Canonicalization | Affiliate Marketing Blog

Canonicalization Higgledy-Piggledy

Posted by Matt McWilliams in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on June 18th, 2010

I read a great article today by Ian Lurie at Search Engine Land about canonicalization.

Don’t know what canonicalization is? Then you need to know! It has nothing to do with Catholic sainthood and everything to do with search engine optimization.

Bad canonicalization = poorly optimized sites. Good canonicalization = well optimized sites. And well optimized sites = more money.

I like these math equations.

First, what is canonicalization? Lurie says it well simply: ““every resource on your web site has a single web address.” It’s basically avoiding duplicate content by having the same URL used over and over again in different ways.

So, myguitarsite.com and www.myguitarsite.com are the same site. You should never have links pointing to both, if you can avoid it. The same goes for www.myguitarsite.com/index.php. That, in a nutshell, is canonicalization.

The same goes for www.myguitarsite.com/lesson-reviews&referrer=google and www.myguitarsite.com/lesson-reviews and www.myguitarsite.com/lesson-reviews&ad=banner.

They are all the same thing.

By having all of these versions, you will lose SEO points.

I will leave it to Ian’s article about canonicalization best practices to explain it more, because he a) says it better than I can, b) had more time to write his post than I do this one, and c) he uses the phrase higgledy-piggledy, albeit a misspelling. How can you resist reading his article? Enjoy and learn…it’s a great read!

canonicalization, search engine land

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How to Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties from Google

Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tips, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design on February 8th, 2010

Many of you are undoubtedly using Private Label Rights (PLR) articles or post news on your site that you get from other sources. These could be considered duplicate content by Google. Or perhaps you have printer-only versions of your pages that are duplicate content of your own site. Whatever the reason, duplicate content can land you in serious hot water with Google and lead to big penalties, including having your site banned entirely.

Here are some tips to avoid duplicate content penalties with Google. Many of them are straight from Google.

First, make sure to tell Google your preferred URL (canonicalization). This tells Google that if you have duplicate content within your site, to refer to the main URL and not penalize you (yes, this is a condensed and basic version of what it does on purpose).

Simply put this in the <head> tags:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com">

If the content is a duplicate of your own pages (such as printer-friendly versions), you can tell Google not to index the duplicate pages. Simply include this is in your <head> tags on the duplicate page:

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">

If you are using Private Label Rights (PLR) material, then you will still have to put in a little effort in order to avoid duplicate content penalties. Change some of the words, especially the high-density keywords, so that:

“The easiest way to learn guitar…” becomes “The best way to study guitar…” or “The number one method for learning guitar…”

“Guitar lessons are often expensive” becomes “Learning guitar can be costly” or “Guitar instruction is generally reserved for the wealthy”

Use a thesaurus and find synonyms for common words.

You can also reorder some of the sentences and paragraphs, or take out a few sentences that aren’t needed, as well as add your own content. Add a sentence of your own to each paragraph or two.

When you are done, be sure to use a copy checker like CopyScape or one of the free tools from Google and Yahoo to check it out.? I hope it helps!