What makes good content? It’s debatable. But it’s safe to say some principles can’t hurt.

1. Easy to read information
2. Links to additional info, if needed
3. Clear navigation and help if necessary
4. Pictures and videos added if they expand the narrative

If people write authoritatively on a subject, readers will learn to trust the website. If the information is schlock and not up to snuff, the low quality will eventually stop people from wanting to investigate the site further.

Quality web content can be short, though. If you answer a question definitively in a concise manner, there’s no point in going long in an attempt to impress your reader.

The idea of duplicate content scares people

Webmasters seem particularly worried about what will happen if they have duplicate content on their websites. They seem to think it will result in an instant and damaging penalty. But in reality, Google tends to be very forgiving of duplicate content.

Testing shows that duplicate content won’t necessarily rank well, but it doesn’t affect the ability of your website to rank. You won’t be penalized for it, you just not might rank. This is especially true if there are better linked domains publishing the same content as you.

In reality, a lot of the web consists of duplicate content, for nefarious reasons as well as legitimate ones. If you’re really worried that duplicate content is bringing you down, you can always use the noindex meta tag to tell the search engines to drop the pages.

NOTE: Keep a record of any changes you make to your configuration. If you turn off php warnings and don’t remember doing it, you might run into a snag later.

If you’re pressed for time and want to stifle all warnings, add this to the top of any file that is included from your main PHP script.

<br /> <?php include error_reporting(0); ?><br />

Now, this won’t just stop the warnings from being printed on the site, but it will also kill all errors being written to your website’s error_log.

If you want to just suppress warnings on your site, and you have access to your .htaccess file, then make a simple edit.


php_value display_errors 0


In order to add error checking back to your website:


php_value display_errors 1
php_value error_reporting 2047


It’s totally up to you how you want to handle error checking, but if you have a script that you don’t plan on changing that is creating error log files of huge sizes, then patching the code as illustrated in example one should do the trick.

It’s not what you think.

Using the “Hourglass” method has nothing to do with putting yourself on a timer to see how many articles you can write in an hour. It is, rather, a way for you to visualize the “shape” your article will take before you even begin to write it.

That’s right! Finished articles have a definite shape, one that frequently resembles geometric or other common shape. You’ll see this shape if you look closely enough at any article after you finish reading it.

Some are shaped like pyramids. Others are shaped like squares or rectangles.

Still others are shaped like blobs — the worst shape of all because a Blob follows no recognizable pattern.

How an article is shaped often determines if it gets read from start to finish, abandoned in the middle or, worse, not read at all.

One of the best article shapes is the Hourglass — thickest at the top, tapering toward thin at the middle, and then flaring out to be thickest again at the bottom.

Beginning today, start to imagine your articles taking the shape of that hourglass
You’ll be able to write faster if you commit to the shape of the hourglass and imagine that shape each and every time you sit at your keyboard. Committing to that shape takes a lot of bad habits and time-consuming things out of play.

For one thing, it’s a means of assuring you’ll put information readers crave (the “meat”) at both the top and bottom of the article. You’ll gain speed because the method forces you to commit to putting the busy reader first.

Putting the reader first means you hit him or her over the head with the most compelling information first and last. In a way, it’s like giving readers a gift when they first enter your home and another gift when they leave.

Readers are people, and people like to receive gifts. Give a reader a gift at the top of the article and he or she just might stick around to see if they’ll get another one.

Commit yourself not to meander. Grab readers in the very first sentence and don’t let them go. This approach takes the worry about excluding the most important facts totally out of play, thus saving time.

Before you begin to write, take a minute to decide what information is the most important. If there are six important things you’d like to share, rank those in order of importance. Imagine your article as an hourglass.

Why is the hourglass shape of articles preferable to other shapes for writing with speed? Because it provides a smooth flow while still leaving room in the middle to provide background, the context of the article.

Commit yourself to placing background in the center of the article, the thinnest point of the hourglass. Background is important for readers to understand the context of the article. But it’s not as important as your key points, some of which are explained in the upper part of the article while others are explained in the lower.

One of the key points, of course, is how to get more information. End your article by telling readers where they can get it. It’s an important fact indeed, especially when you’re the purveyor of the information and can make money with it.

Before you begin to adopt these writing tips, closely read your existing articles.

Try to see their shape. The pattern that emerges may stun you.

Pyramid-shaped articles are thinnest at the top, meaning you’re likely not “grabbing the reader and not letting go” in the very first sentence — a recipe for boredom.

Here’s example code.


RedirectMatch 301 ^/old/(.*)/$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1/


That would take all the requests for files located in the /old/ directory and redirect them permanently their new location at the root. This might come in handy for someone who has a blog installed in a subdirectory and wants to promote it to the root.

You can also exclude directories, in case you need to. Use the following syntax:


Redirect permanent ^/(?!category/)(?!tag/)(.*)/(.*)/$


Redirect match supports regex so anything that can be done in regex can be done using redirectmatch. The documentation from Apache is typically obtuse.

“This directive is equivalent to Redirect, but makes use of standard regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The supplied regular expression is matched against the URL-path, and if it matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given string and use it as a filename.”

In any event, redirectmatch is an extremely powerful and easy to use way to do redirection.

To publicize a Web page, it’s always a difficult task and one of the first steps you can do is to ensure that popular search engines index your website properly. One way to do this for people who have more time than money is by exchanging links with related websites. Although the practice has been frowned on to a degree by search engines, the one reason webmasters to continue to exchange links is because link exchanges have their roots in the earliest days of the internet.

In this article I will discuss some useful tips for selecting the most appropriate links for exchange and I’ll also tell you how to avoid doing link exchanges with websites that may up end having a negative affect on your rankings.

All great link exchanges start with analysis

To find good links always analyze the following issues before accepting or soliciting a link exchange.

1. Look for sites with similar content to create a synergistic affect between your websites. If humans would benefit from the exchange, which happens when two quality resources share links, then you’re probably traveling on the right track. This issue has been debated hotly in webmaster circles for years, but if you do things that benefit your visitors and not just yourself, you’re generally adding value to your website. Tightly related link exchanges may be of benefit to website visitors.

2. Avoid exchanges with pages that have an excessive number of outbound links. The rule is simple: Importance of the page / number of links = importance of the link. Therefore, the less outgoing links that exist, the greater importance that link will have to the search engine.

3. Please check the number of incoming links to your proposed partner’s websites. A large number of incoming links is a good sign. The more incoming links the site has, the higher the value the link to you should be.

4. Also check how many pages the website has has indexed. A greater number of pages indexed in Google generally means the website is adding value to the Google index. This should also mean your link exchange should be considered to have decent value.

5. Verify the positioning for keywords in the page. If the results are good, this means that the person responsible for the SEM on that website is doing a good job.

6. Avoid exchanges with pages that link to pages in “bad neighborhoods” that could be penalized or hurt your site in the future.

7. Check the code of the web page where your link will reside. If it includes hidden links or other foul discounted methods that violate Google’s terms of service, steer clear.

8. Other data that you can review are the number of visits and Page Rank. The higher the better in the case of both metrics.

9. Do not accept links or that are run through redirects, nofollowed, stuffed into frames, funnels or any similar tactics. Search engines do not follow these links so it does not serve to help you achieve any search engine marketing goals.

Following the tricks described above can get you better links for your exchange. Remember that quantity is not synonymous with quality. Limit your exchanges to a reasonable number. Twenty links are more than enough for an optimized exchanged.

Be forewarned that excessive link exchanges have already been devalued in Google and an over-reliance on this method can be detrimental to your long term goals. Only engage in link exchanges if your other methods of link acquisition have slowed down or stopped.

The line sounds like a bunch of crap when you hear it. You can sense David Mamet’s skepticism by what he said upon hearing the news.

“I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury,” Mamet said. “So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

Ha ha. Now that’s the type of wit you might just expect from the man who wrote Glengary Glenross

Pivens rep said the actor would have liked to continue with the play, but his doctors recommended against it. 300 people demanded refunds today upon learning the news.

Either way, if you plan on moving some files, you can preserve rankings for your website content with careful planning. It’s all just part of your normal website maintenance.

But mostly, I enjoyed his take on the SEO Conferences.

The SEO conferences are notorious party magnets and most conference insiders willingly admit that you get more and “better” information after the panels have ended for the day. What does it say about our industry that people are getting the best technical advice from other folks with drinks or drugs in their hands? Alcohol-based SEO instruction is not optimal, so there is considerable irony in the notion that you’re learning how to optimize from someone who may be three sheets to the wind and is willing to mumble something about how to steal links from Web sites.

If that is the best this industry has to offer, I can almost guarantee you that government mandated licensing, certification, and regulation are only a few years away. All the professional organizations and training programs in the world won’t stop the lawsuits, coinsumer complaints, and search engine penalties.

Haha, ain’t that the truth? As a teetotaler, I only attended one SEO Conference. I never did learn any “big secrets”, even at the bar. My sense of the event was it was more of a social event, where people are traveling on someone else’s expense account. Not exactly the type of place for small businessmen and non-drinkers like myself and my wife.

In the end, Michael’s conclusion that change may very well be forced upon the industry seems likely. If the issue of SEO Malpractice becomes big enough, the whole game will change overnight. Bad SEOs hurt everyone, the same way scammers do in any industry.

Lee Haney is an eight time winner of Bodybuilding’s Mr. Olympia contest. Lee Haney was well known for his balance of symmetry and huge muscularity.

For more information: Lee Haney.