What is ROR and How is ROR different from Google Sitemaps?

What is ROR?

ROR (Resources of a Resource) is a rapidly growing independant XML format for describing any object of your content in a generic fashion, so any search engine can better understand that content. RORweb.com is the official ROR website.

ROR promotes the concept of structured feeds (which is related to the concept of structured blogging) enabling search engines to complement text search with structured information to better understand meaning. ROR information is typically stored in a ROR feed called ror.xml placed in your website's main directory. Unlike Google Base, ROR feeds can be easily accessed by all search engines: at http://www.your-website-name.com/ror.xml
You can think of your ROR feed as a powerful structured feed for describing all your objects to the search engines: products, services, reviews, discounts, images, events, schedule, podcasts, anything you want.

The current object types and attributes of the ROR format can be found here. We are working with several companies and individuals in defining new object types and attributes for everyone to use. If you want to participate in this effort (i.e. submit a schema, suggest new types and attributes), please contact us at the email address above.

As we expand the ROR format, our goal is to re-use exisisting data structures and formats as much as possible.


How is ROR different from Google Sitemaps?

ROR was created before Goolge Sitemaps, as a way to describe website information for the search engines. ROR is much more than Google Sitemaps, it does not only help describe your sitemap, but also products, services, feeds, articles, reviews, archives, and much more bjects. Also, ROR Sitemaps are automatically readable by all search engines, including Google.


What is a ROR feed (ror.xml)?

A ROR feed is an XML file for describing your content to the search engines (products, servives, reviews, classified ads, job listing, anything you want). The main ROR feed is usually named ror.xml and located in the main (or top) directory of your website (in the same directory as your index.htm file).

How do I create a ROR feed?

Just use the RORFeed Generator or the RORSitemap Generator. These tools make it very easy to create a ROR feed. If you have a Froogle feed or Yahoo Shopping feed, you can generate a ROR feed from either of them using the ROR Feed Generator. Or you can also ask a ROR provider to create a ROR feed for you. All the details about the ROR format can be found in the ROR specification.

(Source: http://www.rorweb.com/)

How to create a 301 Redirect ?

301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

You can Test your redirection with SearchEngine Friendly Redirect Checker

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection via code and htaccess redirect

IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
• Enter the redirection page
• Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
• Click on 'Apply'

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com"> 

PHP Redirect

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?> 

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.new-url.com/"
%> 

ASP .NET Redirect

<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
}
</script> 

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%> 

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect("http://www.new-url.com/"); 

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.new-url.com/"
end 

Redirect Old domain to New domain using htaccess redirect

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www using htaccess redirect

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

(Source: http://www.webconfs.com/)

Create a new page on your blog

You can organize your blog into separate sections like “About me,” “Contact me” or “Advertise” using pages. Pages appear as either tabs on the top of your page or links on the side of the page. Pages differ from your homepage because they are usually used to display content that doesn't need to change very often. For example, the blog below has pages for “about me,” “workshops & classes,” “shop online” and more.

Read Full Details here: https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/165955

PubSubHubbub Protocol

PubSubHubbub Protocol

To integrate with the social data hub, you will need to publish a global Atom/RSS Activity Stream feed of social activities for your social network/platform, and deliver it via PubSubHubbub.

PubSubHubbub (PSHB) is an open, server-to-server, web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol that is an extension to Atom and RSS. Parties (servers) speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications (via WebHook callbacks) when a topic (feed URL) they're interested in is updated.

Visit here to know more information about PubSubHubbub: https://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/
                                       
                                     

Source : https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/socialdata/

Analytics Social Data Hub

The social data hub is a free platform that social networks and other social platforms can use to integrate their social data with Google Analytics.

In order to integrate you will need to publish a global Activity Stream feed of activities from your social network/platform. This feed then needs to be delivered to the social data hub. To minimize the resource load for both you and Google, we recommend implementing a “push-based” mechanism, via the PubSubHubbub (PSHB) protocol.

The list of partners integrated with the social data hub are:

1. AllVoices
2. Badoo
3. Blogger
4. Delicious
5. Digg
6. Diigo
7. Disqus
8. Echo
9. Gigya
10. Google+
11. Google Groups
12. Hatena
13. Meetup
14. Read It Later
15. Reddit
16. Screen Rant
17. SodaHead
18. TypePad
19. VKontakte
20. yaplog!

(Source : https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/socialdata/)

How To Fix 404 Not Found Error?

What is a Not Found error?

Google discovers content by following links from one page to another. Generally, a Not Found status error (usually a 404 HTTP status code) is returned when Googlebot attempts to visit a page that doesn’t exist—either because you deleted or renamed it without redirecting the old URL to a new page, or because of a typo in a link.

Dealing with Not Found errors

Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them. Typically, they are caused by typos, misconfigurations (for example, for links that are automatically generated by a content management system) or by Google’s increased efforts to recognize and crawl links in embedded content such as JavaScript.  Here are some pointers to help you investigate:

See where invalid links are coming from by viewing the Linked from these pages section, which you reach by clicking the URL.

Fix or delete links that from your own site.

Capture intended traffic from misspelled links on other sites with 301 redirects.
For example, a misspelling of a legitimate URL (www.example.com/redshuz instead of www.example.com/redshoes) probably happens when someone intended to link to your site and simply made a typo. In this case, you can capture that misspelled URL in your server configuration and create a 301 redirect to the correct URL. You can also contact the webmaster of a site with an incorrect link, and ask for the link to be updated or removed.

404s are a perfectly normal (and in many ways desirable) part of the web. You will likely never be able to control every link to your site, or resolve every 404 error listed in Webmaster Tools. Instead, check the top-ranking issues, fix those if possible, and then move on.

When to return a 404 status code

When you remove a page from your site, think about whether that content is moving somewhere else, or whether you no longer plan to have that type of content on your site.

When moving content to a new URL, redirect the old URL to the new URL—that way when users come to the old URL looking for that content, they’ll be automatically redirected to something relevant to what they were looking for.

When you permanently remove content without intending to replace it with newer, related content, let the old URL return a 404 or 410. Currently Google treats 410s (Gone) the same as 404s (Not found).
Returning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404) can be problematic. Such pages are called soft 404s, and can be confusing to both users and search engines.

Unexpected 404 errors

In Crawl Errors, you might occasionally see 404 errors for URLs you don't believe exist on your own site or on the web. These unexpected URLs might be generated by Googlebot trying to follow links found in JavaScript, Flash files, or other embedded content.

For example, your site may use the following code to track file downloads in Google Analytics:

<a href="helloworld.pdf" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackPageview','/download-helloworld']);">Hello World PDF</a>
When it sees this, as an example, Googlebot might try to crawl the URL http://www.example.com/download-helloworld, even though it’s not a real page. In this case, the link may appear as a 404 (Not Found) error in the Crawl Errors feature in Webmaster Tools.

Google strives to detect these types of issues and resolve them so that they will disappear from Crawl Errors. 

Soft 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools

What is a Soft 404 error?

Usually, when a visitor requests a page on your site that doesn’t exist, a web server returns a 404 (not found) error. This HTTP response code clearly tells both browsers and search engines that the page doesn’t exist. As a result, the content of the page (if any) won’t be crawled or indexed by search engines.

A soft 404 occurs when your server returns a real page for a URL that doesn't actually exist on your site. This usually happens when your server handles faulty or non-existent URLs as "OK," and redirects the user to a valid page like the home page or a "custom" 404 page.

This is a problem because search engines might spend much of their time crawling and indexing non-existent, often duplicative URLs on your site. This can negatively impact your site's crawl coverage because your real, unique URLs might not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently due to the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages.

How to deal with Soft 404 Errors ?

We recommend that you configure your server to always return either a 404 (Not found) or a 410 (Gone) response code in response to a request for a non-existing page. You can improve your visitors' experience by setting up a custom 404 page when returning a 404 response code. For example, you could create a page containing a list of your most popular pages, or a link to your home page, or a feedback link. You can also use the Webmaster Tools Custom 404 widget to add a search box and more site search options to your site. But it's important to remember that it’s not enough to just create a page that displays a 404 message. You also need to return the correct 404 or 410 HTTP response code.


(Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/#)