An introduction to .htaccess and what this file can do to help with SEO. Redirects: - Mod_alias and mod_rewrite - Most common redirect types (domain migrations, subdomain to folder and folder renaming and how to deal with duplicate content). Indexing & Crawling: - Set HTTP headers for canonicals and meta robots for non-HTML files. Website speed: - Gzip and Deflate - Cache control

1. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
How I learned to stop
worrying and love the
.htaccess file
Roxana Stingu // Alamy
SLIDESHARE.NET/RoxanaStingu
@roxanastingu

2. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> .htaccess and SEO
Redirects
Page speed
Crawling and Indexing

3. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
.htaccess is very powerful –
even a missing space can result
in server malfunction.
DON’T make .htaccess changes
without a proper back-up!
> Disclaimer

4. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
THE BASICS

5. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> .htaccess speed dating
Full name Hyper Text Access
Job Affects the folder it’s placed in
Orientation Execution order is top to bottom (mostly)
Languages Directives

6. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Regular expressions

7. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
Apache
Server
Global
configuration
httpd.conf
Resources
Documents
.htaccess
Scripts
.htaccess

8. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
httpd.conf .htaccess

9. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> httpd.conf >.htaccess

10. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
TTFB

11. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Performance
4.6
4.8
5
5.2
5.4
5.6
5.8
6
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
PageLoadTime(s)
TTFB(ms)
.htaccess no. of redirects
Impact of .htaccess rules on page load time
TTFB in milliseconds Page Load Time in seconds
Thanks to SEOMike

12. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
REDIRECTS

13. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Main redirect modules
mod_alias
mod_rewrite

14. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> mod_alias
# Redirect [status] [URL-path] URL
### Example
Redirect 301 "/old-url.html" "/new-url.html“
# RedirectMatch [status] regex URL
### Example
RedirectMatch 301 "(.*).pdf$" "$1.html"
.htaccess

15. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> mod_rewrite
### Example
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteEngine off
.htaccess

16. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Rewrite flags

17. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
L|last
N|next
NC|nocase
QSA|qsappend
QSD|qsdiscard
R|redirect
> Most common flags

18. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Common redirects

19. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Domain migration
### Domain change – redirect all incoming request from old to new domain
(retain path)
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example-old.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example-new.com/$1 [R=301,L]
### If you do not want to pass the path in the request to the new domain,
change the last row to:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example-new.com/ [R=301,L]
.htaccess

20. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Subdomain to folder migration
### From blog.mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com/blog/
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.mywebsite.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/$1 [L,NC,QSA]
.htaccess

21. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Folder redirect
### From https://www.example.com/old-folder/any-page to
https://www.example.com/new-folder/any-page
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old-folder/(.*)$ /new-folder/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
.htaccess

22. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content
1. http://example.com/blog
2. http://example.com/blog/
3. http://www.example.com/blog
4. http://www.example.com/blog/
5. https://example.com/blog
6. https://example.com/blog/
7. https://www.example.com/blog
8. https://www.example.com/blog/

23. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content
### Turn on rewrite engine
RewriteEngine on
### Force WWW
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
### Remove trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
### Force HTTPS
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
.htaccess

24. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content
Request http://example.com/folder/
Step 1 http://www.example.com/folder/
Step 2 https://www.example.com/folder/
Step 3 http://www.example.com/folder
Step 4 https://www.example.com/folder

25. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content

26. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content
Indexing Google stops after 3 to 5 redirects
Crawling wastes crawl budget
Speed each step slows down the time it takes
for a page to load

27. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
#### Force HTTPS://WWW and remove trailing / from files ####
## Turn on rewrite engine
RewriteEngine on
# Force HTTPS and WWW
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.(.*)$ [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{https} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
# Remove trailing slash from non-filepath urls
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /(.+)/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^https://www.example.com/%1 [R=301,L]
# Include trailing slash on directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.+)/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ https://www.example.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
.htaccess

28. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Duplicate content
Request http://example.com/folder
Step 1 https://www.example.com/folder/
Request https://www.example.com/folder
Step 1 https://www.example.com/folder/

29. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
CRAWLING &
INDEXING

30. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Canonical tags
### Add a canonical tag to a non-HTML resource
<Files white-paper.pdf>
Header add Link '<https://www.example.com/white-paper-download.html>;
rel="canonical"'
</Files>
.htaccess

31. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Indexing directives
### Add a meta robots tag to a non-HTML resource
<Files white-paper.pdf>
Header add X-robots-tag "noindex, noarchive, nosnippet"
</Files>
### Add meta robots tags to non-HTML resources by type
<Files ".(docx|pdf)$">
Header add X-robots-tag "noindex, noarchive, nosnippet"
</Files>
.htaccess

32. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
PAGE SPEED

33. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Leverage Browser caching
Expires headers
Cache control

34. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
### Set Expires Headers
<FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$"> Header set Expires
"Thu, 15 Jan 2015 20:00:00 GMT"
</FilesMatch>
# Set the cache-control max-age
# 1 year
<FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=31449600, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 2 DAYS
<FilesMatch ".(xml|txt)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, public, must-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
.htaccess

35. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
experimental non-standard

36. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Compression modules
mod_gzip
mod_deflate

37. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
### Enable gzip compression for resources
<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</ifModule>
### Use DEFLATE to compress resources
<FilesMatch *.(html|css|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|ico)>
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</FilesMatch>
.htaccess

38. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
TOOLS &
RESOURCES

39. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Get to grips with .htaccess
danielmorell.com/guides/htaccess-seo
.htaccess for SEO

40. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> .htaccess generators/testers
aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/
danielmorell.com/tools/htaccess/redirect-generator
htaccesscheck.com
webconfs.com/seo-tools/htaccess-301-redirect-tool/
htaccesstools.com

41. @RoxanaStingu #BrightonSEO
> Thank you!