Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

URL Canonicalization is making sure that each page is accessed in ONLY one uniform way.

Now, if you have a website, it probably has a home page. (If it doesn’t that’s just weird but I digress…) That home page can probably be accessed via the following URLs:

http://domain.com
http://www.domain.com
http://domain.com/index.php
http://www.domain.com/index.php
https://domain.com
https://www.domain.com
https://domain.com/index.php
https://www.domain.com/index.php

That’s 8 DIFFERENT URLs for ONE PAGE.

Now imagine if you had 80 links to your site, but they are split equally over those 8 variations. That essentially means you have 10 links to 8 pages according to Google, AND a duplicate content problem to boot.

So what’s a web developer to do? People will just link to whatever they want right?

Right.  BUT you can FORCE canonicalization, and it’s REALLY simple when you have an apache server (running PHP) - so all you blog junkies, listen up.

At the public root on your website, there is a file called .htaccess. This file controls the configuration of your server on the domain level. There are all kinds of tricks you can do with this file, but I am only gonna show you ONE trick that you should use EVERY TIME you set up a new website.

Check it out and do this every time…

• Open up your .htaccess file.
• Add the following code (to the top or bottom, it doesn’t really matter)

  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^chris-hooley\.com
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.chris-hooley.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

• Replace chris-hooley with the name of your site, and the TLD (the .com) with the TLD of your site if different (for example, .net, .org, etc)
• Now open up a browser and try typing in your address without the WWW.

You can’t. It’s that easy. All link popularity now hits ONE SINGLE version of your domain name.

This trick can be expanded upon to eliminate secure calls to your site and also to eliminate direct page access, but the main thing is that your domain is clean and canonicalized.

So… happy blogging people, and from now on part of your SEO site launch routine should involved a 45 second update to your .htaccess file.

w0rd!

Chris is coming home baby! This is my first trip back to Beantown since I stayed at Uncle Mark’s and Auntie Marie’s about 5-6 years ago. I have since gained 30 pounds (it’s all muscle lol), had a kid, bought 2 houses, and developed a taste for fiber rich foods and shuffleboard.

My taste for beer however, remains unchanged. And I want to drink one with YOU!

I’m getting in on Saturday night, staying at some swanky hotel (the one that sarah jessica parker got kicked out of the pool on sex in the city) and going to the sox game on Sunday. Sat night and especially Sunday night I’ll be looking for something fun to do, so if you’ll be in or around the city let me know. We’ll get some brewskis and maybe go bah hoppin or somethin.

HIT ME UP if you wanna meet up downtown and / or go get a beer. My cell is 623-680-9173 and I should have it on at all times. CALL ME, we’ll talk. Maybe we can take a trip down to Tewksbury and hang out at the Oakdale Mall with our skateboards and beg strangers for money to get some Papa Ginos too. err, maybe not that. OK then. SEE YOU IN BEANTOWN! (hopefully)

On a side note… I owe you guys a few posts. One for links for those birthday wishes, and part 2 of my Hooley Party Train post. Just so you know, I got this new GF who is taking up a lot of my blogging time so feel free to blame her for all bad things in your life that involve me. She’s just so darn cute I can’t bring myself to sit in front of my computer when I’m not working-

Tell ya what, if Boston is boring, you’ll see a bunch of posts coming from this el blogo and everybody will be more happy than ever… except my GF who will probably be getting hatemail for being hawt.

w0rd!

best. prank. ever. 

Jeff Dempsey, my technical specialist at NextStudent,  decided to create a website dedicated to yours truly and then get a bunch links pointed to it.  He even recruited a bunch of my blog buddies to switch their links from my site to his. 

He beat me in the SERPs in literally like 4 days. 

Not only did he kick my ass, he also dropped mysite to #4 and 5 on Google for the phrase Chris Hooley.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Seriously kick ass prank… But he forgot one thing, I own him.

Since I am his boss, and I do in fact own the rights to his soul, I decided his newfound SEO skills should be put to better use. (obviously he’s bored at work if he has that kind of time anyways) So here’s his new task.

I created a blog dedicated to how Chris Hooley owns Jeff Dempsey.  He is required to write at least one blog post per day about the subject and acquire links as fast as he can until he owns both terms, Chris Hooley and Jeff Dempsey.  This is not a challenge, but a job requirement. 

I will maintain all editorial control.  Jeff is not allowed to NOT post, and cannot brag about himself.  Only me.  He will then outline his adventures in link building and content production and present his newfound knowledge of SEO to the team one he owns the SERPs.

Man, I can’t WAIT to read his daily posts about how I own his soul!

Ya know, sometimes I sit back and think… it sure is good to be a passive aggressive asshole boss!

Happy blogging Jeffyboy!