Not listed at all and a little lost

ReStructurE · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 3

new to phpBB and php in general. i have read many many pages on seo the last couple of days with no luck..most of what i read was from 3 or 4 years ago. first of all here's some info:

phpBB 2.0.22
.ws domain
i have a free linux hosting account with godaddy.

i cannot find any mod_* file or .htaccess. when i try to register with google, i upload the html file into / and google returns this message

AmirAbbas

dcz

About the Google error message, I am not really sure about what you did here, but the message is clear, you need to fix your server 404's handling.

Because it looks like you had Goole search for some file that was not here, and he should have encountered a genuine 404 when he's telling you he ended up with a 200 OK header.

It's bad because bots will have a lot of trouble dealing with 404, as they do not have much more than headers to find out a page has gone or is not found.

As it' is now, they won't find out about 404 and will loose some time in indexing.

Do you have an .htaccess file on your server ?

Did you implement custom error pages ?

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ReStructurE · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 3

Hi thanks for the replies. first off let me say that definatley clears things up as to what mods to use..it was a little overwhemling....nice list....which of the three do you suggest?

dcz

Well, I'm afraid I must tell you your hosting solution will not be really SEO friendly if you cannot fix the 404 headers.
It seems a bit incredible, but if you cannot fix this, I don't think you should continue with the service.
404 returning 200OK header are really dangerous SEO wise, each time a bot will hit a 404, and they will (for example yahoo is testing random URLs just to find out about your 404 headers), they won't be able to tel it's a 404 and will continue "thinking" the pages that do not exist do exist.
With time this can really become problematic.

Then, about .htaccess, look up in the mod rewrites releases, you'll find some Wink

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ReStructurE · Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 3

that sucks, your right i'm not going to waste all my time trying to optimize my site until i fix the 404 problem..i thought it was hosting problem... i'm thinking of getting a hosting account with dreamhost. but i'm glad i posted here because i also thought it could also be a phpBB specific thing and was thinking about trying vb (and believe me i don't like paying for software) well thanks everyone