how the ads are implemented there while a minority performs tests with various designs and locations before making a decision.

Webmasters belonging to the first or second group usually lose money day in day out while the third group is the only one to maximize ad revenue. This may be an oversimplification but it usually is true. Why is that you may ask.

Scenario 1: Default Ad Designs – Selecting default ad designs results in lower ad revenue, this is especially true for Google Adsense and other PPC advertising schemes. The colors of the ad unit are simply not optimized which has the result that the click through rate is lower than those of optimized ad units.

Alternative: The best colors either match the link color of the website or use the default link color of the web (#0000ff). There might be some other colors, for example red that yield good results as well.

Scenario 2: Default Ad Locations – Optimizing the design of the ad unit is only one side of the medal. A properly designed ad unit can be placed in the wrong location on a website leading to low click through rates. The same is true if the webmaster copies ad locations from other websites without testing. Yes, a floating ad unit next to the main content of the page produces a good click through rate but it might not be the best location.

Alternative: Placing ad units next to the main content will always result in a higher click through rate. It is however advised to test various positions to find the best working one for the website. Good positions to test are:

• Floating left of the content
• Above the content
• Above the title of the content

There can be drastic differences depending on the location selected.

How to test

Performing the tests is not that difficulty. Best option would be to alternate between the different ads at the same time. There are scripts that can rotate ads. If that is not possible it is best to run one ad unit for some days and switch to another one after that until all different ad designs and locations have been tested. If the advertiser offers channels be sure to create different reporting channels for each design and position to be able to compare the results.

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