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Posts Tagged ‘canonical link element’

Aug14

SEO Friendly Web Development – Canonicalisation Video

Author: Nick Rinylo

SEO Videos

Script:

Welcome

Canonicalisation is designed to avoid the same content being indexed on different URL’s. We use it to stop dymanic URL’s being indexed with the same content as the original source.

Ideally then, you would have one URL and one set of original content. We have had CMS and ecommerce software in the past push out DB queries that are indexed by Google leading to an effect on a SEO campaign.

Google recommends 3 different ways of protecting your site and how to indicate to Google your ‘canonical‘ or ‘preffered’ content.

1.) Set your prefered domain via Google’s webmaster tools - demo -

2.) Specifiy the canonical link element element for each original version of a web page. - demo -

3.) Indicate your canonical URL to Google by including them in a sitemap.html or Sitemap.xml -demo -

Relatively straight forward in terms of putting into practice Google’s recommendations.

We also have looked around are some similar useful videos from Mat Cutts which will we link on our blog at seo-creare.co.uk/news/

Thanks for watching.

Resources:

Matt Cutts -Should large corporations use rel=canonical?

Matt Cutts - Canonical Link Element

Posted in SEO Videos | Tags: canonical, canonical link element, canonicalisation, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO | Comments Off

Apr03

Canonical Link Element – Duplicate Content

Author: Nick Rinylo

Search Engine Optimisation

After coming across the canonical link element in February i hadn’t yet found a use for this tag / element. But now i believe i have. Basically it is designed to tell Google which page is the true version of potentially a wide range of domain combination or DB queries. For example Google could potentially see the following as different pages (this is important within SEO):

domain.com
domain.com/
domain.com/index.php
domain.com/default.asp
www.domain.com
www.domain.com/index.php
www.domain.com/default.asp
www.domain.com/

You get the basic idea….

So i here you ask how do i let Google know which page is the correct version, well before you start doing any crazy 301 re-direct’s or use the canonical link element, if possible you should be consistent from the start meaning:

• Always link to the same domain
• Use a .htaccess re-write your domain
• Set up the correct domain in Webmaster Tools
• Consistent Internal Linking

If you have followed these simple steps you will have no need to use the canonical link element, however if you free you potentially have duplicate content issues with you CMS or ecommerce platform all you need to do is add the following code in your <head></head> tags.

Google will trust that you have used this correctly and unless you have made a mistake i.e. created a infinite loop. It will assume that this command is correct. This tag is only based for sites that you fear may have duplicate content issue, any other issues can be solved with 301 re-directs.

Remember also that you can only use the canonical element internally and sub domains, NOT external websites.

References:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/canonical-link-element-presentation.html

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | Tags: canonical link element, Duplicate Content, SEO, SEO friendly re-directs | Comments Off

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