Back to Basics: Fixing Canonicalization Issue
*The following tip was shared by Eric Gesinski from Tulsa SEO*
Editor’s note: While this issue is well discussed in SEO circles, the post serves as a good reminder – don’t miss it!
One element to SEO that web designers sometimes miss is a big one: canonicalization. While you may know about it, you have to realize the impact it has on SEO is a major one. This is an issue that is definitely worth fixing; you may see your site jump a few positions if you correct this issue on a site that needs it.
What exactly is canonicalization? In SEO, it’s a reference to the different ways you can access a site. I’ll use “dailyseotip.com” as an example (even though this site has corrected their canonicalization issues).
Take a look at these different site addresses:
- www.dailyseotip.com
- dailyseotip.com
- www.dailyseotip.com/index.html
- dailyseotip.com/index.html
Even though they’re different, on most sites these all go to the same page. While a user will see no difference between them and assume it’s just the home page, the search engines will view each of these as separate pages. Not only that, but with the www/no www difference, you have duplicates of every page of your site available. Especially in the case of Google, this will water down the ranking of
your site pages.
To fix this, you need to consolidate each of these pages so that anytime you visit any of them, it redirects to one page. And an HTML redirect is not the best way – you can lose your link juice using this. Make sure you use a 301 redirect. This can be done in your .htaccess file to make sure your whole site has its canonicalization issues fixed.
If you get this corrected, the search engines will now see all the links pointing to any variation of that page pointing to just one page, and this will help bring your rankings up.
Ann Smarty
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16 Responses to “Back to Basics: Fixing Canonicalization Issue”
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I think we should also mention the Canonical tag. In some CMSs or other database driven dynamic content generation suits, we may not be able to rely on .htaccess, especially for the numerous on the fly subpages. But Canonical tag can help out there.
Link to Google’s page with details on canonical tag: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
This is a tip that I know is important yet I often overlook it. Can you post the .htaccess code as a reference?
Ann Smarty Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
We’ve discussed that here: http://dailyseotip.com/preventing-duplicate-content-with-htaccess-file-beginners-guide/156/
EOS Rebel T1i Reply:
November 24th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Why yes you did.
Thanks!
Great post. I bet there are clients who don’t think to let us SEO consultants know that they have different site addresses. This is another item I’m adding to my checklist. Thanks!
I am just amazed with all the high tech stuff out in the world that there hasn’t been a global fix for this issue. Saying this I think I better go and check my last three sites to make sure my .htaccess it up to date.
Thanks for the reminder.
Brad West ~ onomoney
We often find clients have multiple domains showing the same content and need aggregating. We had a client with 12 domains all indexed, all with the same content. Found some with copyscape and asked if they had a couple of domains.. turned out to be 12!
My three WordPress.com sites indexed on Googles’ first two pages using “Microsoft app tips”. Transferred to self-host site, and using subdomains for each blog, sites cannot be seen using previous keywords. The sites are seen by Google using the site:subdomain.domain.com & cache: subdomain.domain.com. I have added Google Analytics and the All in One Pack. No results. What do I do?
Ann Smarty Reply:
December 5th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
How much time has passed since the transfer?
peecee Reply:
January 18th, 2010 at 2:42 am
Sorry for the long delay to this reply. Two weeks after the transfer, and using the WordPress All-in-One SEO plugin, my search results are at the top of the first page when I use the same keywords that were in the WordPress.com blogs.
Thanks again for your reply.
Thanks for the reminder Anne
I’ve just been looking at SEO for my site, in particular Duplicate Content.
Wordpress produces so much duplicate content… archives, categories etc.
There is so much information out there buit eventually, I settled for the All in one SEO pack plugin, which has a Canonical setting plus lots of options for no index.
If all you want to do is set your preference for WWW or non WWW, I do that using a 301 redirect as you suggest.
I dislike xxx.com, prefer www.xxx.com
Yes, as well as domain and home page canonicalisation, and then checking that the client doesn’t have multiple domains with exact same duplicate content – you also need to check your section pages too. These can often be addressed either with the section and / – or with /index.php etc. This is another area of potential duplication to eradicate where possible.
Just 301 the thing and be done with it! There is no better option to resolve duplicate content.
For the guy mentioning duplicate content on WordPress pages… There’s a way around it: just add unique content to the cats and scrap the archives (ok, maybe dont scrap them if you have a big website with plenty of history and readers but for most of my clients I’ve scrapped the archives and seen no drop in performance). Pick cats that are keyword rich and unique to your site and add a few 100 words above the post listings. Works really well!!!
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Once Again, great information!