Thursday, February 19, 2009

Duplicate Content Issues Solved by Google with Canonical URL Tag

By Ellis Jackson Jr

You probably have it on your website right now. If duplicate content is and issue for you then you need to correct it now. Google penalizes webpages that have the exact same content. Maybe you created a page then you wanted to rename that page for better search engine placement? But there is a problem. See, you already have links going to that url and if you chance it then those links will be lost and so will the traffic that it brings. So what can you do about it to keep the traffic without create duplicate content? Well Google has just release a code that can help.

Now as you know Google has issues with duplicate content. Google wants to show unique content. That means that you need to make sure that each page you create is optimized for different keywords. But sometimes while you are creating a website you may end up have two or more URLs with the same content.

See, "www.example.com/" and "www.example.com/index.html" and "example.com/index.html" can be considered three pages. This can cause link dilution and Google may index the pages lower because of it. You might not always be able to get rid of the page so you are left with duplicate content issues. You want to clean that up right away so you can gain in search engine ranking.

On February 12 2009 Google has announced the Canonical URL Link Tag. This little tag will let Google know that you want a certain page to be considered the official address for the content created. It only works for Google but hopefully the other search engines will soon recognize the tag or at least create their own. It is very easy to set up. All you do is take this code that looks like this.


All you need to do to make the Canonical URL Link Tag work is replace the "yoursitename.com/correct-page.html" with your sites name and page you want to be the official page. Then just copy and paste the link into you page into the head section of your website where the meta data is located. Once done, when Google crawls your site again you will be letting Google know that this is the page you want Google to index and this alone.

Now if you have duplicate content from two different domain names then it will not work. The Canonical code only works with sub domain names from a single top level domain. So if you have multiple pages on your website that lead to the same content this should hopefully solve this problem.

Well now that you have the Canonical URL Link Tag it is time to put it to good use. Start searching for any duplicate content pages you might have and get them taken care of fast. The sooner you do, the better the ranking you will have.

If you like this tip then come see more here at Niche Marketing. You will find all kinds of tips for building niche websites, getting traffic, finding the right home business product and more. To see are products we have reviewed then go straight to: http://www.allproman.com/product-reviews/

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