Glossary

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200

Status OK – The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser.

Some poorly developed content management systems return 200 status codes even when a file does not exist. The proper response for file not found is a 404.

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301

Moved Permanently – The file has been moved permanently to a new location.

This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location you may want to test moving a file or folder first, and then if that ranks well you may want to proceed with moving the entire site. Depending on your site authority and crawl frequency it may take anywhere from a few days to a month or so for the 301 redirect to be picked up.

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302

Found – The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URI.

Generally, as it relates to SEO, it is typically best to avoid using 302 redirects. Some search engines struggle with redirect handling. Due to poor processing of 302 redirects some search engines have allowed competing businesses to hijack the listings of competitors.

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404

Not Found – The server was unable to locate the URL.

Some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist. Ensure files that exist do give a 200 status code and requests for files that do not exist give a 404 status code. You may also want to check with your host to see if you can set up a custom 404 error page which makes it easy for site visitors to

  • view your most popular and / or most relevant navigational options
  • report navigational problems within your site

Search engines request a robots.txt file to see what portions of your site they are allowed to crawl. Many browsers request a favicon.ico file when loading your site. While neither of these files are necessary, creating them will help keep your log files clean so you can focus on whatever other errors your site might have.

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Above the Fold

A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling. Some people also define above the fold as an ad location at the very top of the screen, but due to banner blindness typical ad locations do not perform as well as ads that are well integrated into content. If ads look like content they typically perform much better.

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