Use If-Modified-Since And Save Bandwidth Costs

So some would categorize information related to the importance of adding code to your website that tells user agents (web browsers and search engine spiders) if a page has been modified or not in the web design department and other into SEO services. I’ll suppose it’s both and adding the If-Modified-Since request-header field is highly suggested and truly necessary and here’s why.

Besides the fact that a decent and meticulous web design services firm will take precautions against over consumption of server bandwidth by search bots of all kinds, Google explicitly states in their Webmaster Guidelines under the Technical Guidelines section that we should:

Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

This feature not only saves you bandwidth and overhead but it does the same for the search engines. If a search engine bot reaches your website and they are notified that the page has not been modified they won’t waste anyone’s time crawling the page. that saves your bandwidth and theirs – everyone wins.

Setting up If-Modified-Since request-header on your website isn’t too complicated but be aware that different website may require different coding configuration to help sending the request.  I’ve personally checked the web in search of a WordPress plugin that would facilitate the If-Modified-Since request-header feature but to no avail.  Please feel free to comment if you’ve found a script snippet that can work with WordPress. If not it looks like we may have to write a plugin ourselves. You can also use this tool to check here to see if you’re website currently supports If-Modified-Since.

So it’s clear that the If-Modified-Since request-header is of the utmost importance. If you’re a business owner contact your SEO web designer and send him this article for reference. You’ll be happy you did and so will your bottom line.