Rel canonical saves your day
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an inseparable part of internet based marketing. Using the right code, layout and abiding by the search engine rules could be a do or die situation for your website. Canonical refers to a preferred page, out of an entire set of pages with extremely similar content. It prevents spiders from finding and re-indexing your product web pages exhibiting highly similar content.
Duplicate version of your web page is known as the print version. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo penalize website postings that are very analogous as they seem like a copied data to the crawlers. Your website could have products listed and displayed in repeats based on their importance like price, quantity or availability at times. When the search engine is shown that the site is a legitimate part of the original content it will spare the site re-indexing or red flagging process. Rel canonical comes to your rescue when such a problems arise.
Apt use of Rel canonical
Search engines observe every change in your website and its related tags. Without complete know-how, using rel canonical can hurt your well designed and reputed site. Rel canonical is easy to use, but the correct application of this tag makes all the difference. Use rel canonical tag on the print version to direct it towards original page. You can just edit the <head> tag of the page without any modifications in the side of the server.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have search engines that identify rel canonical tag. The Search engine considers this tag only within a specific domain or sub domains, not across various multiple domains. The complete link set from your canonized page may or may not pass on to the other.
Improved Page navigation
Browsing a site can be improved using rel canonical in cases where redirecting a page would not help. URL format may be the important criteria, as some products require category and sub-category page formats. To prevent risking re-indexing and red flagging of print versions rel canonical tag comes handy.
Checks multiple URL creation
Session IDs are frequently generated and 301 redirects may not be possible in such cases, rel canonical can be put to use here. URLs with tracking code that check link clicks or measure paths can have rel canonical tag. Keep your URLs relevant and sensible, so that adding a rel canonical doesn’t change your visitor graph extensively.
Some rel canonical benefits
In case you have ‘page not found’ error rel canonical will allow indexing of the page during repairs or redesigning of web pages. Search engines following a heuristic approach to find the canonical in case of a 404 error. You should follow the rules as you use rel canonical for relative paths and search engine processes your website in a regular format. Slight differences in your page content may be allowed while using rel canonical you must prevent chain of rel canonical to ascertain optimum canonization.
Rel canonical tag not required for the following:
- Novel sites need not have rel canonical. The print version pages can be avoided when you have the opportunity to design it accordingly.
- Moving to a single page from a complete site through canonization would not be a smart choice, as it could ruin years of hard work. Search engines de-index such pages and your ranking could be affected on a large scale.
- Pagination may not involve repeated content, canonization because there are some techniques to keep crawlers off slightly similar pages.
Wrapping up the guide
Partial knowledge is harmful and this proverb suits best if you are using massively altering tags. After through solution searches if rel canonical is your only way out, use it gradually after repeated analysis and testing. Each search engine has its own way of processing such tags, so well informed use of such tags is recommended.
Everyone wants to compete and enhance their internet property for more pertinent marketing and prevent content duplication. Hence, it is essential that we use rel canonical tag wisely.
