Thursday, September 2, 2010

Importance Of Canonicalization

In Search Engine Optimization, Canonicalization is a process for converting URL that has more than one possible representation into a "standard", "normal", or canonical form.

For example, most people would consider these URLs as same.
www.example.com,example.com/,www.example.com/index.html,example.com/home.asp. But technically these URLs are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the above URLs. Canonicalization is the process to pick the best URL among several choices. Canonicalization gives uniqueness for a page. Canonicalized web pages have unique PR and Unique Rankings in search Engines 

Methods of Canonicalization

Redirections:
URL redirection or domain redirection is a simple technique to make a web page available under many URLS. Use server side redirection methods of 301 for all non-www to www redirection in htaccess file. 301 redirection is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. The code "301" is understand as "moved permanently". 

Webmaster tools:
Go to Google web master tools and select the option called preferred domain
To specify your preferred domain: 
On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want. 
In the Site configuration, click Settings.
At Preferred domain section, select the option you want.

Use Canonical Attribute:
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have just announced a new tag, which we can use to tell the search engines which URL it should consider for the current page. This is better explained with an example, so here goes. 

Specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page as follows

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

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