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Yes, both result in the same. The difference with the first one that I gave is that it tests !^www.mydomain.com for non-inclusion(due to the exclamation mark before the www) of the www. The condition (RewriteCond) tests the URL following to see if it does not include www. If the condition is true (i.e. is does not include www) then the RewriteRule is applied. I hope that makes sense. Peter

Thanks Peter!

Thank you both. I appreciate the feedback!

I'd like to bump this question as well.. I see allot of agency's talking the talk, but when it comes down to actual deliverable's, they still turn to outdated and low value "links" just for the sake of reporting that they have built links. (Blog networks, Social shares, bookmarks and resource pages from their networks of sites etc) In a nutshell, link building isnt about that anymore. Its about real world marketing, providing value first and getting links second. On one hand, we could put all our eggs into the "New SEO" basket but then we fall short on actual deliverable's that clients have been used to getting. (Links built) with "New SEO" links aren't a guarantee, it all falls around a campaign and in a nutshell is all about Outreach and PR. I guess its all about educating the client, but at the end of the day, other (Old school) agencies CAN guarantee links and we cant. (Less internal resources, no blog networks all links dependent on outreach and real campaigns) In response to your questions: What are you or your SEO agency doing for your client's link building efforts? Guest Articles (PR / Outreach) Niche Directory Submissions (High Authority and Paid) Broken Link Building (no guarantees, based on hours spent) What are you (or the agency) doing yourself, or out-sourcing, or having the client do for link building? Feedback on content ideas for the content team in the industry. Commonly asked questions from clients. Encourage client Reviews on G+ If a new client needs some serious link building done, what do you prescribe and implement straight off the bat? Only option here is to go old school. (Social Bookmarks, Directory Submissions, Resource page submissions, Paid Links) Alternatively, make it a point that "serious link building" should not be done unless they create something worthy of the amount of links they want/need. (other than internal links, always room for optimization here) What are your go-to link building tactics for clients? Competitor Analysis - Identify Tactics they use, make notes of possible content / campaigns to create to legitimately get the same links Niche Directory / Local link building What are the link building challenges faced by your agency in 2013/2014? As described above, main challenge is educating the client on how a Digital Agency SHOULD be working (with Google, not against it by manipulating rankings IE "building" links) What's working for your agency and what's not? Outreach... We need more contacts and mutually beneficial relationships (PR stuff) Does your agency work closely with the client's marketing department to gain link traction? If so, what are collaborating on? When their PR agency creates a campaign, we review and find ways for them to incorporate a link to the site in all online publications were possible. When reporters contact them for an angle on a story, we take a look and advise were applicable What else might you be willing to share about your agencies link building practices? Looking at the future, we're trying to set ourselves apart from the average agency. Staying away from Link building and moving towards "link earning". Having the motto were whatever we create, it needs to be link worthy or provide real value to people. If we do this consistently for all clients, the links will come in automatically. This is all in theory obviously but really don't want to be doing old school "link building" if i know the value isn't going to last very long. What's the real alternative?? In summary, I'd love to know what other agencies get up to as well. Do they rely solely on outreach? Do they have their own network of sites to rely on for when its time to report and links haven't yet been built? I guess its about finding that balance, old school and new school. Its a work in progress i guess!!

I think you can find the answer to your question in this other thread: http://moz.com/community/q/what-are-benefits-to-develop-large-html-sitemap

RSS feeds as duplicate content? That's the first time I hear something like that. Feeds are intended for feed readers, which basically is a file that tells the title of the page/story, a small portion of the content/summary and the location of the actual document, an URL where you can read all the article/page. It also helps crawlers find new content in your site by scraping the feed instead of the whole site, but it does not SEO benefit, other that "perhaps" having your new pages indexed faster.

Hi Kristy, So glad to help. I'm a fan of Whitespark's FAQ page. Helps you to see how their service stacks up to others: http://www.whitespark.ca/citation-building-faqs Worth a read.

I have a website showing very well with Google right now and this site has a SLEW of back links going to industry.com. I guess it's just a matter of time before Google figures this out and slaps the site with a manual spam application. I have had several of my sites slapped and 2 have had the application removed, one is now showing in the #1 and #2 position for the most important terms, the other has not recovered and I am thinking about taking it down and starting fresh with a new domain. A third has been slapped and I can not for the life of me to get the manual spam application removed.

I am sorry my friend. Somehow I missed your response. It should have been: RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [R,L] So, you missed the / And it is also used to remove the trailing slash from URLs just like the one that I gave you earlier. Best, Devanur Rafi

You're right to be scared! Earn backlinks via quality content and clever PR instead. RE: News releases... http://searchengineland.com/google-links-in-a-press-release-should-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339

Thanks for your input William.Lau.

Hi, honestly, as long as the page you want to plant your link on does not allow many other doing the same, you should be good. If your content, back on your page gels well or is related in someway to the content of the linking page, it would be even better. To put it short, you should plant links on a clean site which in this case is and it does not matter how many such links you have. Such links will definitely have a positive impact to your SEO campaign. Another suggestion would be, you should take enough care about your link profile and make sure it looks natural with links coming in from different quarters rather than only from a single source (type). Good luck friend. Best, Devanur Rafi.

Thanks, I made a new site... Basically I disavowed every single link that I got from webmaster tools, except for a industry blog that did a story on my software and my crunchbase listing... I see now in Analytics that all the incoming google searches have no keyword data... Google is really interested in just making people buy adwords it seems..

Agreed with Chris. I'd prefer to have a ton of branded links (whether it's URL or brand name) and then target whatever keyword I want on the actual page.

Im assuming you dont have any existing penalties, you just dropped those links into the disavow to clean up the link profile right? If so, then you will notice a drop in ranking within 2 weeks usually (if the site benefited from those links) Building new links, content and doing outreach shouldnt be a problem to it. It will just do it's own thing.

Yes, with that many links I think that is the best thing to do. Peter

Hi, URL forwarding  technically uses 302 redirect method. It is also called 'temporary redirect'. What it tells the Search Bots? Okay, it says that the URL has temporary moved. 301 redirect refers to 'moved permanently'. What it tells the search bots? It says that the URL has permanently moved to the new one. 301 redirect is used when you want to tell search engines that your old URL has now permanently moved to the new one. You must use it with care as search bots tend to give all authority of the old URL to the new one, and eventually take the old URL off their index. More information can be found here http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection Thanks

Google's advice on this is a bit vague, and the practical consequences can vary a lot. Linking together a couple of sites is usually fine - linking together dozens or hundreds could get you marked as a link network and get all of your sites penalized. Usually, as Richard and James said, it's more that Google will simply devalue the links, especially if those sites share ownership/hosting/etc. It's just too easy to cross-link your own properties. I don't think getting too fancy with hosting, C-blocks, etc. is the answer. That's a lot of work, and Google can still connect you on ownership and other cues. To erase all of those cues is a lot more time, effort, and money than links from a couple of sites are really worth. The best advice I can give is that, if you cross-link, do it in a way that's clearly of value to users. In other words, just linking these sites to each other in the footer is almost going to guarantee that Google ignores those links. If, however, you can link specific content to directly relevant content on another site, they're much more likely to let those links carry equity, and that's going to be valuable for your visitors and let them usefully traverse your sites. So, think of it more as a CRO task - how can you get visitors from one site to meaningfully engage in and convey on your other sites? If you can do that, and if you're only talking a handful of sites, you have some chance at making those links carry value.

Thank you for your responses. I will look into maybe calling attention to this via the webspam report.

My pleasure any time