Today’s word is “Canonical”
Now when I’ve told most people about this newer SEO practice I either get a blank stare or “What in the world is a ‘canonical?” The answer is this; a “Canonical” is a link relationship and is used to prevent duplicate content problems that occur commonly in Search Engine Optimization and it looks similar to this code…
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.purewebanalytics.com/post_about_canonicals.html" />
What problem does Canonical URLs fix?
Webmasters and website owners alike for years have had problems with duplicate content being indexed and ranked poorly because of this fact. Now it is not really a duplicate but it is in the fact that if you have multiple links to the same page Google and other search engines used to see this as a bad thing and thus it dropped rankings of your website. When the canonical URL concept was finally launched earlier this year (back in February) and it was covered by just about everyone in the SEO community.
Now that I’ve talked about the problem let’s talk about solutions to this problem that are currently out there for your website’s SEO efforts. There are a number of plug-ns that have been built that address this problem and allow you to use the Canonical link relationship to your advantage.
Canonical Plug-in for WordPress
Depending on how you’ve linked to content on your WordPress site chances are some duplication issues with respect to content may occur. For instance of you have a page that is associated to multiple categories on your WordPress website duplication issues may arise. Click here for Joost De Valk’s Canonical URL plug-in for WordPress .
Canonical Plug-in for Magento
The thing about designing an e-commerce website is that it is similar to the problem faced by content-based web software like WordPress because an item can be associated to multiple categories or areas of an ecommerce website. Of course, someone has thought of a plug-in to assist you in solving your duplicate content problem. Both Joost De Valk and Joachim Houtman collaborated together to develop this Magento plug-in so have a look at it here.
Honourable Mention: All-in-one SEO Plug-in for WordPress
The All-In-One SEO Plug-in for WordPress is does support and uses the Canonical URL structure. I’ve always loved this plug-in, yes “loved” this plug-in! It’s great because if you don’t know a lot about SEO and you run a WordPress website it gives you a boost when it comes to common SEO practices that are in use today! Check it out here
Depending on the website that you run duplicate content has been an issue for a long time and now with Canonical URLs it’s possible to help you with some of the problems that lower ranking websites or ecommerce websites face.
Luc Arnold
Gettin’ “Canonical” with it!
