How to reduce duplicate content issues through URL canonicalization?

The web is full of duplicate content. Search engines try to index and display the original or “canonical” version. Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they’ll lose ranking.

For example, most people would consider these the same URLs:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.html

But technically all of these URLs are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the URLs above.

Q: So how do I make sure that Search Engines pick the URL that I want?

A: URL canonicalization

Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages.

The goal of the canonicalization process is to transform a URL into a normalized or canonical URL so it is possible to determine if two syntactically different URLs are equivalent. Search engines employ URL canonicalization in order to assign importance to web pages and to reduce indexing of duplicate pages. Web crawlers perform URL canonicalization in order to avoid crawling the same resource more than once. Web browsers may perform canonicalization to determine if a link has been visited or to determine if a page has been cached.

Q: How to fix this duplicate content issue?

A: Make all the non-canonical URLs do a permanent (301) HTTP redirect to the canonical/preferred URL .Suppose you want your default url to be http://www.example.com/ . You can make your web server so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).

Q: Is there anything other option to fix this duplicate content issue?

A: Yes, Using the new canonical tag

Sometimes can't generate permanent/301 redirects, Can't help how people link to you, Uppercase/lowercase paths, Session IDs, Tracking codes, analytics, and landing pages

Than we can specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page.

For example:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234567&sort=alpha&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234567&sort=price&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd

 If Search Engine knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results.Now we can specify a canonical page to search engines by adding a  element with the attribute rel="canonical" to the  section of the non-canonical version of the page. 

 To specify a canonical link to the page http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, create a  element as follows:

< rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish"> 

Copy this link into the head section of all non-canonical versions of the page.

• You can only use the tag on pages within a single site (subdomains and subfolders are fine).
• You can use relative or absolute links, but the search engines recommend absolute links.

This tag will operate in a similar way to a 301 redirect for all URLs that display the page with this tag.

• Links to all URLs will be consolidated to the one specified as canonical.
• Search engines will consider this URL a “strong hint” as to the one to crawl and index.

SEO Redesign Secrets

> Creating Your SEO'd Site Architecture

Search engines look explicitly at how all your pages are linked together in order to determine their place within the site. Pages that are linked from every other page will be given more weight than those that are only linked from a few others. This is all considered a form of internal link popularity, or in Google language, internal Page Rank.

Recommendation: During your redesign, don't bury too deeply within the site any content that was previously bringing targeted search engine traffic. Ensure that any informational content that will be focused on the more competitive keyword phrases (for example, product and service pages) is high up in your site hierarchy.

In addition, all content contained in a specific category should be cross-linked via some sort of sub-navigation within that section.

> Categorization and Avoiding Duplicate Content

When people are seeking information from a search engine, they usually have a question, a problem, or a need for specific information. The search queries they use at Google and the other engines reflect this. The more ways you can categorize your content for the various target markets you serve, the better.

Recommendation: Be sure that all top-level pages answer the potential searcher's (your potential customers') questions, and that it's clear that your products and services can solve their problem. In addition, you also have to ensure that regardless of how someone found any piece of content on your site, they always end up at the same URL to avoid Page Rank splitting and duplicate content issues.

For example, if a specific product can be classified as both a product and a service, it makes sense that it might be listed under both categories. However, the page (URL) that the potential customer eventually lands on, regardless of which category they started in, should always be the same.

> New Content Management System and Changing URLS

If URLs must change in the redesign due to a new content management system or back-end coding, search engines may take some time to index the new URLs as well as give them the same weighting they gave the previous URLs due to URL age factors.

Recommendation: It's critical to 301-redirect all old URLs to their relative counterpart within the newly designed website. This will pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones quickly, as well as ensure that site visitors don't receive 404-not-found errors.

This will be easier if the new URL naming is similar to the old one, because you can use automated methods. If URLs must change completely with no correlation to the names of the old URLs, and hand-redirects are required, you'll want to at least redirect all the top-level pages, as well as those that you're sure receive keyword traffic from search engines. But, ideally, every URL should be redirected if at all possible.

> Coding of Navigation Menus

Links contained within the navigation of your website should be coded in a search engine–friendly manner so that they are visible and crawl able. Some DHTML and Flash menus are invisible to search engines, which cause the pages linked within them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Recommendation: Make sure all navigational menus are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. In addition, avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation (CSS mouse over’s are fine). You'll also want to ensure that all content can be reached by hard-coded links – don't force the user to go through any kind of search box menu because those are traditionally search engine unfriendly.

> Custom HTML Elements

While some level of automation for titles, metas, headers, URLs, and alt attributes for images can be helpful, it's critical that your new website's content management system allow you to create custom descriptions for these as well.

Recommendation: Make sure the content management system has fields for custom title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc. There should be no limit to the number of characters allowed in these fields either, because every page may need a different number of words and characters.

> Session IDs and Other Tracking Links

its best not to use session IDs to track visitors, but if your system must use them, you'll only need to feed the "clean" URLs to the search engine spiders – otherwise, they may get caught in an infinite loop, indexing the same content under multiple URLs.

You'll also want to avoid any sort of campaign tracking links appended to URLs because these can split your link popularity by causing your content to be indexed under multiple URLs.

Recommendation: If this type of tracking is inherent in your system, use the canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

About The Author
Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.

Website Return on Investment (ROI) Checklist

Having a website is one thing, but is it working hard for your business success? Are you getting quality and targeted traffic on your website? Are you ranked No.1 on Google and Yahoo for the main business keywords?

It is our endeavor to ensure your website ROI. Hindavi Technologies & Consulting Solutions has compiled a checklist of tips to improve your website towards more targeted traffic and higher rankings on Google and Yahoo.

Competitive Research: Find out your local and global competitors. Review what they are doing on their websites. Find a list of their keywords, page titles and descriptions in their source code (right click on web page and select view source). Type the most important keywords for your business and look at the source code of companies that rank at the top.

Meta tag optimization: Discover and Research for proper keywords and put it in title tag, description tag and keyword section based on priority.

Search Engine Indexing: Submit your website URL in all the major search engines. Google verifies your website and then indexes your website when you upload the sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools.

Increase Your Business Network: To increase your product sale/ visitor traffic, promote your website through Social Media Marketing, Video Promotion, Blog Promotion, online press releases.

Keep it simple: Look out for navigational simplicity of your website. Ensure that there are no broken links; every page is clean and uncluttered. Make absolutely sure that every single webpage on your site gives the end user the ability to navigate around the rest of the site

Write for the search engines: Be sure to include all the major keywords in your webpage contents. Also ensure that they are included higher up the page. Use lesser pictures and more of text/ Java script at the top of the web page.

Use CSS - Cascading Style Sheets: Style sheets allow you to make instant formatting changes to selections of text on any web page. Hence you can alter the style of any or all web pages globally.

Make each page Unique: Try to structure each page with its own unique title, description and keywords. This means the search engines will crawl more pages and your website will be displayed for a variety of keywords/ searches.

Contact Details: Ensure that the contact details of your company are visible consistently across all the web pages.

If you adhere to all the above suggestions, you will definitely make your website work for your business success. Targeted traffic, higher rankings are just a click away. Visit www.hindavi.in/seopune.html for expert advice NOW!

How not to get Black Listed by Google

Site owners, have the search engines been unfair with you?Has your site ever been blacklisted by Google, Bing, Yahoo? Well, the article will give you a fair bit of an idea on various factors that affect the repute of your website.

On Page Factors:- Unethical changes made on your site pages to get higher ranking on SERP (search engine result pages) will get you banned. Here are some on-page factors:

Hidden Text

Hidden Text as the name itself specifies the text hidden from users who visit your web page. Some webmasters will do this so that they can add keywords throughout their web page without interfering with what the visitors actually see. Yet, the search engines can still see hidden text.

For example, let's say you have a white background on your website. If you wanted to hide text, you would simply make the color of your text white (#FFFFFF) and users couldn't see it.

Alt image tag spamming

This is another way that people will try to cram keywords into their website, allowing search engines to see their keywords, but not allowing visitors to notice any difference in their website. The real purpose of an alt image tag is if a user visits your website and the graphic will not load,or is disabled by their web browser, text will appear instead of the graphic.This is often used for blind people. Alt image spamming is something you want to stay clear of.

Meta Tag Stuffing

What I'm referring to here is when people throw in thousands of the same exact keyword into their meta tags. For example, the following website is trying to rank well for "SEO".

This is obviously ridiculous. Google doesn't use Meta Tags when ranking websites and will penalize you so stay away from it.

Title Tag Stuffing

The title is what appears in the top left hand corner of your web page .You only need to include your keyword(s) onetime in your title tag. Anymore than one time will only dilute the effect, and if you overdo it, you may get banned.

Those are just a few of the things that people continue to do online. These things WILL eventually get your website banned and WILL NOT help you rank well. It's just a waste of time and effort.

Off Page Factor:-

The only way you can get penalized by off-page optimization is if YOU link out to "bad neighborhoods", which would be:

· Link Farms (a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group.)

· Penalized websites (websites that are "gray barred" by Google)

Take this case for example, Lets say I had a website and exchanged links with your website .At the time that we exchanged links, both of our websites were very quality, related websites, with a Google Page Rank of 5.This would be an ideal link trade.

But here is an honest advice. If you do a link exchange with a website, check back to that website every once in awhile to make sure that theyhaven't been "gray barred" by Google. This is one of the top reasons that people get penalized by Google, and the sad part is, they have no idea what they've done wrong because they haven't actually changed anything on their website!

The author of this article is an SEO executive at www.hindavi.in.For further inquiries on ethical SEO and SMO, email to seo@hindavi.in