Htaccess and our bad results

[kmasters]

Hello everyone, my name is Katie. I am new at my company and trying to figure out why their/our SEO has diminished in google results. Just 4 months ago they have printed verified proof they were page one and two in organic search results. Now we cant be found in the first 50 pages. The site itself is clean and friendly. I wanted to ask for input on this htaccess file. My boss is asking me to take a look at this file specifically. Could any of these items be conflicting with the websites ranking? Here is the code below.

Also this is my first thread, hope I gave all the right info

<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

rewriteengine on
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomaincom$
rewriterule ^$ "http\:\/\/www\.mydomain\com\/" [R=301,L]

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?mydomaincom/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|swf|flv|png)$ /feed/ [R=302,L]

<filesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|png|ico|js|css|pdf|html)$">
Header set Expires "access plus 7 days"
</filesMatch>

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

DefaultLanguage en-US

IndexIgnore *

<ifmodule mod_deflate.c="">
<filesmatch ".(gif|jpg|png|ico|js|css|pdf|html)$"="">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</filesmatch>
</ifmodule>

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} proc/self/environ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*(.*) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]

Thanks so much for your help. -Katie Masters

[dzine]

For starters, there appear to be dots missing before the 'com' in the first rewritecond and rewriterule.

It could be the forum software doing that. It's often best to use [code] tags around bits of code posted on forums

What are you hoping to achieve with that .htaccess file?

[KernelPanic]

Are you sure they weren't seeing personalized results?

[kmasters]

For starters, there appear to be dots missing before the 'com' in the first rewritecond and rewriterule.

It could be the forum software doing that. It's often best to use [code] tags around bits of code posted on forums

What are you hoping to achieve with that .htaccess file?

Thank you for the reply. In the actual htaccess the '.' and the correct domain are in place. I compared the rest of the post and it all looks like it transferred to the post correctly. That was a very good observation.

We are going through checking high and low on our pages for something that could be making us lose rank in results. We were hoping any of the users here could tell us if one of those items within the htaccess file is a bad idea (for seo purposes) to have. Thank you very much for your help. Do you have any idea if the other items could be hindering us?

[DarrenHaye]

Just 4 months ago they have printed verified proof they were page one and two in organic search results.

What does that even mean?

Couldn't you guys check yourselves what position you were.. didn't being in the position lead to more calls/sales?... you shouldn't have to rely on "printed verified proof" :|

[kmasters]

Are you sure they weren't seeing personalized results?

Excellent question. These results do not look personalized in anyway. The search queries were as follows: "piano teacher". "learn piano", "piano lessons" and the final was "piano instructor."

As long as you were searching from Google in or around town, you could find us page one. or even two. There's not a lot of competition, but when we weren't being found 50 pages back it worried the company. One of those search queries brings back a local results page and we are page one on that result, but not the corresponding web result.

They/we also use Google Analytics. I took a look in there and checked backlinks. There are a few quality ones and that's it. We just don't know if something could be messing with with our SEO on the htaccess side. Thank you for your question. Please offer any more ideas.

[kmasters]

What does that even mean?

Couldn't you guys check yourselves what position you were.. didn't being in the position lead to more calls/sales?... you shouldn't have to rely on "printed verified proof" :|

A few weeks after the site was designed, the owner Google'd certain keywords on friends and family computers in town. Every time she did she printed the page the company's results had shown up on.

The question in the end isn't really about the past, that was a lead in to the problem. The question I'm asking is about the htaccess file.

That's what that means.