Adding &pws=0 turns off personalized search.

If you work with clients in a region other than your own, localization could come in handy.

gl – country &gl=US
gll – latitude,longitude
gr – region &gr=CA-AB &gr=GB-ENG &gr=US-UT
gcs – city (gr must be set) &gr=UT-US&gcs=Salt Lake City
gpc – postal code (gl must be “US”) &gl=US&gps=84109
gm – US metropolitan areas &gm=770

Restrict search results to a date range by using as_qdr.

d[number] – past number of days (i.e. &as_qdr=d10)
w[number] – past number of weeks
y[number] – past number of years

“&strip=1? on cache: queries strip media from the google cache view.
“&filter=0? on site: queries hide duplicate results.

Joost de Valk created a very nice pdf summarizing several of the google url parameters. You should also check out Cheat Sheet For Google Cheat Sheets for a few more links.

Using 301 Redirects

A popular variation on the Canonical Hostnames Example in Apache’s URL Rewriting Guide is to add the following to your root .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
# Redirect index.php to /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.php?\ HTTP/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php?$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# Redirect www to non-www (or reverse if you prefer www)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]


One alternate method to use if you can’t get access to your .htaccess file is to use a php function like the one below. This would work great for a WordPress blog if you were to install it as the first line in your theme header.php file since it will be called for every page.

<?php
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']=='www.example.com' || $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']=='/index.php') {
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header('Location: ' . 'http://example.com/');
} ?>

Good Internal Link Structure

Make sure the links on your own site are consistent. If some of your links point to example.com and some point to www.example.com, there could be potential duplicate content issues. Pick the version you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

XML Sitemaps

The sitemaps XML format is explained at sitemaps.org. In November 2006, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced autodiscovery support for sitemaps via robots.txt. By April 2007, Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Microsoft had all confirmed support for XML sitemaps. For autodiscovery, add the following line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: <sitemap_location>

Of course, you should make sure the links used in your XML sitemaps are well-formed and correctly pointing to your preferred domain. Make sure to keep your sitemap file up to date. You can find more information about how the top search engines’ handle sitemaps including how to ping your sitemaps file or submit it manually using Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Search Site Explorer.

• Creating Google Sitemaps Files
• Yahoo Sitemap Support
• Indexing on MSN Search
• Ask.com Sitemap Suport

Ping Addresses

• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=
  http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yoursite.com%2Fsitemap.gz
• http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=[THE URL OF YOUR FEED]
• http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

Don’t forget about human readable site maps. Read Shari Thurow’s thoughts on the right way to think about site maps.

Set Your Preferred Domain in Google Webmaster Central

In addition to adding an XML sitemap, you can set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Central.

• How to set your preferred domain in Google.

From url canonicalization to link bait, Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP hits all the SEO basics a php programmer could need. Billed as a book written for the php developer or tech-savvy marketer, this book attempts to debunk a few myths and protect you from the black arts of black hat seo while offering up a healthy dose of code examples and tool suggestions.

Co-authored by American Jaimie Sirovich and Romanian Cristian Darie, Pro SEO with PHP has a unique flair for foreign language SEO. Also included are tactics for avoiding (im)proper cloaking and the basics of geo-targeting. Rounding out the book are chapters on an e-commerce case study and SEO for WordPress including several lovely plugin suggestions.

Finally, there’s a hidden piece on regular expressions in the appendix, which goes quite nicely with the chapter and code examples about url re-writing. Matt Cutts, Google SEO extraordinaire, is quoted quite a bit along with a few other books and blogs and including a sprinkling of tools and WordPress plugins throughout to please any SEO. Overall, I really liked the book.

I couldn’t sum it up better than Cristian Darie himself, so I’ve borrowed his summary of the book which just so happens to be a great example of copy complete with all the right terms in bold, optimized for both humans and machines. To spice up the list just a bit (and add a bit of SEO myself), I have added in various links to relevant sites and articles.

• Understanding the criteria that influence search engine rankings
• Building keyword-rich URLs using PHP, Apache, and mod_rewrite
• Using the HTTP headers to properly indicate the status of web documents
• Relocating content using the proper HTTP status codes
• Coping with duplicate content effectively to avoid penalization
• Avoiding being the victim of black hat SEO techniques
• Implementing geo-targeting and cloaking using IP delivery
• Promoting your site using web feeds and social bookmarking
• Optimizing your web pages using better HTML and JavaScript
• Enhancing existing web sites
• Using search engine and traditional site maps effectively
• SEO for WordPress blogs
• Building a SE-optimized E-Commerce catalog case-study

The 10 Commandments of Search
An excerpt: “And all the webmasters perceived the thunderings of an update, and the changing of their PageRank, and the voice of the engine, and their rankings sinking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off.”

… from a great post by Skitzzo on the SEO Refugee Blog.

<?php
if (is_home()) {
   $description = "Default description of this website.";
   $keywords = "default, keyword, list";
} else {
   $description = get_post_meta($post->ID,'description',TRUE);
   $keywords = get_post_meta($post->ID,'keywords',TRUE);
}
if ($description) {
   echo "\\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"$description\" />\\n";
   }
if ($keywords) {
   echo "\\t<meta name=\"keywords\" content=\"$keywords\" />\\n";
   }
?>

Here is another similar method:

<?php
  $pagetitle = get_post_meta($post->ID,'pagetitle',TRUE);
  $description = get_post_meta($post->ID,'description',TRUE);
  $keywords = get_post_meta($post->ID,'keywords',TRUE);
  if (empty($pagetitle)) {
    echo "<title>";
    wp_title('');
    echo " - ";
  } else {
    echo "<title>";
    if ($pagetitle!='') {echo "$pagetitle - ";}
  }
  bloginfo('name');
  echo "</title>";
  if (!empty($description)) {
    echo "\\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"$description\" />\\n";
  }
  if (!empty($keywords)) {
    echo "\\t<meta name=\"keywords\" content=\"$keywords\" />\\n";
  }
?>

Other meta tags, like character set, are hard coded into the main header.php code because they are the same on every page.

You can find more information about Using Custom Fields on wordpress.org. There are several meta plugins listed on wordpress.org, and a search for custom fields plugins wordpress on Google will return even more options.

Search professionals today are like Wall Street analysts navigating a cutthroat, competitive, and no holds barred investment world. You must diversify your keyword portfolio based on an analysis of search engine and site-specific stats. Optimizing for the critical, potentially life-saving advice online health seekers are looking for is quite different than for fast-paced, web-savvy shoppers navigating rich media, coupons, comparison engines, and themed merchandising from e-retailers. We are on the verge of an explosion in search as the big brands are just realizing the potential of the search marketing channel. Smaller companies will have to explore targeted and alternative methods as big budgets begin to saturate competitive keywords. Take advantage of the long tail and alternative pay-per-click search engines. Advertise to niche markets in vertical directories when possible.

For a truly competitive advantage, pay attention to the integration of organic and paid search. Know your numbers, and customize each campaign.