How to Fix Canonical URL Issues – Duplicate Content
Are you concerned about duplicate content? Do you know how search engines see your URL structure? Take a quick look at the URL’s listed below. They all look pretty much the same right, but search engines see 8 different URLs and to them each URL deliver completely different content.
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/ (with trailing slash)
http://example.com
http://example.com/
www.example.com
www.example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/index.html
This is called Canonicalization URL and can cause duplicate content issues from within your site.
What is Canonical URL?
Canonicalization is the process of picking the preferred URL that you want your website to be presented under when there are several to choose from and it usually refers to the URLs homepage.
Listed below are a few steps you can take to solve the problem of having the same content indexed under different URLs
- If you have a WordPress blog you can use the Canonical Link Element Plugin: You can download the Wordpress Canonical URL Plugin by clicking on this link and once activated it places the code <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/” /> between the head tags <head>. . . </head> of your site. This tag is supported by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft & Asked.com.
- Use Google’s webmaster tools to specify the URL structure you prefer to use – www or non-www
- Check to see if your web hosting company allow you to pick the URL structure you perfer to use via their control panel
- Stay consistent when setting the URL structure when linking throughout your website from the begining
- You can also use permanent 301 redirect
To learn more about canonicalization check out SEO Book’s website on URL Canonicalization: The Missing Manual.
To learn how to set the perferred domain features visit Google Webmaster Central Blog.
