Mod_rewite Redirects All Site Pages To One

I had an interesting challenge the other day. One of my non-profit clients had to close their site, wanted to tell the visitors why they were closing and suggest that visitors support another non-profit site. This was due to an internal situation and not related to my volunteer SEO efforts. The site had decent traffic, especially to some speciality interior sections. So the trick was to redirect all the site's pages to a special explanation page.

I tried several mod_rewrite rules, but they all had some problems. Most of the solutions caused an infinite loop. Then I called my great programming partner Aerik for assistance. He helped me customize a mod_rewrite rule that redirected every page in the site (regardless of their file extension) to the special explanation page.

Then I encounter a problem with the special page, when it lost the stylesheet and images, because they were redirected too. I added a few more exclude rules (! means not) for css, jpg and gif files. That did the trick.

Here's the code to redirect all site pages to one with mod_rewrite:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index-special\.php$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)\.css$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)\.jpg$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(.*)\.gif$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/index-special.php [L,NC,R=301]

Don't forget to check your redirects with a http header checker to make sure they are doing what you want them to do.

I've been really busy with a couple of large client projects recently, but I have posted a few updates to my free web directory reviews.

Martin Preece on eMarketing Talk Show

I was interviewed last night on eMarketing Talk Show about free and paid directories. It was really fun and if I may say so myself, it was a really good show. Thanks to Cindy Turrietta and Todd Sarouhan for having me on their show and for making me feel comfortable.

If you didn't get a chance to tune in live, you can go to the eMarketing Talk Show page from my show and download or play the segments. We covered all the things you need to know to benefit from listing in free web directories and some things about paid directories too!

Another PageRank Export:

Google started another toolbar PageRank export (update) on 04/04/06 to allegedly show PR in a Big Daddy world (7th question down). This means that my reviews need to be updated again. I wonder how much of the turbulence I was seeing with some sites on some datacenters was left over from the last PR export and how much was the start of this one??!!?? Boy oh boy, I hate keeping track of PageRank!

I will spot check some listings to see what's going on. Then I will update my free directory reviews accordingly. I'll keep you posted.

As always, I want to hear from you. Thanks again to everyone that has been sending my feedback on their own experiences with the directories I review and bringing new ones to my attention.

martin

Directory Reviews Updated and Much More

It's been a busy week of playing catch up since I returned from the Search Engine Workshop in Las Vegas. I'm going to write more on my workshop experience later, but I have to tell you that it was incredible!

I finally gave up waiting on the Google datacenters to all agree after the 02/18/06 PageRank export, so I went ahead and updated my reviews on my Free Directories and the Paid Directories, to reflect the PR changes. I also updated a lot of other information in the reviews.

My reviewed directories fared pretty well in this last PR export. Here are the results:

Free Directory Listings:

• 17 Free Directories increased in PageRank
• 8 Free Directories decreased in PageRank
• 2 Free Directories got booted to Duds (Add Link Directory and San24!)
• Of the Duds, 2 increased PR and 2 decreased (Duds aren't included in the first two stats above)

Paid Directory Listings:

• 2 Paid Directories increased in PageRank
• 6 Paid Directories decreased in PageRank

There are currently 97 Free Directories (including 17 in Duds) and 17 Paid Directories reviewed for a total of 114.

I was happy to see that several of the new PR0 directories, I have added lately, fared well in this PR export. I goes to show that getting a free listing when a directory is new can be a good investment of your time for the future. I still need to update the back links and double check to make sure that none of the free ones have switched to paid recently.

SEO Friendly List Updated:

Dan has updated his great SEO Friendly List again on 03/29/06 and boy do I appreciate all the work he puts into these updates. His list is much bigger than my reviewed list, so it's all the more work for him. Thanks Dan!!

I'm getting interviewed on eMarketing Talk Show:

I am doing an interview about Free and Paid Directories on eMarketing Talk Show this coming Friday, April 7, 2006 at 4:00 PM PDT, 7:00 PM EDT, and Midnight UK (BST). Tune in and listen to what I have to say. If you miss it, it's available as a podcast after the show. Thanks to Cindy Turrietta for inviting me on the show.

That's it for now. I have to get some client work done, but as always, I really appreciate any feedback you have to offer (especially if a reviewed directory changes their submission policies).

martin