Identify Web Server and Scripting Technology for Onsite SEO
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This is an important article for beginners in onsite search engine optimization. Before you accept any onsite SEO work, it is important that you know how to tweak the site. To be able to do that, you need to know the site's web server and scripting technologies. Does the site use Apache or Microsoft IIS? PHP, ASP, or Java? This article will explain why you need to know this, and how to find out.
Tweaking the site requires some skill with respect to the web server and scripting technologies used. Of course, if you are fully comfortable working with PHP on Apache web servers and have no idea of how to work with ASP.NET on a Windows server, then you should not accept any onsite SEO work for a Microsoft technology-based website.
It is risky to do onsite work on a website which is beyond your capabilities, because you might damage the current stable setup of the website -- and you will be liable for the damages caused.
Therefore, this article will guide you through identifying the most commonly used web servers and website scripting technologies used as a requirement for doing onsite SEO work.
How to tell if the server uses Apache or Microsoft IIS
According to Netcraft's April 2010 survey, Apache web servers earned a 53.93% market share, while Microsoft IIS has a market share of 24.97%. Together, these two are the most commonly used web servers on the Internet.
Let’s start by examining one of the most important steps – identifying the web server used by the website. If you are an Apache user and plan to use .htaccess to do some redirects or URL rewrites, you'll find this doesn't work with IIS.
Also if you are more knowledgeable at working with Microsoft IIS servers than Apache, then you should check first to see if the website on which you are planning to do onsite SEO work is on a Microsoft-based server.
First method: The Apache error .htaccess test
This method is the quickest way to check if the server uses Apache or Microsoft IIS. Note that this technique does not exactly provide the web server information every time, but it is worth checking. If this method fails to identify the web server accurately, try the next method. This is how the first method works:
Step 1: Suppose you need to determine what type of server is used by www.swimsmooth.com. The first thing you need to do is launch a web browser (Google Chrome, for example).
Step 2: In the browser address bar, type the home page URL + .htaccess. For our example, this is the complete address you need to type in the browser address bar:
http://www.swimsmooth.com/.htaccess
Step 3: Press the enter key and examine the results. By default, if the server is Apache, it will return a 403 forbidden error, because the .htaccess should not be publicly accessible. After this, it will include server information, such as that shown in the screen shot below:
From the above screen shot, it is obvious that swimsmooth.com is hosted on an Apache web server, because the 403 forbidden errors include an Apache server name tag.
Let try another example. Suppose you need to know the server used by www.dotnetspider.com. Using the “Apache error .htaccess test” reveals this result:
It shows that the website is hosted on a Microsoft IIS web server, because it is included in the error.
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