Help with Understanding Header Checkers?

header checker, wordpress, redirects, backlinks

[Frost_Angel]

I have a wordpress blog and I really want to understand how to do this:

From an article on searchenginewatch:

For redirects, use a header checker tool to follow the redirects back. Sometimes you will uncover years of nested redirects, as pages have moved with tons of trusted aged backlinks. To do this, run the your redirects through a bulk header checker, such as the one provided by XXXXXX or one of the many others that are on the web. If you find that some are nested, rerun this data until you get to the original page. Once you've tracked all the redirects back to their original page, run the list through a backlink checker, just as if you were checking for backlinks on 400/500 level pages.

I honestly do not understand this - and I moved my 10 year old HTML site to wordpress in 2011 and the site lost it's rankings - and losing backlinks was probably part of it.

I realize for some of you - the paragraph above is simple and explains it perfectly - but what I need are step by step instructions.

For instance - "using a header checker tool" -- is there a Firefox addon that you use? The author mentions Xenu to find orphan pages (I don't even know what orphan pages are?)

But what am I looking for when I use the header checker? How do I know there are redirects and how do I follow them back?

I am the first to admit that I don't understand this and I am a total derp about it - but I don't have the budget to hire someone to help me and I am trying to learn it.

[not2easy]

Firefox has an addon "Live HTTP Headers" that you can invoke to see what files are being called for a request and from where. It is not a simple to understand tool for a noob, but it is simple to use and with some trials you can learn to understand what it is telling you.

My suggestion would be to install the addon, then in FF go to Tools and click on Live HTTP Headers. A new little window opens up and as soon as you enter an URL (or click on a bookmark) it begins recording the server's responses along with listing the files that are being requested and lines showing properties of those files or responses. If you start with your own pages you can go down the list and probably recognize the files being loaded to display the page. To really be able to study the list you will need to click to "Save All" and give the file a .txt extension so you can look at it in notepad or any text editor. It IS a learning process. When you feel comfortable using the tool, then it becomes useful to follow the other instructions given in your post. Others may have better information, I use it occasionally but not every day.

There are other tools available, one is called fiddler which I believe is free.

[varindia]

This seems you have some misconception about WordPress. It is one of the SEO Friendly CMS and you need to use some plugins like "all in seo".

Among the other plugins, you can refer following link:
"mashable.com/2009/03/20/wordpress-seo-plugins/" and many other similar links are there that refer plugins for seo of your site.

Take care of tags and keywords in your contents.

I use "META seo inspector" in chrome for checking META is ok or not.

[lucy24]

For redirects, use a header checker tool to follow the redirects back. Sometimes you will uncover years of nested redirects, as pages have moved with tons of trusted aged backlinks. To do this, run the your redirects through a bulk header checker, such as the one provided by XXXXXX or one of the many others that are on the web. If you find that some are nested, rerun this data until you get to the original page. Once you've tracked all the redirects back to their original page, run the list through a backlink checker, just as if you were checking for backlinks on 400/500 level pages.

I absolutely love the mental image this creates.

Move or rename a page, redirect it. Check.
A year or two later, move or rename again, redirect again. Check.
Later still, more of the same.

And each time you're redirecting only from the most recent URL to the current one. So people with elderly bookmarks-- and robots with long memories-- end up with

www.example.com/url-from-1998.html >> 301 to
www.example.com/url-from-1999.html >> 301 to
www.example.com/same-url-but-you-changed-your-extensions-in-2001.php >> 301 to
www.example.com/url-from-2004.php >> 301 to
www.example.com/url-from-2006.php >> 301 to
www.example.com/same-url-but-you-decided-to-go-extensionless-in-2007 >> 301 to

... and so on :)

I think that's what they're really saying. Much easier to prevent ahead of time than to find and fix afterward. Every time you add a redirect, look carefully at all your existing redirects and update anything that will also be affected by the newer redirect.

Which is why I've got
/fun/FontInput.html
and
/fun/font_input.html (don't ask!)
both redirecting to
/fonts/font_input.html And don't tell me to give everything a better name. The bingbot is still eating 410s from two years ago when I went through Round 1 of name improvements.