But, what about ourselves? How does keeping all of my trimmed url analytics on some other companies servers benefit me? How can I boost my own brand recognition if I were to create my own personal url trimming application?

Those were the exact goals in the creation of my own url trimming app: http://entr.in/ger/

I wanted to accomplish the same things that bit.ly or tr.im were doing, but to also keep my brand http://derekentringer.com intact with all of the Trimmed URL’s that I was pushing out onto the web. Why would I push another companies brand recognition with all of the interesting articles and videos that I was sharing when using a smaller url? Why wouldn’t any Twitter or Facebook user want their own trimmed url? I believe that using your own custom url trimming service can benefit both your brand recognition, as well your own internal link tracking and social media monitoring initiatives.

Now, I don’t think that using tr.im or bit.ly is a bad thing, but, if you remember very recently, tr.im almost went offline right along with all of its data.

Protect your own data, boost your brand awareness, and get your own url trimming service.

If you’re looking for you own url trimming application, hit me up in the contact area. I’m sure we can work something out to fit your needs.

Note: If you decide to trim a url with entr.in/ger/, it will work, but you will not be able to track the link analytics. This is my own personal url trimming application.

stop();
//create the xml object
xmlLoad = new XML();
xmlLoad.load(_root.feed);
xmlLoad.ignoreWhite = true;
xmlLoad.onLoad = function(success){
	//if successful
	if(success && xmlLoad.status == 0){
		//reset the text
		xml_text="";
		//list of items
		var xmlItems:XML = xmlLoad.firstChild.firstChild;
		for (var m = 0; m<xmlItems.childNodes.length; m++) {
			//grab each item
			if (xmlItems.childNodes[m].nodeName == "item") {
				for (var n = 0; n<xmlItems.childNodes[m].childNodes.length; n++) {
					if (xmlItems.childNodes[m].childNodes[n].nodeName == "link") {
						//grab the link of the item
						itemlink=xmlItems.childNodes[m].childNodes[n].firstChild.toString();
					}
					if (xmlItems.childNodes[m].childNodes[n].nodeName == "title") {
						//grab the title of the item
						itemtitle=xmlItems.childNodes[m].childNodes[n].firstChild.toString();
					}
				}
				//add the current item
				xml_text+= "<a href=\""+itemlink+"\">"+itemtitle+"</a><br><br>";
			}
		}
	}
	//set the text
	xml_holder.text = xml_text;
}

The only library item needed is a TextArea component, placed on the stage with an instance name of “xml_holder”.

In order to embed and display this on your Myspace page (or anywhere really) you only need the following code:

&lt;object data="http://www.derekentringer.com/downloads/xml_reader/xml_reader.swf?feed=http://www.derekentringer.com/blog/feed/" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="450"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.derekentringer.com/downloads/xml_reader/xml_reader.swf?feed=http://www.derekentringer.com/blog/feed/"/&gt;&lt;/object&gt;<br />

Be sure to change the “?feed” variable to the url of your own RSS feed.

Click here for a preview

Download the source

A .htaccess file can be an SEO’s vital friend. When visitors hit your site with either www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com, it splits your inbound links into two separate pages. This can have effects on your Google Page Rank. By correctly creating and implementing a .htaccess file at your server root, you can improve your website ranking.

To change the url in the browser before the page loads you can use two different methods.

Here, the url will always contain the www. before the domain name:

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

Here, you can take the www. away:

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

By deciding which of these ways of keeping your inbound links will work best, you can improve your search engine results.

301 Redirects

Redirect 301 / http://www.yournewdomain.com/

The above code is to be used when pointing multiple domain names to one domain (the main site) . This is often done by businesses wishing to protect their trademark by purchasing similar names and various top level domain names (TLD) for their company. This is also good for companies wishing to capture type in traffic of users who type keywords straight into the toolbars or their url area of the browser.

By using both of these methods, you can keep a tight seal around all of your inbound links, improve your SEO and Google Page Rank, and keep the files on your server more organized.

Keep Directory Index File Name Out of Your URL

Sometimes it just looks nicer to not have a url such as http://www.derekentringer.com/index.php. All we want is http://www.derekentringer.com.
Using your .htaccess you can eliminate it easily. You can also specify any directories that you might not want it to parse out the index file.

# Main Index exclude
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/DirectoryYouDoNotWantChangedHere
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

Now, there will never be an index file listed in the url, except for the directory “DirectoryYouDoNotWantChangedHere”.

Error Document Redirects

Instead of using a Control Panel to process redirects, you can use your .htaccess file. These links can either be redirected to your home page, or you can setup an error document.

# Handle Errors
ErrorDocument 100 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 101 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 102 http://www.derekentringer.com
# 2xx
ErrorDocument 200 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 201 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 202 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 203 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 204 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 205 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 206 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 207 http://www.derekentringer.com
# 4xx
ErrorDocument 400 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 402 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 405 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 406 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 407 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 408 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 409 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 410 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 411 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 412 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 413 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 414 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 415 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 416 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 417 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 418 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 419 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 420 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 421 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 422 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 423 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 424 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 425 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 426 http://www.derekentringer.com
# 5xx
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 501 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 502 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 503 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 504 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 505 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 506 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 507 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 508 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 509 http://www.derekentringer.com
ErrorDocument 510 http://www.derekentringer.com

Alternate to ErrorDocument

Instead of listing out all of the error types, you can also use the much shorter version:

### ALTERNATIVE TO USING ERRORDOCUMENT ###
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.*$ /error.php [L]

This will push all of your errors to a single page.

That’s really just the beginning of what the .htaccess file is capable of, as it has an extensive set of capabilities.

Read more about them here.

Download a sample .htaccess file

“For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site’s performance on organic search listings. While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

So is the Internet just another direct marketing medium? I don’t think so. The transformation from one-to-one to many-to-many is occurring in the world of social media. Nothing on the internet fits the concept of branding quite like Web 2.0. Branding is a social phenomenon. Web 2.0 is social media. The desire to fit in is a huge part of branding. Web 2.0 is the sheer momentum of the bandwagon. It is group think, which is what moves t-shirts at the mall, or the latest fashion styles at your local mall.

While viral marketing is all the rage, the means through which a message goes viral is social media. Social media is Internet word of mouth.

The poet W.H. Auden famously said:

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

If you want them to love you on the Internet, you won’t get there by shouting your name the loudest. You need to be heard, but your message also must resonate emotionally and socially with the consumer. If the message doesn’t resonate, it’s just noise and not signal. Those who make the best use of social media are the ones who will be most successful building their brands on the Internet. Social Media Optimization (SMO), not paid search, is the path to brand building online.

Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn’t make sense to them.

If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user’s (or a search engine’s) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache; for more information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.

How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.

For example, when someone requests this URL:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/seo-and-dynamic-urls.html

The server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule
thread-threadid-(.*)\.htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1

It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345

You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache’s Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.

The aim of Crazy Egg is for webmasters and site owners to learn from visitor usage patterns and improve their site based on what they learn from the application, as opposed to having page after page of statistics. Some features currently in development will allow users to track ad performance so that ad campaigns can be refined, RSS integration and demographic information of your visitors (filtering the map based on which visitors you wish to see).

The problem is, it’s possible the search result for every page on your site will come out looking the same. This is not what you want – you want your site to cover a range of topics and search phrases, and having 1000 pages that look the same is just asking for Google to treat them as duplicate content.

If you aren’t able to create a unique META description for every page, it’s best to leave it blank and let Google create a snippet out of page content. In all fairness, the search engines do a pretty good job of creating relevant snippets. So you should only replace a snippet if you are going to be improving it.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of quality inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.

A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the quality of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then that would be more relevant in a search engine’s assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.

In other words, good backlinks equals good SEO.