What role does the .htaccess file play in SEO

The .htaccess file plays quite an essential role in the way that your website is ranked by various search engines. The issue is that very few people are aware of its significance, which may be influencing the ranking of your website at this very second.

What is the .htaccess file?

The .htaccess file is described as “the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized administration of web server settings” on the website Wikipedia. A definition like that is almost incomprehensible to anybody who is not an expert in computer technology, which I am not.

Putting away all of the jargon associated with computer programming, the .htaccess file is a very small file that is inserted into the root directory of a website to perform a variety of tasks.

Because these are the only functions that are relevant to the subject of search engine optimization (SEO), this article will only examine two of them. There are many more. I will also teach you how to construct the .htaccess file so that you may utilize your .htaccess file for the greatest possible impact on your website’s search engine optimization.

Users Being Blocked

Users may be allowed or blocked from accessing a site based on their domain or IP address by using the .htaccess file. Because there are various web tools that individuals use to acquire the keywords that their rivals are using, you would want to do such a thing because you would want to get an advantage over them.

They will then be able to target your keywords, which will give them the opportunity to move you further down in the search rankings. One such tool is known as SpyFu, for instance.

They make it possible for you to conduct covert surveillance on your rivals. If you want to prevent your rivals from using these tools on your website, all you have to do is format your .htaccess file similarly to the example that is provided at the bottom of this post.

Changing a website’s URL

If you do a search on Google and check through the search results, you will notice that certain websites are indexed with www. in front of them, while others are not listed with it. If you look a little more closely, you’ll undoubtedly notice that some websites are indexed more than once; for example, some will have www. in front of them, while others will not. Why does this happen to be the case?

This is because backlinks are being established to both the www. and the non-www. versions of the website, but the search engine considers them to be two distinct websites. This indicates that you are building connections to two different websites rather than simply one single website.

Because of this, any SEO benefits are being shared across two websites, when in reality, they might be assisting just one website and achieving far greater results. Simply changing one URL to point to the other will solve the issue and allow you to avoid further complications. It is in your best interest to change the URL that now has the fewest number of backlinks to the URL that currently has the largest number of backlinks.

It is incredible how a very little amount of code may have a significant impact on the results of your search engine optimization efforts. In case you were wondering, this will be the last occasion that I discuss computer code in relation to search engine optimization (SEO). It would be irresponsible of me to disregard the significance of the .htaccess file’s function and not discuss it with any of you.