Forum Moderators: phranque
I just purchased a new domain and currently working on my website, which I estimate it will be finished within the next couple of months. In the meantime, and wanting to make a perfect start with SEO issues, I deleted the default pages placed by the web host, so nothing is cached by search engines until I upload the real website. The new hosting package is truly superb as it runs on Linux using Apache and it seems that I have full control over things. For example if I type in a non-existent page I get:
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Not Found
The requested URL /a.html was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at www.example.com Port 80
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instead of a custom, advert-infested 404 page that I used to get with my previous host. However if I type my domain's url i.e. www.example.com I get the Apache test page saying:
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This page is used to test the proper operation of the Apache HTTP server after it has been installed. If you can read this page it means that the Apache HTTP server installed at this site is working properly.
You may now add content to the directory /var/www/html/. Note that until you do so, people visiting your website will see this page and not your content. To prevent this page from ever being used, follow the instructions in the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf
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Would there be any problem with search engines; I mean, I don't want Google thinking that this page is my actual website, indexing it 'by mistake'. Is there an issue there or I just been paranoid. I looked for the welcome.conf file but can't find it in that directory - maybe its hidden!? The good thing is that I have access to almost every folder, like I normally would if I was using a Linux/UNIX machine. My skills in that area are very inferior. The fact that my host says that I need to upload everything in /var/www/html/ in order to be accessible over the web, will it have any consequences in terms of SEO - will robots be able to 'see' a level up that '/var/www/html/' for example '/var/www/'. Or is it that folder is like a sandbox that won't allow anything going upwards.
Anyway, these are things I will probably be more familiar with over the time. My main question was whether leaving the Apache test page being displayed would have any negative impact on SEO. If yes, how can I remove it so that a standard 404 will be returned instead? When I upload the website in about a month, it won't be any problem as the index.html will take the request over.
Regards.
If you really want to 404 index requests, and sacrifice the time it will take to be re-indexed when ready, then you could use mod_rewrite to rewrite requests for the URL "/index.html" or "/" to another file that does not exist.
var/www/html: Don't confuse URLs with directories and filenames. Your domain-level URL has been defined by your host (using the DocumentRoot directive) to point to the filesystem directory /var/www/html. That is the highest-level directory that will be Web-accessible. So URL www.example.com/index.hrml now points to the file /var/www/html/index.html, and no part of /var/www/html or above is visible on the Web. A URL and a filepath are two different ways to access a resource/file -- two different 'views' of the same thing. Browsers and other Web clients use URLs, and servers translate those to filepaths.
Jim
Thank you for your reply. I will do what you suggested. I have actually pretty much finished the main (index.html) page as far as design and content is concerned, but haven't got any outgoing links on it. I will probably do a seperate index, using most of the keywords that I will use when the site is up. Actually I was thinking that if I do not sumbit my site address to anywhere, then no robot should crawl my website as they won't know of its existence - isn't that right?
Regards.
Yes, but there are inadvertent leaks much more often than not. Password-protect to avoid.
Despite the fact that this is not an SEO-related forum, I'm trying to steer you toward taking advantage of having the domain and server live. Get your index page indexed *now* instead of waiting "until the site is finished." If you're gonna get 'sandboxed' (search WebmasterWorld for the first hundred or so threads on that term), then start the release clock ticking now instead of waiting until the site's ready. Put up at least a single preliminary-yet-hopefully-useful page, targeted at your market.
You've already figured out that your hosting service's default page isn't exactly good for getting your site listed, so now make the leap to actually putting up a useful targeted page. So many folks waste the opportunity, and end up waiting 30-90 days after 'finishing' their site with a Google cache and SERP snippet that stubbornly continues to describe their site as "Under Construction - Please check back here soon!" They get a few hits from construction workers looking for local check-cashing services that way, maybe... :(
I never wait until a site is 'finished' to start promoting it. If I did, I wouldn't have a single page in Google. I've got one site I started in 1997, ranks really well, but it's not 'finished' yet. I've never 'finished' a site, as a matter of fact -- though many of them consistently rank right under those Premium Adwords slots...
No time like the present ... tempus fugit ... carpe diem ... the early bird gets the worm -- all good and all applicable here. :)
Jim
Thanks for all the help!
