Comments on: Optimizing your Wordpress Blog for Google: Part 2

By: seo collection links optimization compititions

seo collection links optimization compititions — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:43:02 +0000

The Google Webmaster tool requires you to upload a unique xml file

By: Olaf

Olaf — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:05:20 +0000

Hello.

what you’re saying is not true. If your server is right configured and you enter a URL like http: //domain.com/something you get a 404 error (try it on this blog as I did).

I don’t understand the problem with webmaster tools validation process, it’s not a problem to upload the file or just adding the meta tag. I did it many times for WP blogs…

By: Austin Web Development

Austin Web Development — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:28:28 +0000

One word of caution regarding the .htaccess code. The rewrite rules you’ve posted simply redirect the user to index.php if the request filename is not a file or directory.

The challenge with this approach is that any page which should receive a 404 status will instead be redirected to the index.php page and return a 200 status.

The Google Webmaster tool requires you to upload a unique xml file (or include a unique value in a Meta Tag) to validate you are the site owner. The service checks for a file which shouldn’t exist (e.g. noexist_(some-hex-values).html). If this file returns a 200 status, Google will know you are employing a redirection technique that it doesn’t approve of.

By: barryb

barryb — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:29:37 +0000

Oh yeah - sorry - reading a little deeper on the google webmasters page clearly says “if you’ve blocked access to these links using robots.txt then you shouldn’t be concerned about these errors” - or something like that. I always speak to damn soon…..

By: barryb

barryb — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:48:06 +0000

I’ve implemented all of these ideas I think. I recently blocked the trackback links using the robots.txt file. Now google generated 69 trackback errors because of that (viewed in google webmaster tools) - i suppose it’s just telling me that there was a link for it, but google bot couldn’t follow it. In any case it was just a little frightening seeing all those ‘errors’ but I don’t think it will hurt anything.
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