In our previous blog post on canonicalization we gave a brief definition and covered the most common webmaster concern of www versus non-www versioning of a domain.

This blog post will cover the canonical tag which was released in February 2009 to help website owners and their webmasters regulate how search engines sorted their content in the hope of keeping duplicate content out of each search engine’s index.

First, what is the canonical tag and what does it look like?  The canonical tag is marked by rel=”canonical” and is placed in the header of the source code for a webpage.

Here is an example:

<link rel=”canonical” href=” http://www.morevisibility.com/blogs.php” />

This tag notes that the URL version listed as the href would be the version that is canonical, or preferred by you, the webmaster.  It should be noted that rel=”canonical” is not the same as a 301 redirect.  The 301 redirect automatically re-directs both search engine bots and human visitors to your perferred version of the page. The canonical tag is only ever seen by search engine bots, not users.  A 301 redirect is also considered a stronger signal that there is a canonical source, whereas the canonical tag is taken as more of a suggestion and may be overruled by the search engines if their analysis or algorithms see that a different page seems to be a better fit.  The canonical tag also has cross-domain functionality; it can be used in cases where it may not be easy to set up redirects, such as when you are migrating from one domain to another and are unable to create server-side redirects.  Google has stated that they consider the rel=”canonical” link element as a hint or suggestion and not as an absolute directive.

These two techniques can help webmasters convey to the search engines which version of their webpages to include (or exclude if needed) from the indices and how they prefer link metrics (such as link juice) to be assigned.  Contact MoreVisibility if you need help with the canonicalization of your website.

Canonicalization is often misunderstood by website owners who are frustrated with different versions, or unintended duplicated pages, appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs). The concept behind canonicalization is that, when duplicate pages are created, there is one preferred version indicated, called the canonical version. If no canonical version is indicated, the search engines may choose one or more versions to show in their SERPs.  Canonicalization problems are common and every website owner should make sure to check on the status of their website. We featured canonicalization as one of our Top 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes in our August 2011 Newsletter.

The most common concern with canonicalization is www versus non-www of a domain in a URL. In this situation http://www.companyname.com and http://companyname.com are seen as separate pages. If each page serves a 200 OK, search engine spiders can come across each version and see them as stand alone pages, not the same page, and possibly consider one of them duplicate content. To keep this from happening, we suggest that you select which version of your domain you would like to be the canonical version and set the other version to redirect.  Let’s assume that we want http://www.companyname.com to be the canonical version. Placing redirects from every non www page to the www page would be needed to indicate to the search engines that www pages are considered the canonical version.  We also advise against any duplication of your website whether on the same domain or on other domains that you may own.

In the next blog in this series, we will cover the canonical tag.

Of course, writing interesting and engaging content is a major part of increasing the readership and popularity of your blog. But from the standpoint of being indexed by Google and found via search results, there are several tactics you should be using for each post:

Promotion: When you launch a new blog, you can leverage the popularity of your main site to boost the visibility of the blog. Include links back to your blog on your main website and in marketing emails.

Social Sharing: As above, you should also update your social media accounts when you add new content to your blog. Although the links you post on social media sites are usually no-follow links, they still have a good chance of traffic and being shared by others.

Join Directories: Most people only consider joining a directory when they are launching an entirely new website. However, there are directories just for blogs that can increase your traffic. For starters, check out

• www.bloggingfusion.com

• dir.blogflux.com

• www.blogcatalog.com

• blogsearch.google.com/ping

Update Frequently: Google favors fresh content and active websites, so you should update your blog frequently and consistently. In most cases, one to three new posts per week will suffice

Combining these tactics with your engaging content is a surefire way to increase your visibility and blog readership.