WordPress Ultimate .htaccess Hacks For better SEO

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The .htaccess files (Hypertext Access file) is a very powerful configuration tool on Apache web server.

The Apache web server has a number of configuration options that are available to the server administrator.It can be found in the webroot of your server and can be easily edited using any text editor.

NOTE-Make sure to back up your current .htaccess file before applying any of the following hacks.

Redirect WordPress RSS feeds to feedburner

#Redirect wordpress content feeds to feedburner
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner    [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator [NC]
RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed [R=302,NC,L]
</ifmodule>
Remove File Extension From URL
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*[^.]+)$ /$1.php [L]

force the use of the browser cache

FileETag MTime Size
<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
  <filesmatch "\.(jpg|gif|png|css|js)$">
       ExpiresActive on
       ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
   </filesmatch>
</ifmodule>
Redirect visitors to a maintenance
page
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^123\.123\.123\.123
RewriteRule $ /maintenance.html [R=302,L]
Protect your WordPress from
hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
#Replace ?mysite\.com/ with your blog url
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
#Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]
Remove "category" from a URL
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)$ http://www.yourblog.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Block all requests from user agent

## .htaccess Code :: BEGIN
##  Block Bad Bots by user-Agent
SetEnvIfNoCase  user-Agent ^FrontPage [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase  user-Agent ^Java.* [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent  ^Microsoft.URL [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent  ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent  ^Offline.Explorer [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent  ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent  ^Zeus [NC]
<Limit GET POST HEAD>
Order  Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny  from env=bad_bot
</Limit>
##  .htaccess Code :: END

Redirect an old domain to a new domain

# redirect from old domain to  new domain
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$  http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Enable gzip with htaccess

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml  application/xml application/xhtml+xml text/javascript text/css  application/x-javascript
BrowserMatch  ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch  ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
Implement a 301 Redirect

The first URL should be a relative path to the old URL and the second one should be an absolute path to the new URL.

Redirect 301 relative/path/to/oldurl/ http://www.domain.com/newurl/
Remove www from URL
#remove www from URI
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Disable Directory Browsing
Options All -Indexes
Force Caching
FileETag MTime Size
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 86400 seconds"
Add Trailing Slash to URL
#trailing slash enforcement
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !#
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
Limiting number of simultaneous
connections
MaxClients < number-of-connections>


stop spam comments
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourblog.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]


Protect your .htaccess file.

# STRONG HTACCESS PROTECTION</code>
<Files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</Files>

Set the timezone of the server
SetEnv TZ America/Indianapolis

Sources :-

Avoiding the use of .htaccess for performance

Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

Stupid htaccess Tricks

Josiah Cole

Perishable Press

AskApache

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