MsSEM.comHelen M. Overland MsSEM.com The Canonical URL Tag How to Use the Canonical Tag to Avoid Duplicate Content Filters in Google, Yahoo & Live.

MsSEM.com Helen M. Overland

Helen M. OverlandMsSEM.com

The Canonical URL TagHow to Use the Canonical Tag to Avoid Duplicate Content Filters in Google, Yahoo & Live

The Canonical URL Tag

Contents

1.Who Am I?

2.What is Duplicate Content and Why is it a

Problem?

3.What is the "Canonical" Tag?

4.What are the Limitations of the Canonical Tag?

5.How to Add the new Canonical Tag to Your

Website

6.Further Coverage



Who Am I?

Director, Search Engine Marketing with non~linear creations – www.nonlinear.ca

Projects with large well-known brands Proven Success: Demonstrated increases in sales

and traffic year over year on large & small budgetsOver a decade of experienceSpeaker at marketing conferences such as Search

Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, PodCamp Toronto



What is Duplicate Content and Why is it a Problem?

Search Engines visit your website and try to determine what pages you have

If two pages are very similar, one of them might be flagged as “duplicate content”


I love fresh, unique and

quality content!



To Search Engines, these may all be DIFFERENT pages:

http://www.example.com/http://example.comhttp://www.example.com/index.phphttp://example.com/index.php?disp=home

... Even though these URLs are all just your single home page


Which One is Right???



So the search engine "guesses" which is the "right" page



I pick... uh... THAT one!



If the search engine only visits a few pages on your site, and most are duplicate URLs, some of your "real" pages might not get spidered



Whew... I'm done for the day here



So we use 301 Redirects to control where people go

Redirect all people from: http://www.example.com/http://www.example.com/index.phphttp://example.com/index.php?disp=home

To:http://example.com


Ah ha! I See!



But 301 redirects have limitations. What if you are a retailer who advertises through affiliate websites?

http://www.example.com/products/white-runnerhttp://www.example.com/products/white-runner?affiliate=123

Which link gets listed in search results pages?


Now which one do I index?



And it's hard to make 301 Redirects handle unforeseen circumstances

Consider the following somewhat unfortunate URL…



Oh dear.



What is the "Canonical" Tag?

On many CMS systems and websites, people can add on whatever additions to the URL they like, and the page will still work.

If a URL returns a valid page, and is linked to enough times, or is linked to from a highly authoritative domain, the URL may be indexed.


Hmm... that URL seems to be

popular, I'll add it right now


What is the "Canonical" Tag?

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft realized this was a problem for people.

So they created the new "Canonical“ tag

The "Canonical" tag is a way for you to declare the "official" URL of the page – no matter what's extra in the URL

The "Canonical" page is the “true“ URL of the page


Here we come to save the day!


What are the Limitations of the Canonical Tag?

Search engines seem to be getting smart to spam tactics before they launch new features

The canonical tag will only work on your domain

The content of the canonical pagemust be very similar to the page that points to it


You can't fool me this time,

spammers!


How to Add the new Canonical Tag to Your Website

The canonical tag is a simple tag that is added to the <HEAD> area of your webpages

It looks like this:

<link rel="canonical"

href="http://www.example.com/products/white-runner" />

..Just add the "real" URL to each page on your site by using this tag



How Does the Canonical Tag Help?

Search engines will now have a hint as to which is the "real" page

http://www.example.com/index.php http://www.example.com/index.php?unfortunate=link

Which can help stop URLs you don't want from being indexed


No, that's probably not right

Thank You!

Helen M. Overland (a.k.a. semlady) [email protected]

MsSEM.comnonlinearcreations.com

Follow me! twitter.com/semlady

Get more information on theCanonical Tag here: mssem.com/library/url-canonical-tag.php


That's One Smart Lady!

MsSEM.comHelen M. Overland MsSEM.com The Canonical URL Tag How to Use the Canonical Tag to Avoid Duplicate Content Filters in Google, Yahoo & Live.

Documents

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