Redirect Using 301 or 302?

I recently moved my cool online stores.com to a new domain name, interne toutput.com. I don't know what will happen. According to Matt Cutts' blog, this should be avoided. But if you really need to move your old website to a new domain like me. The best thing I learned is using 301 redirect ( permanently moved) but not 302 redirect (temporarily moved). Redirects using 301 will preserve your current search engine rankings of your pages or a website. It will also make your site search engines friendly too. Here is a tool you can test your redirects for search engines friendly or not: Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker.

The redirections of my old site were taking place within the same host. Implementation was kind of tricky. First of all I tried to use Redirects within HostMonster.com which is my hosting server. It only redirected the old domain name to the new domain name. Although I redirected all other pages as well, non of them was working. So this was not good for me. I needed each page to be correspondent redirected to the new domain. For example, I wanted http://mycoolonlinestores.com/List-of-Clickbank-Products.html to be redirected to http://internetoutput.com/List-of-Clickbank-Products.html and any other pages as well.

I have tried for many times and it kept giving me errors. Finally this article saved my life: 301 Permanent Redirect by Brian V. Bonini. All I did was putting RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.internetoutput.com/$1 [R=301,L] right after this line RewriteEngine On in my .htaccess file under my old website's directory; and each of the pages worked like a charm. So I am happy these redirect problems were solved that I can move on to other issues. As always your comments are welcome!

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Free Tips for Promoting Your BANS Site

After reading some information in Build a Niche Store (BANS) forum, I get a general idea of how to promote my BANS site. Actually there are ideas all over the Internet that you can adapt to promote you BANS site. Check out the following list to see how you can be benefited from it:

• Submit your BANS' URL to the following search engines:
  Google also submit to Google Webmaster Tool
  Yahoo also submit to Yahoo Site Explorer
  MSN also submit to MSN Webmaster Center
  

• Submit your articles to the following article directories:
  http://www.GoArticles.com
  http://www.ArticleBlast.com
  http://www.EzineArticles.com
  http://www.eHow.com
  http://www.EasyArticles.com
  http://www.ArticleDashBoard.com
  http://www.ValuableContent.com
  http://www.Article99.com
  
  
• Use Squidoo to promote your BANS. Creating an account is Free and easy.
  

• Use Kaboodle to promote your BANS sites. Read this article to find out how you can implement it.
  
  
• Use Yahoo! Answer to promote your BANS sites. Find out how here.
  
  
• Don't forget to join your BANS niche related forums to promote it.
  
  
• Use social networks to promote your BANS site:
  http://www.myspace.com
  http://www.facebook.com
  http://www.linkedin.com
  http://www.digg.com
  http://delicious.com
  http://www.stumbleupon.com
  http://www.reddit.com
  http://technorati.com
  
  
• Use videos to promote your BANS site:
  http://www.youtube.com
  http://video.google.com
  http://vids.myspace.com
  http://video.msn.com
  http://video.aol.com
  http://www.metacafe.com
  http://video.search.yahoo.com
• Use your own blog to promote your BANS site.
  

These are the tips that can be used to promote your BANS site and they are Free. I will add more to this post in the future.

Update: Just learn this trick that you can get back links from sites like Domain Tools, Alexa, and WhoIs. All you have to do is to get the links shown as below and list them in you own blog. Just like the following examples. Googlebot will crawl your blog and thus give you back links:

http://whois.domaintools.com/airlineticketswithus.com
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=airlineticketswithus.com
http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=airlineticketswithus&tld=com

Make sure you replace the highlighted parts with your own domains.

Relate article
Progress in My Build a Niche Store

Submit New Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools Account

If you like Google to find your blog/website for indexing, then it is better that you submit it to Google Webmaster Tools account; and it is Free. I have submitted all my blogs and websites to that account. It provides detail report about the visibility of your pages on Google. Features such as Overview, Statistics, Links, Sitemaps, and Tools are very useful for studying your blog/website. You can trace any error from these features and try to fix it.

My only problem I have so far is with the New Blogger sitemap submission. If you submit it as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml to Google Webmaster Tools account, then it only shows the maximum URLs of 22. However I have 59 URLs. Does it mean the rest of my URLs are not going to be indexed on Google? I searched the web and found this post Submit Your Blogger/FeedBurner Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools that has solved my problem. After I submitted this blog as http://meaningfulblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100, now it shows all my URLs on Google Webmaster Tools account. Just an useful blogger tip that I want to share with you.

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How to Get Out of Google's Sandbox?

What is Google's sandbox?
In a simple term- it is an alleged filter placed on a new website. No matter how well you've done SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with your website, you are still not going to rank high with your targeted keywords. It is likely that Google has put your website in a probation period.

How do you know your website is in Google's sandbox?
Well, if your website have ranked well with Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines but not Google, it is likely that your website is put in Google's sandbox. The purpose of the Google's sandbox is to filter out the trash sites and to keep the quality content sites for its search engine relevant results. I realized that Google has put my BANS site in a sandbox. It was indexed 13 links about one week after it went live but now it was dropped to be only 6 links. When I typed site:airlineticketswithus.com, nothing showed up in Google (it used to show a lot of links). However, Yahoo has indexed 6 out of 23 links so far. MSN still did not show anything yet.

How long does Google's sandbox last?
If a website is put into Google's sandbox, it may stay there from 1 month to 6 months. A brand new website with a new domain name may even stay there longer; usually from 6 to 8 months.

What can you do to get out of Google's sandbox?
There is not that much you can do to speed up of getting out of the sandbox. Some experts suggest that while your website is still in the sandbox, you should add relevant content to your new website, get high quality incoming links, and optimize your web pages for Google.

Related articles:
Google sandbox theory validated by search engine giant
What In The World Is This Google Sandbox Theory Thing?

Update 12/17/2010: After two years and three months, airlineticketswithus.com has finally got out of Google's sandbox. Now if you type site:airlineticketswithus.com, it shows some indexed pages. I consider this is my Christmas present. I did change BANS site to be self-hosted WordPress site one year ago and I have promoted it to some directory submissions.