SEO & AI Optimisation Expert

Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience

How is SEO like plumbing?

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Jokes about the Internet being a series of tubes aside, I do draw an analogy between plumbing and search engine optimisation.

How is SEO like plumbing? Wordpress SEO ExpertI am often asked if I can guarantee someone a place on the first page of Google, or the number one spot. Naturally I can’t, because precisely what Google (or Bing or Yahoo!) are going to do is outside my control.

What I can do is make sure your website is up to date with current SEO best practice. Everything will be in place to optimise your site for their indexing.

This is where the analogy comes in. A plumber can make sure your house is 100% ready for water to flow to all the places it needs to. But they should never guarantee that the local water board will never have a supply problem at their end.

If anyone ever guarantees you a position on a search engine ranking, please keep them away from your digital stop cock.

Permanently moving website to a new domain

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You really want to add this to your .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 / http://your-new-domain

Let’s break that down.

  • “Redirect” is pretty obvious, it tells the web server to redirect the request.
  • “301” is a special code that tells any search engines that come by that this change is permanent, and they should update their results to reflect the new URL. (Using “302” instead would set it as a temporary move.)
  • “/” just means the entire site, from the very top directory has been moved.
  • “http://your-new-domain” or indeed, whatever your new URL is, is the new domain that all requests should be sent to. Note the final “/” on the end.

Easy peasy! Now all bookmarks, and search engine results will still be valid and get people to your new address, with one short piece of code.

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