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In that case you can just add a 301 redirect in to your .htaccess file below the code you added earlier.

redirect 301 /football-teams/index.php http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/

Hi Gary.

Have you tried visiting the url http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/index.php to see if it now resolves to http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ ?

If it does then the issue is fixed, the next time SEOMoz crawls your site the error will dissapear.

Cheers.

Ade.

Hey Gary.

Here's the solution that I use.

All my sites are hosted on a linux server so this won't be relevant if your site is hosted on a windows server.

1. create/modify your .htaccess file in your site's root directory.

2. Add the following code to the top of the file:-

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This will ensure that any requests sent to http://yourdomain.com are redirected to http://www.yourdomain.com and that the index.php part of the url is removed.

If you need more help on creating or modifying your .htaccess file then you can find more info here - http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html

All the best.

Ade.

Thanks again for your input Sha.

I got there in the end!

I am not one to settle for a solution that I am not entirely happy with and although creating a 301 redirect to the home page of the site for courses that have dropped off of the system is fine for SEO, it doesn't help the site user that can't find the relevant course details.

Rather than a redirect solution using .htaccess, which would have been way easier had Joomla allowed it, I have resorted to adding some php within the main Joomla error.php file. Here's the code :-

// check if joomla http status code is 404 error
if ($this->error->code == '404') {

// get current page URL
function curPageURL() {
 $pageURL = 'http';
 if ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") {$pageURL .= "s";}
 $pageURL .= "://";
 if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
 } else {
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
 }
 return $pageURL;
}

// check to see if 404 error relates to courses
if (strstr(curPageURL(), 'courses'))
{

// strip last part of URL so that new url relates to relevant category
$newurl = dirname(curPageURL());

// add query to url to trigger pop-up course not found message after page is redirected
$redirect = $newurl . '?course=notfound';

// 301 redirect to relevant course category
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: " . $redirect);
exit();
}
}
?>

Hi Sha,

Thanks again for your time in helping me out.

Unfortunately with Joomla your suggestion doesn't work. I think what Joomla does is to check to see if a component or article exists and if it doesn't then it redirects to a file called error.php.

So essentially there is no 404 error for the .htaccess file to act upon as a page has been found that matches the URL, it just happens to be a very un-SEO friendly page churned out by Joomla.

I have tried adding - ErrorDocument 404 index.php - to the very top of the .htaccees file but this also does nothing.

It looks like joomla does not allow any true 404 errors to occur : (

I am sure that there must be some way of disabling the joomla error handling to allow the .htaccess file to handle them instead but I haven't found it yet. I have found a lot of other people asking the same question but no solution.

Thanks again.

Ade.

Just as an update for anyone else trying to resolvee tis same issue on Joomla 1.5;

I haven't managed to find a way of disabling the Joomla error handling that is over ruling the .htaccess redirects so what I have done as a temporary measure is to modify the Joomla error 404 page so that it re-directs back to the home page of the site.

If I do find a solution I will update this thread.

Hi Christopher,

I suspect that there are a huge amount of these types of sites that aren't spam but the point that I was trying to make is that because a large proportion of them are spam, my perception is that I instantly don't trust the credibility of any site using the same format.

This is an observation on my perception of the sites and not a reflection on all of them.

In regards to the SEO world, the site owners that use these type of mile-long pages seem to be all part of a group with affiliate links to each others sites.

Somewhere along the line I have ended up on their mailing list and every couple of weeks I get an email from another miracle solution to driving relevant traffic towards your website. For me the common theme for all of these sites is that they are pretty much Black Hat and shady.

Based on the sites that I have seen using this one-page format, my perception is that any site I see with the same format is Spam. This of course may not be true but personally I wouldn't see any site using this format as credible.

Following on from Johns response;

"You should have an instinct for which of these will convert best."

Once you have a list of these keywords you could always carry out an old-school KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) check on each of them.

1. Check the Adwords tool for the number of monthly searches.

2. Run a regular google search and note the number of returned results which is diaplyed just below the search bar. i/e 'About 1,799,900 results (0.13 seconds) - This is your competition.

3. KEI = monthly searches x monthly searches ÷ competition

The KEI theory is that the higher the KEI the more effective your campaign will be. Initially the figures don't give you a very clear picture but if you include the KEI check as part of your regular research and combine the results with your other keyword analysis and "instict" you will end up with a more rounded view.

If, for instance, you were choosing between two different keywords to use as your main target keyword and one of them had a KEI of 2.3 and the other had a KEI of 176.4 then I would be opting for the second keyword choice.

Hi Sha,

Thank you for taking the time to help me out, I really appreciate it.

I have just spent the last few hours scratching my head and googling as I had already tried your solution but it didn't work for me. I did think that I must have made some sort of typo and so I copied and pasted from your code which works fine in your examples but again, it doesn't work on my site.

I think that I have found the reason and also discovered that I may have opened a bigger can of worms than I thought. I maybe should have said in my original post that this site was a Joomla 1.5 site but I didn't think that it would make any difference as the .htaccess file is outside of the joomla installation.

Apparantly Joomla overwrites any HTTP Status errors and so any .htaccess rewrites for files not found won't be carried out.

I think that my best option is to try to find out if it is possible to disable the Joomla HTTP Status error handling and to use your solution but unfortunately it's going to have to wait until tomorrow as I am already in the bad books for working late again.

If I find a solution I will post it here.

My issue is probably still a long way off being resolved but you answered my question perfectly and I am very grateful for your help.

Hi Gianluca,

Yes I did - Thanks for pointing it out

Hi,

I would say that you have a couple of options:-

1. Add a nofollow tag to the head of the page so that it doesn't get indexed

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

2. Add a canonical link to the head of the page pointing back to the original content

<link href="http://www.original-site.com"rel="canonical">

I would try to go for the 2nd option if possible but it can be difficult to implement if you are using a CMS system. Also make sure that you don't have more quoted content on your site than you have original content.

Hi.

I have used a UK based company in the past called BB Online (http://www.bb-online.com/) They aren't the cheapest but their service is really good.

To be able to register a domain in many Euorpean countries, the regulating bodies require that you have an address within to country and a business registered within the country. BB Online take care of all of that for you.

The main reason that I chose to use them was that you can phone them directly to ask any questions rather than having to use email or support tickets.

I haven't needed to register another domain with them for about 18 months but up until then all of my experiences with them were good ones.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Ryan,

I also use Joomla and AceSEF looks perfect!

Thanks Ryan.

So basic rule is - If at all possible, keep your blog within your domain.

On a brief aside, you said in you last post "With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate."

Are you able to tell me which software?

Hi,

One of my clients has a CMS website offering Health and Safety training. When the courses have been run they automatically drop off of the system which is great for the front-end of the site but this leaves pile 404 errors for the URLs.

I am trying to put a .htaccess redirect in place that will redirect back to the main category for that course i/e :

http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA/27-nrswa-operative-sept-11.html

will redirect to

http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA

I have spent a looooong time hitting google for a solution but can't seem to come up with anything.

If at all possible I would also like to be able to post a php variable via the redirect url so that I can display a message on the category page saying that the course is no longer available be please select a different course. i/e:

http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA?course=not-available

Any help on this would be most gratefully received.

Hi.

Sorry Cassi, my post doesn't answer your question for you but raises another one based on Ryan's answer.

The main attraction for using 3rd party blogging solutions is the ease at which they can be set-up compared to setting up a blog on a domain from scratch even with the help of wordpress.

Some blogging services such as Posterous will allow you to use a sub-domain address for your blog. Would this help? or would this still be classed as splitting the blog away from the site?