Hi Donnie

Thanks, I totally agree with your comments on EMD's. In this instance I think the hyphen is perfectly acceptable.

Thanks again.

Hi Billy

You must have been waiting for the next Q & A question......congrats on the extra points and thanks for your thoughts

Trevor

Hi Mozzers

Just after some opinions really. Basically a client wants a restaurant website developing and had already chosen a name for it as (example) "englishroserestaurant.co.uk". They wanted to register it themselves but unfortunately before they had time to someone else did.

Now they have come back to me and said about using the name (example) "englishrose.me.uk".

I know these .me.uk names are supposedly for personal websites and not businesses but I assume that, by itself, shouldn't be an issue as there are many commercial sites that do use them.

However as all the combinations have been taken I have suggested that they use a "domain-domain.com as an alternative so just wanted to know which option you guys would go for out of:

1. englishrose.me.uk

2. english-rose.com

Although I avoid hyphens whenever I can in this instance 100% I would go for number 2 as it's only one hyphen and it's a business and looks more professional......having said that I would welcome any comments or opinions.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Ravi

I don't use them as it does make it very easy for competitors to quickly look to see what keywords you're trying to rank for.

Having said that take a look at this post and read the comments, you'll see it's a mixed bag!

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/why-i-still-use-meta-keywords

Personal preference really.

Hi Diane

Just checked your homepage in a crawler and It looks like the 301 redirect is working. Not sure if you or your hosting company did it last night but certainly it's there.

If you type into your browser just 'in2town.co.uk' it redirects to 'www.in2town.co.uk'.

Very best wishes for the site.

Hi Diane

Don't worry about asking your hosting company I will let you know exactly what  you need to do, although likely to be tomorrow morning now

Very best wishes

Trevor

Hi Diane Just away from computer at the moment but will reply later with how to do it. I'm assuming you're running on a unix server? Cheers Trevor

Hi Diane

Just looked at the OSE numbers and going with redirecting to the 'www' version will be the way to go as you have many more links pointing to that version.

In OSE if you type in http://www.in2town.co.uk then 'add URL' http://in2town.co.uk then 'Compare Metrics' you'll see the difference between the two.

Very best wishes

Hi Diane

Looks like you need to set a canonical version for your site.

Importantly before deciding on either http://in2town.co.uk or http://www.in2town.co.uk you need to check if one or other has many more links or one has more authoritative links as redirecting will reduce the link juice passed.

You can set the canonical version in the .htaccess file on your site and also as a preference in Google Webmaster Tools.

If you let us know what server your site works on we can better advise you.

Very best wishes

Trevor

I'd 2nd Dan's response with Screaming Frog. Been using it for a number of months now and love how easy it is to use. I have the pro version which gives you the option to limit crawl depth and what it crawls etc but the free one is great too.

Hi Ravi

I don't use them as it does make it very easy for competitors to quickly look to see what keywords you're trying to rank for.

Having said that take a look at this post and read the comments, you'll see it's a mixed bag!

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/why-i-still-use-meta-keywords

Personal preference really.

Hi guys

Not sure if I can get mozpoints for answering my own question - perhaps someone can thumb it up

Anyway below is the .htaccess code that seems to work for canonicalization and allowing POST:

http:// to http://www.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomainexample.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mydomainexample.com/$1 [R=301,L]

REDIRECT /folder/index.php to /folder/

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/))index.php$ http://www.mydomainexample.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Cheers

Hi Ryan I noticed that the site has a canonical issue with both an http and www version too. Nice and thorough analysis, really interesting regarding the flag. Now I'm back home I might just have to take a look....although really should think about getting some shut eye here in blighty