Using .htaccess

Available on most web servers, .htaccess is a powerful file that can solve a range of technical SEO issues.

The .htaccess file provides configuration information for the web server and can help address a wide variety of issues from security to URL redirection that have an impact on SEO. Generally, if your server runs on Unix or Linux or any version of the Apache web server, you can use .htaccess (incidentally, Windows servers have their own methods of handling most of the issues raised here).

Its capabilities are well documented, and it’s a human-readable text file that’s easily to modify through any notepad-type application. Use an FTP client such as FileZilla to download your .htaccess and make changes (ensure you first make a backup in case you need to revert back to the original copy).

In the book, we cover how to use .htaccess to rewrite URLs, implement 301 redirects, block ‘bad bots’, prevent image theft and design custom error pages.