Give Google what it wants - Canonicalize?
Posted on March 2, 2008
Filed Under Webmasters |
I’ve recently learned of a new word, Canonicalization. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced, but I now know what it means. I cannot beleive this doesn’t come standard on every website, since it is so important for SEO.
So what does Canonicalization mean? Well, Wikipedia describes it as
A process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a "standard" canonical representation.
HUH???
To break it down for SEO in unTECHy terms, your website can be displayed as yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com. These are read as 2 different websites by search engines. Standard SEO practices say that this is a no no. We need to canonicalize!
Luckily, I’ve found another quick fix for webmasters that involves adding a couple of lines to your .htaccess file. This way when a search engine crawls yoursite.com it will automatically forward them to www.yoursite.com.
1. Download and open .htaccess with your FTP software.
2. Add this anywhere in the file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
**BE SURE TO CHANGE yourdomain TO YOUR ACTUAL DOMAIN**
3. Save and re-upload your .htaccess file.
4. Test it out, type in your URL (without the www) and see if www is automatically added.
Voilla! Google will now treat your website with a little more respect.
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unTECHy Hello I'm Keith, a smalltown Iowa (USA) boy. I came up with unTECHy at an attempt to try my hand at blogging. Feel free to follow me as I attempt to educate and entertain my visitors with my unTECHy points-of-view.
That’s a good tip for anyone having their blog hosted under their own domain. Take advantage of everything you can to get better ranking and results from Google and not only.
1 Million in 365 Day’s last blog post..Wednesday’s Movies 5 - Various Selection
Good tip, but canonicalization gets much deeper, especially for WordPress. I recently published an article on comprehensive canonicalization for WordPress. It’s a bit geeky, but it should be a great help to your readers.
Jeff Starr’s last blog post..Fake Slifer Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards on Ebay