I got the site up and running, updated some content, and then submitted my sitemap information to the Google Webmaster Tools. As usual, the next step is to wait and see how long it takes Google to start regularly indexing the site.

Instant Indexing

When I checked my site’s info in Webmaster Tools the next day, I found something strange – a page in the site was already cached in the index.

I had included a link to the site in the article here. This site has a decent reputation with Google. According to SEO Meter, this site gets crawled every 1 to 2 days.

Apparently, Google crawled the site, followed the link, and cached that page in the index. It has yet to sort through the new links and the sitemap, but the home page is accessible through a Google search.

Get Articles Listed Quickly

This leads me to a pretty useful bit of information. If you have a link on a trusted site to an page that is previously unknown to Google, it will quickly get stored in the index.

I’ve never found this type of quick response with directory listings or forum links. I suppose the difference here is that it’s a direct content to content link that carries some real weight.

If you already run a website – or if you write articles at Associated Content or a similar site – this seems like a pretty good strategy for jump-starting the crawling process. Choose some of your main landing pages and link to them immediately from other sites that you own and write for.

This will send Google your way, get your pages indexed, and start bringing in a modicum of search engine traffic. From there, you can wait for the rest of your link building strategy to help improve your SERP and Page Rank.

In order to maintain the meager search engine and referral traffic that the old pages had, I planned on using 301 Redirects. I figured that I would re-create each of the old articles (~10 total articles) on the new site and set up an individual 301 Redirect to send users and search engine spiders to the new location.

The problem, however, was that the standard .htaccess rewrite that WordPress uses was conflicting with the 301 Redirects. For some reason, they just weren’t working – so I turned to a PHP-based solution.

301 Redirects In htaccess

Normally, you can handle a 301 Redirect with a .htaccess file. You can do this with a single line in your .htaccess file.

redirect 301 /path/to/old/file.html http://newdomain.com/file.html

The first part “redirect 301″ indicates the type of redirect. This tells the browser (or the search engine spider) that the page has permanently moved to the new location. HTTP has several other options. The 302 Redirect, for example, indicates that the move is temporary.

The next two parts indicate the old path to the file and the URL of the new location.

Normally, that’s all there is to it. However, WordPress adds its own layer to the .htaccess file which makes your pretty URLs work. The URL that you request is really just a bunch of variables that tell WordPress what article to pull out of the database and display in the template.

Although you should be able to get the two to work together, I couldn’t. The server was ignoring my 301 Redirect and going directly to the other rewrite rules.

Using PHP to 301 Redirect a WordPress Page

The solution? PHP.

Creating a 301 Redirect in PHP is fairly simple. I’d read about it before, and just the other day I came across a brief article about it in one of my regular RSS feeds.

You use the header() function to send custom headers to the user’s browser. With these, you can tell the browser that you want to initiate a 301 Redirect. You can then tell the browser where to go to find the article.

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://newdomain.com/article.html");

Simply replace the URL with the URL you want to redirect to.

Making It Work With WordPress

If you look in your site’s directory structure, you may realize that the path to your article doesn’t really exist.

Let’s say we want to redirect the article located at http://www.earn-web-cash.com/2008/03/20/useful-wordpress-plugins/. To use PHP, we’d need to create a PHP file to replace the article that is being redirected, and include the snippet of code above.

The problem is that the directory /2008/03/20/useful-wordpress-plugins/ doesn’t exist. Those are parameters sent to the WordPress script to fetch information out of the database.

To make this type of redirect work, we need to create this directory structure. Start at your root, and create the directory “2008.” Create a directory “03″ inside that. Create a directory “20″ inside that. Finally, create the directory “useful-wordpress-plugins” inside that.

You’ll notice that there is a trailing slash in the URL. In a normal directory structure, “useful-wordpress-plugins” is a directory, even though it would seem to represent the file where your article resides. To get the browser to access a PHP file at this location, we place an index.php file in that directory. Then, accessing the URL will automatically pull up index.php.

In short, create /2008/03/20/useful-wordpress-plugins/index.php, add the snippet of code above, and your redirect should work flawlessly.

This is a good way to move a few articles on a site to a new site. If you’re moving an entire site, you’d definitely want to look into using the .htaccess method, or creating a PHP file that dynamically chooses what page to redirect the user to. I only had to move 10 articles, so I created ten php files to do the work for me.

There is one caveat to keep in mind. If your installation of WordPress uses the URL http://www.earn-web-cash.com/2008 to access the yearly archives, you’ll run into a problem. /2008 will now be an actual directory – so the server will try to serve up the directory. You’ll need to change your settings so that the archives are located in something like http://www.earn-web-cash.com/archives/2008.

Why? I was able to work in a few nice backlinks to my site and my articles. I’ll earn some cash if it gets traffic of its own.

How Does Squidoo Work?

Squidoo is another writing site online – with a bit of a twist.

Squidoo isn’t about articles… it’s about “lenses.” Each lens is a mini-website. It’s longer and more in depth than an article – but it’s only one page.

You add all the content you want about your topic – writing, pictures, polls, link lists, etc – and hope users come a knockin. If you do get traffic, you get a portion of the advertising revenue.

You can eke out a few extra bucks by including items for sale on your lens – like books at Amazon.com.

Why Did I Write a Lens at Squidoo?

I’m pretty sure my lens (XML Through PHP) isn’t going to make a ton of money. That’s no reason to scoff at the idea, though.

The lens I created was (as you might have guessed from the title) about XML and PHP. In the past week or so, I’ve written three articles here about working with XML. Do you see where I’m going with this?

The lens is an overview of working with XML. Three parts of the lens are hooks to get the reader to come read an article here about a particular application of XML in PHP.

In writing this lens, I accomplished a number of tasks. I created a useful online resource – it should be educational for someone that’s new to working with XML and PHP together. I created some advertisement for my site – any readers of the lens should be enticed to click on one or another of my links. I also improved the SEO of my site by including five targeted backlinks from the lens to content on my own site.

You Should Join Too!

I don’t see any reason not to join Squidoo and make a lens or two about your niche.

You can create optimized links to your site and also capture some extra search engine traffic and direct it back to your site. There’s a decent referral system in place – you get $5 if a referree makes $15. You can also diversify your online writing portfolio and make a little more loot every month.

So head on over to Squidoo, sign up, and write your own lens.

What is Xomba.com? It’s just another site you can write for on the ‘net – and get a share of the revenue through your AdSense account. This makes it ripe for writing short articles that feature your own website – full of targetted backlinks.

There are two types of articles on Xomba – Xombytes and Xomblurbs.

Xombytes are typical articles. They should be a couple hundred words (or more). If I write a Xombyte about one of my websites, I use the same tactic that I use on Associated Content – I write an overview of a topic and include links to two or three of my own articles. For optimal SEO, I usually try to sneak in a link to my front page as well on a targeted keyword like “PHP,” “programming,” or “web design.”

Xomblurbs are even simpler. They seem ripe for backlink generation. They’re essentially social bookmarking articles – you submit a link and a short description. That description can contain html.

So in a Xomblurb I write a short title, add the link to my own article, write a two sentence intro, and then end with something like “This is one of many web design and traffic improvement articles located at the site.” In the last sentence, I link to two of the categories on my blog.

Although I only write a couple of sentences, I can quickly generate three backlinks to my site – two with nicely targeted keywords that are good for SEO.

There’s probably not a whole lot of PR in these pages, but it’s a ridiculously simple and easy way to generate backlinks to your site. I’m going through and writing one or two Xomblurbs a day on my old articles, and I plan on posting most of my new articles there as well. Seems well worth the investment in time for a bit of SEO.

Here’s a sample Xomblurb if you want to check it out.