Canonicalisation - Best Approach?
-
Hi
I have been reading into canonicalisation and I am looking for professional advice and guidance on the best approach as there are many conflicting views on how to implement a solution.
I have added to the homepage
http://www.cheapfindergames.com/" />
so that http://cheapfindergames.com and index.php redirects to the www version.
Or would it be better using .htaccess if this is the case what code would be needed to achieve the above?
Many Thanks
-
If what you are trying to achieve is to have a canonical that is the www version, you are better served doing two things: First go to Google webmaster tools and select a preferred domain (from GWMT):
To specify your preferred domain:
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Site configuration, click Settings.
- In the Preferred domain section, select the option you want.
You may need to reverify ownership of your sites. Because setting a preferred domain impacts both crawling and indexing, we need to ensure that you own both versions. Typically, both versions point to the same physical location, but this is not always the case. Generally, once you have verified one version of the domain, we can easily verify the other using the original verification method. However, if you've removed the file, meta tag, or DNS record, you'll need to repeat the verification steps.
Note: Once you've set your preferred domain, you may want to use a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from your non-preferred domain, so that other search engines and visitors know which version you prefer.
To do the 301 redirect of the non www to the www here is the script from Scriptalicious:
**RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]**
Hope this helps you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirection loop. Best way to resolve...
Hi Guys Got a warning on a crawl today "Your page is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page... and so on." In GWMT it is set to www. and also back-end in my server. I also have an SSL deployed and in my htaccess the rule is added to ensure all pages got to SSL. Any of you guys have advice regarding the best route to go or should I "IGNORE" this warning as all other aspects are clocking 95%+? Thanks in advance Daren
Technical SEO | | Daren-WebSupportLab0 -
How to best keep client hosting separate but manageable?
For those of you with a number of client accounts for which you do hosting, how do you keep them manageable but separate? Let's assume you have both public and private clients and don't want someone to do a reverse IP/server lookup and be able to identify everyone you work with. Additionally clients can be working in the US/UK/EU and want localised hosting. I'm looking for a large shared hosting provider (with some potentially dedicated options) who will let me manage accounts on multiple physical servers in a variety of geolocations from a single billing account and preferably a single admin panel as well. Once client contracts end I also need the ability to let them take over the hosting in a break-away account and to be able to add their own billing details. I'm looking for a solution a bit more upmarket than something like SEOhosting from Hostgator (which doesn't allow me to specify geolocation territories anyway), potentially with an account manager to help me sort out the individual requirements. Does anybody have any ideas of providers or what I should be searching for to get what I want?
Technical SEO | | I3SEO0 -
Non WWW. versus WWW. versions, current best practice ?
Hi Im increasingly seeing sites not using the www., but understand from various sources including seomoz that best practice is to be on the www. with the non www version 301'd to the www version. Since alot of sites are clearly doing this the other way round now is that better practice or the former still best ? I appreciate that non www version gives you 3 more characters for url's but apart from that is there any benefit over the www. version ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Best practice for author tags: G+ personal or G+ company page?
I work for a company that has a corporate G+ page. I have a personal G+ page. When I write articles for the company blog there are 2 questions that come up: (1) for the rel="author" tag within the blog posting on the company's blog, should I reference my personal G+ page, or the company's G+ page as the author? (2) which G+ page, mine or my company's, should share the link to the blog posting on the company's site? Or should both share it? My goal is to build up author rank for either me or the company I work for (don't care which) so that after a while the Google organic search listing will include the author thumbnail if the article ranks for the search query. I don't care if the thumbnail is me or my company; just trying to figure out how to best link everything to maximize the chance of getting an author thumbnail in the search rankings. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
Best way to manage SEO for a massive events listing website.
I run a website that tracks entertainment for the entire state of South Dakota. While I've made some fantastic strides in gaining traffic, I feel lost on how to manage all those entries in an SEO friendly manner. I have a TON of errors showing on my crawl diagnostics and I just don't know what to do. The nature of the website is such that there are going to be duplications all over the place. I know that I can help some of this by getting my canonical links setup properly (that's coming in my next version of the site's theme), but what else should I do to make those event listings friendly for the SE's?? http://www.entertainsd.com
Technical SEO | | jcherland0 -
Determine the best URL structure
Hi guys, I'm working my way through a URL restructure at the moment and I've several ideas about the best way to do it. However, it would be good to get some views on this. At the moment I'm working on a property website - http://bit.ly/N7eew7 As you can quickly see, the URL structure of the site needs a lot of work. Similar websites - http://bit.ly/WXH5WG http://bit.ly/Q3UiLC One of the sites has http://www.domain.ie/property-to-let/location/ And the other has http://www.domain.ie/rentals/location/property-to-let/ I could do with some guidance about the best steps to take with this. I've a few ideas myself but this is a massive project. Cheers, Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkScully0 -
What is the best approach to specifying a page's language?
I have read about a number of different tags that can accomplish this so it is very confusing. For example, should I be using: OR
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Best way to change from one CMS to wordpress??
I have a client that was working with another SEO consultant and they pretty much dropped the ball big time! The SEO company took his site off of wordpress and put it on another CMS (http://www.wsinetsuccess.com/WSI-E-Fusion). My client would like to take hes site off of the WSI E Fusion platform and back onto wordpress. My question is how is the best way to going about doing this with out loosing all of the PR to the site? Should I find all of the URLs that are on the site and just 301 them to the right page? Thank you very much for your help.
Technical SEO | | pakevin0