OK, here is the story: I posted my free audio player test result there, of course with the link back to my new website but without notice they changed it to a page on my competitor website. Even I am still the David and they are the Goliath :P but it’s hurting me since my free audio player test is not done in hours, it is done in weeks even more, it’s definitely not a spam! I’ve contacted them and they change it to the freeware publisher URL but still not a link to my website :D

You know I will not post the link to that website here, I don’t want to be blamed for a corruption of a good name but here is my comment there:

I’ve tested several music players with my Realtek Azalia Soundcard and a low end Edifier C2 speaker on WinXP including: CoolPlayer, Winamp (also with MAD Plugin), iCoolPlayer, Spider Player, Winyl, QuxPlayer, Aimp2, XMPlay, Xion, BEOPlayer even Samsung PC Studio Multimedia Player and of course WMP.

What I am looking for is the best quality of sound produced by those players omitting the user interface and the top 3 among them are:

Winyl (not sure what the engine is)
coolPlayer (MAD Engine)
XMPlay (BASS Library)
iCoolPlayer (I think it’s BASS too)

Winyl has the best sound quality on my system but lack of UI features (which is I do not care). Most players can not determine which one is treble, middle and bass (blurry in term of imaging) but this Winyl (IMO) can provide it with a solid bass kick, sharp character of each frequency group. So, if you have the same system as I have, maybe you should try Winyl.

Oh, one more thing: They said removal of any link on a comment depends on these:

1. The website linked to does not have a WOT (Web of Trust) rating of green
2. The link is to a .exe file
3. The link is spam or self promotional

It’s not a link to EXE File, it is maybe self-promotional but it’s a real test data there (not a spam!) I think I deserve that link back and how in the world a fresh new website has WOT? LOL :D

Speaking about search engine result, I think it’s related to what we call as Permalink Structure. It’s a URL path structure used to access every resources/pages on your site. If you use WordPress as your blogging platform you must be familiar with this term.

I had posted similar article titled “Something is wrong, the Google Search Result from my blog looks bad“. Listed there are several steps I had been done to get a better search engine optimized pages. You know what? By writing that post, actually I am waiting for someone who understand this stuff to give opinions about my todo list. And yes, I got lucky.

A friend from Netherlands, his name is Oeroek had posted very-very helpful comments on that post. His comments are useful for someone who new to this matter like me. One of his suggestion is: I should change my permalink structure from the current one to another pattern with less noise in it.

I agree with him in this matter because based on my recent search, his suggested permalink structure is the best one according to many sources. But I had put a tiny addition to the permalink structure, I had replaced the trailing backslash with “.htm” just because I want it to be recognized as a webpage instead of a subfolder. If you want to look more, Sumesh and Karthik have an overview why this permalink structure considered as the best one.

The best permalink structure for single page (most people in the neighborhood don’t deny it) can be seen on the address bar. And the format looks like the following.

You can set the permalink structure from your WordPress [Dashboard] - [Options] - [Permalinks] - [Custom Structure] textbox.

So which one is scary? :D OK, here is the list of scary things by changing the permalink structure (before I realized there is a solution for these scary things):

1. I will have duplicate contents. The pages from this blog has been indexed by Google, as we know they have my pages with my previous URL structure, and when their bot crawls my blog on the next visit - compared to pages they already have on their cache - they will find 2 pages with the same content but having 2 different URL structures.
2. My in-post-links will go to 404. All of my in-post-links which are pointing to the pages on this blog will not work because I use the previous permalink structure for those links.

There is a solution for those scary things. One solution. And I realized it after Oeroek told me about this:

The problem with duplicate content is that Google needs to know which page is the original and that both pages may have their own backlinks, splitting their voting power.

That is why you use a 301 redirect. This means a permanent move and states to Google that the 301 source is the old page and the 301 target is the new page. All backlinks, pagerank, etc, will be directed to the 301 target.
So using .htaccess the correct way, with a 301, does not lead to duplicate content.

“301 redirect” is the keyword! And of course it should be applied in .htaccess file. So this is my .htaccess file if you curios to see it.

OK, at this point I had sucessfully changed the permalink structure of this blog. Will it give me a better result or will it give me the opposite? Lets waiting for the effect to come :)

If you need a fast solution to change your permalink structure, you can use plugins designed to do it for you. There are many options but Andy Bailey said that a plugin called Permalink Migration Plugin is a good one.

As usual, if you find anything you think it’s incorrect, please let me know. I welcome you with your thoughts. And once again thanks to Oeroek for his great suggestions.

Well, I guess I am talking too much, right? :D OK, lets start with Google Search. As I said before that most of the items shown there are looking bad. Means they’re not appealing enough to persuade the searchers to click it. Following are the reasons why I said they’re not appealing enough:

1) SOME USELESS PAGES ARE ALSO INDEXED. What I mean by “useless” is: pages with no informative content in them, pages aren’t fulfilling the searchers need. From their point-of-view those pages are useless. They are pages such as wp-login.php and wp-register.php.

done: Adding the following META Tag to the header section of those page and other similar pages will prevent the crawler from indexing the pages:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

2) DEFAULT WORDPRESS PERMALINK STRUCTURE IS STILL SHOWN THERE. I have no idea why several pages with URL structure like “www.averagecoder.net/page/3/” can be indexed there. As long as I can remember, from the first second I set the WordPress Privacy setting and robots.txt file to “Open For Crawler” I already set the permalink structure like the current one.

done: I think disallowing it from robots.txt by using the line below will do the job:

Disallow: /page/*

3) ALL OF MY INDEXED PDF FILES ARE HAVING MY BLOG NAME AS THE TITLE. Every post on this blog can be converted into PDF by clicking the link at the end of the post, that’s why I have PDF files indexed there. But, instead of using the post title, Google fetch the header on the PDF as the search item’s title. It’s quite reasonable since all of my PDF files has the same title on the header (my blog name) and this is not good.

done: Using the post title as the header of the PDF. This will requires me to edit the ContuttoPDF Plugin code.

4) THE PAGE’S TITLE AND THE DESCRIPTION DOESN’T REALLY MATCH. Sometimes Google Bot didn’t fetch the appropriate post content to be set as the description. I am not really sure why it could happened but I guess it’s in the way I choose the keywords - I can’t deny that my keywords prediction and the placement are terrible. So, it’s reasonable if the bot fetch the comment instead of the post content or the description meta tag because it couldn’t find the keyword entered by the searcher in the post content or the meta tag.

todo: be more careful with keyword prediction, more research is mandatory I guess and make sure the chosen keywords are well placed within the post content and description meta tag.

Any suggestions? Or you just want to be a spectator? :D That’s fine. Make sure you subscribe to this post by writing a comment and then submit it with [Notify me of followup comments via e-mail] checkbox checked to get notified by my updates on these SEO methods.

I like to do blog walking, spend a regular time passing by on another blog especially on personal blogs while at the same time working on my social campaign by writing a comment on blogs with the same niche as mine or when it covers an interesting topic which is good enough to be ignored.

One thing I noticed when visiting other’s blogs is, most of them are noisy, not because they cover more than one topic but it’s more on the presentation. I still can see it covers 1 niche focus with lets say 3 related areas but it scattered all over the place. Just like when you have 30 cards with 3 different colors and then you throw those cards on the floor at the same time. You still can see there are 3 colors but it’s hard to locate and remember the position of each color group right?

Take this blog as an example, please assume as it yours. It covers more than one topic: Blogging Related Stuff, Programming Tips and Software Collections. Then consider the following case:

“What if a single beautiful teenage girl named Sophia read your blog and she only interested in Blogging Related Stuff and she eager to subscribes to your RSS Feed but there is only one RSS Feed directly available to her and the feed contains all of your posts? (your full feed)”

OK, lets assume she subscribes to your full feed. Every morning, she checks his RSS Reader and spotted a new post from your blog, she opens the feed hoping that it will be a new post from your Blogging Related Stuff category but it’s not, it’s a new post from your Programming Tips and the worst thing is, she has no idea at all about programming :D Disappointing right? She still likes your blog because on some occasions she have what she wants to get but she will say that your blog is noisy.

I guess at this point you understand what Blog Noise is. You can follow these steps to reduce the noise on your blog(s):

Revisit your category listing. It is impossible to highlight each single category so the best practice is to define which one can become your “major categories” from your category list, group the others under those major categories as a child categories then highlight those major categories by - for example - put the latest posts from each of them on your sidebar. Doing so will simplify the content structure without loosing the richness of your blog and it is easier for your visitor to digest your content this way.

Provide several RSS Channels. Don’t let your readers filter your RSS content themselves by only providing your full RSS feed, don’t expect they willing to do it. Make it easier for them by providing several RSS Feed channels based on your major categories. I recommend you to use Feedburner free service to deliver your feed because it has statistical capabilities like how many reader subscribe to your RSS Feed and among those subscriber how many of them click back to your blog - useful to help you understanding your audience.

Explain it to your readers. It is a good idea to give your readers an explanation about your content structure, define what each category on your blog is about. Put it on your about page or somewhere they can immediately see it. Make sure they aware and fully understand it.

Do you want to add some? :)

Another reason why I decided to migrate is because I want to develop my blog but I don’t want the process distract my focus on my main job. With WordPress I can get the speed. For single needed feature there are so many plugins available to be plugged with little efforts and there are plenty of support I can get from the community.

OK enough with the opening story, let’s get into the main issue. There are pages from my previous blog which are indexed by Google and Yahoo! With the release of my new blog I want those indexed pages from my previous blog deleted from their index. Is it possible?

I use both of their webmaster tools, Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer. Following is the explanation of what I’ve done using those tools to delete indexed pages from my previous blog or the more precise word is to remove my previous blog from both Google and Yahoo! I will assume that you also use Yahoo! Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

There are explanations on how to delete your site or your URLs from Yahoo! search index. You can read the explanation here. They recommend you to use robots.txt to prevent the indexing after the deletion, this is the note from their site:

When you’ve used Delete URL/Path to remove a URL from our index, we recommend using robots.txt to exclude the content from being added to our indexed again. Robots.txt excludes Yahoo!’s crawler (Yahoo! Slurp) from re-indexing your content.

To delete your indexed page or your entire site via Yahoo! Site Explorer Control Panel, you can follow their instruction here.

To get notified by the deletion process, go to [Preferences] - find the [Communications] section and then check the [Notify me of all actions I perform on my authenticated websites] checkbox.

UPDATE: The link below shows the approved removal request from Yahoo! Search Result:

Screenshot showing the approved removal request from Yahoo! Search

Google Webmaster Tool

Google Webmaster Tools also provides the feature to remove URLs which are already indexed by Google. 3 things that you should have them done before requesting a URL removal are below:

1. Make sure the content is no longer live on the web. Requests for the page or image you want to remove must return an HTTP 404 (not found) or 410 status code.
2. Block the content using a meta noindex tag.
3. Block the content using a robots.txt file.

From my experience, doing point number 2 and 3 aren’t enough, point number 1 is mandatory. My first removal request with the page still exists on my website has been denied, but when I removed the page and then submit another request, it was successful.

To remove URLs indexed by Google via Google Webmaster Tools you can navigate to [Tools] - [Remove URLs] and then click the [New Removal Request] button. You will then need to select one of several removal types provided.

• Individual URLs: web pages, images, or other files Remove outdated or blocked web pages, images, and other documents from appearing in Google search results.
• A directory and all subdirectories on your site Remove all files and subdirectories in a specific directory on your site from appearing in Google search results.
• Your entire site Remove your site from appearing in Google search results.
• Cached copy of a Google search result Remove the cached copy and description of a page that is either outdated or to which you’ve added a noarchive meta tag.

Select one of the removal types based on what you need, click the [Next] button, enter the URL needs to be removed then finally hit the [Add] button. Your request will be placed on the queue for processing.

As far as I know, Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t provide notification feature. You should check the status of your request manually from the control panel.

UPDATE: The link below shows the approved removal request from Google Search Result:

Screenshot showing the approved removal request from Google Search

That’s all. To check the pages of my previous blog on Google or Yahoo! Search you can use “site:averagecoder.com” query. I hope the result is the same on your browser, none of the pages from my previous blog still indexed by both search engines.

If you find anything incorrect on my post please say so, or if you find another way to remove indexed page(s) from any search engine, I would really love to hear it, please let me know…

Cheers :)