Often in SEO, there are some things you may miss that may ultimately have a negative effect on your site. Nicolas Prudhon goes over that “one thing” you may have overlooked while working on your site’s SEO.
You have been working so hard to optimize your site and yet you may have forgotten one thing. If you are any bit conscientious about the SEO of your site, you probably have a good keyword, a good page title, backlinks and so on.
Did you know that because of the one thing you forgot to do, part of that hard work is going to waste?
Take a few seconds to look at the following URLs:
- http://www.mydomain.com
- http://mydomain.com
- http://www.mydomain.com/index.html
- http://www.mydomain.com/index.php
- http://mydomain.com/index.html
- http://mydomain.com/index.php
If you are like most website out there, it is very likely that those 6 URLs actually return the same page.
As you do further analysis of your pages from the previous links, you’ll see that you may encounter different sets of backlinks and PR.
This is due to URL canonicalization
Indeed, to you and your visitors, all those links may resolve to the same page, but for the search engines, those are 6 very different pages. The decision is then left to the search engine as to which one it should show you.
In most of the cases, the URL returned will be the one with the most inbound and outbound links, thus the process is invisible to the webmaster in most instances.
The main problem about this when it comes to SEO is the simple fact that part of your efforts is leaked onto those different URLs.
In order for you to palliate to this problem, you must instruct the search engines that those URLs are in fact only one.
By doing so you’ll be able to optimize the SEO working efforts.
The process is done very simply by adding a few command lines to your .htaccess file as follows:
- To redirect a http://mydomain.com to http://www.mydomain.com:
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %(HTTP_HOST) ^mydomain.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
- To redirect your http://www.mydomain.com/index.html to http://www.mydomain.com:
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %(THE_REQUEST) ^[A-Z] {3,9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule (.*) index\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L] - To redirect your http://www.mydomain.com/index.php to http://www.mydomain.com:
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %(THE_REQUEST) ^[A-Z] {3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule (.*) index\.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]
Note: don’t forget to replace “mydomain” by your actual domain name.
What This Code Does
By adding those commands to your .htaccess file, you are telling the search engines that regardless of which of those URL is requested, they should take you to http://www.mydomain.com
The method used is called a 301(permanent) redirect. It is an extremely powerful SEO tool as any page moved or redirected by this mean doesn’t lose its value.
It may sounds a bit complicated and technical, but truly as far as you are concerned, it’s only a matter of copy and paste (and replacing “mydomain” with your actual domain name).
Congratulations, you now can enjoy full benefits from your SEO work!
The Discussion
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Thanks for the great post Nick. I’ve never heard of URL Canonicalization, but this is something that I’m now going to apply to this blog, and any future blogs. I’m no SEO genius, so this really helps.
Thanks a lot, and I hope to see some more posts from you soon!
Actually Alex, despite the fact that this article is actually much more “technical” than what I write usually, it is exactly because a lot of people never heard about it that I though it may come handy
Anyway, I’m glad to be of some help and thank you for publishing my article so fast!
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..SEO help with Niche Marketing
People mostly falter with the “www” and “without www” thing in their blog url!
The major search engines actually added a tag recently that allows you to tell them what url you want for canonicalization. Within 2 days of the announcement there were 3 wordpress plugins that were out to auto create the tag on pages for you. Just another route to look into.
I really hate to link to one of my own sites in a comment but I did a writeup a QUICK post here: http://www.stuartconover.com/2009/02/19/canonical-links-plug-ins/ with links to 2 Wordpress and 1 Joomla plugin. Figured they might prove useful after today’s post
That’s pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing that Stuart!
Hi Stuart, I believe that it is not the “link” itself that gives a spam feel, but rather if it is related and helpful to the discussion or not.
As Alex mentioned earlier, people have very few information about it, so whatever can be useful and helpful for their understanding is more than welcome!
Honestly, I wasn’t even aware myself of those plugins so I have to thank you too for sharing this resources.
That’s really something I love about those blog discussion, we all can share and learn so much!
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Why my site is not indexed in Google?
Will installing the plugins have the exact same effect? I’d rather not mess with the .htaccess if I don’t have to.
Btw, my commentluv shows another Nicolas guest post.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..3 Secrets to Writing for the Search Engines
Hi Dennis, through what I read about this plugin, although they may look like doing the same thing, I think I found a major difference there.
“This simple plugin helps you easily tell the search engine bots the preferred version of a page by specifying the canonical properly within your head tag.”
The code used in the .htaccess file uses the 301 redirect which not only tells the search engines your exact canonical setting, but ALSO maintains and unify all your SEO starts (ranking, PR, etc…)
The code in your .htaccess file is merely 3 small lines, against having some extra meta information in the header of each and every page of your site.
It’s very easy for you to see if you have done the things right. After updating your .htaccess file, just try to access your site without the www; if the page that opens automatically is the one with www you have done the things correctly.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Discerning mind against Information Overload
Thanks for that, I’ll give it a go.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..3 Secrets to Writing for the Search Engines
Very well done. .htaccess and httpd.conf files make all the difference in SEO in most cases.
Great post,
Big D
Thank you David,
I really appreciate the comment.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Internet Marketing Starts with Personal Relationships
I have also neveer heard of URL Canonicalization before.
Something I think a lot of us should be looking into.
Dean Saliba’s last blog post..Blogitive – Nice To Add To Your Collection
Thanks for the comment Dean!
It’s not really surprising actually. As human we don’t really ask ourselves this kind of question. Common sense tells us that it’s the same page that is returned… but search engines don’t have common sense.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Discerning mind against Information Overload
I have always realized that index.html, index.php, etc. are all different pages, but never really factored in the SEO of it all. Yet, I knew that using WWW and Non WWW is a no-no, and you should redirect them just like with the index pages. Seriously disappointed with myself for not seeing that at first, haha.
Just a quick note about that.
Although my example shows you how to redirect a non www site towards a www site, the opposite can be done too.
From a SEO point of view it doesn’t matter which version you choose, with www or without www. What matters if for you to be consistent with your choice.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Discerning mind against Information Overload
yes , valid point raised ,Google see links with www and without www as different pages hence your link juice is split between two pages . So first thing while doing on-site optimization we do is to redirect non-www url to www url
You’re absolutely right. Actually most of the people will only think of redirecting their non-www towards their www url, but it’s good to include the index page, when we think about it, it’s the same too and it doesn’t take much more work to do so too.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..WVO is taking over SEO Part 3
I’m glad I started blogging with a purchased domain url. If I didn’t, I would have a lot of backlinks to a domain.blogspot.com link instead.
Kai Lo’s last blog post..Web Domain Value
Considering how cheap domain names are now, I would definitely recommend people to get one as soon as possible. It’s really sad to see your hard work going to waste just because you didn’t planned properly at first.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..WordPress Tutorial
Great informational post, never knew about this sort of thing.
Had to rattle my brain a little for this one!
Hi Evan, sorry for this post to be a bit technical, however without going into the details in the meaning of the code itself, the concept is not that hard to understand.
I’m glad that I have been able to help you there.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..The 5 Best Friends of the full time Internet Marketer
So that means that www or non www, it doesn’t matter? I mean I can change the domain name of my blog by going to wordpress settings and changing the blog URL. But what do you suggest? getting a www attached to my blog name or just keep it as it and maintain the uniformity? Does it have something to do with the SEO?
Hi Davey, that’s correct, www or non www is the same, it’s just a matter of personal preference only. Whatever form you use, make sure to keep using it everywhere, if you use the non www make sure not to include www in your inbound links.
And yes, it has to do with your SEO and where you distribute your “link power”, the tip showed in this article is to help you channel all those leaks into one uniform URL.
I couldn’t get it to work. The www redirect did nothing and the the other 2 gave error 500. My domain is running on RedHat host. I changed the mydomain to the correct one.
Hi Andrew,
Quite surprising but anyway, try the following code:
===========================================
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
===========================================
Note: don’t forget to change “domain” by your actual domain name!
Let me know how it goes.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Targeting your Market with Google Trends
Thanks Nicolas!
That worked.
Awesome Andrew!
If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask, I’m here to help!
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Can We Survive the “NoFollow” Black hole?
Thanks Nicholas – Great resource
I’m already using the redirect to the www – wished I’d run across this a year ago!
Howver, I am getting 500 errors trying to use the code to get the .com instead of the .com/index.htm (did replace the .html in your code with .htm)
I’m using Godaddy running Linux if that makes a difference.
Thanks much!
Finally someone who can write a good blog ! . This is the kind of information that is useful to those want to increase their SERP’s. I loved your post and will be telling others about it. Subscribing to your RSS feed now. Thanks
Yes, Alex and Janith are doing an excellent job with this blog!
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Optimizing for Keywords that Get Clicked On
I’ve tried it 2 days ago, I want to redirect my blog URL with W W W to without W W W. After I’d done it, I can’t access my blog anymore. So now I remain the same coding without changing anything.
Btw, with these way, can we also redirect single post as well?
Regards,
Lee
Hi Lee, I replied to you on my blog.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..SEO Quiz – Questions and Answers
Thanks. I’ll update my .htaccess files right away
Great post – learned something new today – will edit my htaccess files now (now i realised how impt it is to the security of my blog)
ZQ
.-= ZQ | Travel Blog´s last blog ..Saturday Singapore Issue 3: Singapore Flyer =-.
Actually the primary use is for SEO, but it does indeed potentially also solve some security issues.
Doesn’t Thesis automatically take care of this for you?
.-= Adam Baird´s last blog ..A Lesson From Moving: Consistency! =-.
Yes it does! Another great reason to get Thesis Theme.
thanks for sharing this info
Thanks for this mod_rewrite tutorial. I have always problems to set it up correctly.
The best way for me is to choose http://www.domain.com over domain.com. It seems more natural to me this way. And if you have set up one way or another, please remember NOT TO SWITCH later, when you have brought your blog to some level of development, as it may lower your PR rank, and SERP results…
.-= New Cars Guru´s last blog ..New Porsche 911 GT3 RS =-.
Thanks for the info but when I tried to add those codes to my .htaccess file I got a “500 Internal Error”. I saw on another comment you are giving another code, but it is to replace the ones you mention? I am just a bit confused…
.-= Prisqua´s last blog ..Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-18 =-.
Hi Prisqua,
Sorry for the late reply.
Yes the other code I give is to be used instead of the previous one. Depending of your server configuration and .htaccess file you may have experienced some difficulties with the first code, but this should be fine with the other one I provided.
.-= Nicolas Prudhon´s last blog ..Staying Ahead Of Your Competition In 5 Steps =-.
This is main part in SEO mistakes as i have seen people building links with main url and internal linking with index.html or home.php etc
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Using Podcasts To Increase Traffic Flow To Your Website =-.
Hi Nicolas
If I run my blog Thesis theme, should I just forget updating .htaccess altogether? Thanks
Cool posting here. please keep in continue.
Regards~
Prasen Dutta
Business Development LLC, at software development india
Great tutorial, i didn’t know about this, i will change it tomorrow, need to create a htfile first because i don’t have it in my files…
Its just happened to me 3 days ago, 6 keywords of my site are at top of Google and suddenly just in four hours all of them disappear as they were not even on Google. First think that come into my mind was that i got penalize, but that was not the case i work on it and at last solve the problem, but really if i had find this resource i will easily solve it. Really embarrassing issue for me Canonicalization?
Yeah, the problem is that you almost always judge others by applying your own standards – what I mean is that there are some things like this URL canonization which you seem to have known for years, and consequently you by default think that almost all other webmasters already know that – it’s just that simple. But then you find out that hundreds or thousands of webmasters repeat one and the same mistake – and you just keep being surprised at how that is possible.
I think All In One SEO takes care of this for Wordpress.
.-= Car Transportation´s last blog ..Video: What the recalled Lexus LS steering wheel defect looks like =-.
Hi there, great info, I just can’t seem to find the .htaccess file, I’m using the thesis theme.
thanks!
Laura
Hi, the code is not working for me either. What else can I try to do to make this work? I have thesis theme, so do I still need to add this code?
Hey there again, ok, so I put this code in:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^positiveattitudequotes.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.positiveattitudequotes.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %(THE_REQUEST) ^[A-Z] {3,9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule (.*) index\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %(THE_REQUEST) ^[A-Z] {3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule (.*) index\.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]
And as soon as I do that, it gives me the 501 error redirect message.
Where exactly in the document should this code be placed? I thought maybe it might have something to do with that, so I tried it in a few different places, but as soon as I save it, it goes to an error message….ARG!! What else can I do? Because I can see that mydomain.com/index.html and .php are there and when I type it in, it goes to that page and retains the .index.html…so I’m assuming that right now I’m experiencing URL canonization, right? How do I fix this?
Thanks,
Laura
Hi Nicolos, Important topic to blog with. 301 Redirecting codes differ with respective to their servers.
I would like to share the codes for two different servers here.
1. For Apache server (non www to www)
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(domain\.com)(:80)? [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
We should place these codes in .htaccess file.
2. For Microsoft ISAPI server, (non www to www)
RewriteCond Host: ^domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http\://www\.domain\.com$1 [I,RP]
File redirctions
RewriteCond Host: www\.domainname\.com
RewriteRule /index\.html / [I,RP]
But it requires Microsoft ISAPI tool to carry on this process.
Thank you.
Great tips and advice thanks for the post
He dear
Thanks for this mod_rewrite tutorial. I have always problems to set it up correctly.
I think All In One SEO takes care of this for Word press. Thanks for sharing this information.
Very informative. I’ve known for a while that 301 redirects are essential for websites I just never knew how exactly to code them. Thanks a lot for that. The rel=”canonical” tag is also very effective for this purpose. It also requires a little less technical knowledge and is endorsed by Google. This is especially useful for guest posts as it let the engines know where the content originated from. Hopefully sometime in the near future scrapers will begin utilizing the canonical tag
.
i read this blog and i think this is nice blog….great info, I just can’t seem to find the .htac cess file, I’m using the thesis theme…Actually the primary use is for SEO, but it does indeed potentially also solve some security issues as well as valid point raised ,Google see links with www and without www as different pages hence your link juice is split between two pages . So first thing while doing on-site optimization we do is to redirect non-www url to www url…
thanks for sharing informaion…
This has been a confusing stuff with newbies, including me. Is duplicate content actually still exist?
And also, i had bad experience about changing the address, because it needs a whole lots of time for google to re-indexed my blog a again a few months back.
Thanks for this infos, i have checked mine, thanks god, it redirect to one address
This canonicalization is tough nut to get your head around. I mean, I have my site redirected with .htaccess to the non-www version which was fine, but what about that trailing slash? Does that count as a seperate page in Google’s eyes? Even worse I’ve seen addresses appearing with a hash also. Eg: http://example.com/# – yet it points to the home! I’m lost to be honest.
Great tutorial, i didn’t know about this, i will change it tomorrow, need to create a ht file first because i don’t have it in my files. Great post – learned something new today.
This is the most comprehensive guide I have come across. Thanks for sharing this with us! There are many things even experienced bloggers can learn from this post.
I use the All in one SEO plugin in wordpress and on the settings pages there is a place to check for that says “This option will automatically generate Canonical URLS for your entire WordPress installation. This will help to prevent duplicate content penalties by google”. Does that do that same thing?
That’s pretty interesting..and BTW I have a question @Wordpress I own a blog and if you open it directly in the browser without ‘www’ it would automatically re-direct you to the url with ‘www’ included..but if you search in Google with the pre-defined keywords it is displaying the url without ‘www’. I have no idea why? is this where “Canonicalization” comes into picture???? wat do you say Nicholas?
Nicolas, thank you for a very enlightening article. I have noticed a couple of the pages mentioned and wondered what effect, if any, they might represent. You have given me another tool for my seo toolbox.
I am going to sign-up for your SEO course as soon as I leave here.
Many thanks!
I have also neveer heard of URL Canonicalization before. It is really important?
Something I think a lot of us should be looking into.
This is great piece of knowledge you are sharing with us. And this is true also we keep us busy by doing the activities like blogging articles, discussions and doesn’t pay attention on this at all.
You can also change to a htaccess file working on the control panel of your server. Select 301 and the change will be made immediately. Thank you
Thanks for the post. Lyn Leon
You can also use a meta tag to show the canonial url. In combination with the .htaccess that would be best i think.
Example:
Thanks for sharing tips.
An old trap, which a little bit of mild OCD helped me avoid!
I always liked my domain names to be the same, so take for example my website http://www.christopher-roberts.co.uk/ I always linked to it from my own sites/blogs and in comments on other sites/blogs the same – with the “http://www.” and the “/” at the end.
One day I stumble across the Matt Cutts SEO video about this and smiled to myself thinking that this was a little bit of SEO that I had already done
Good to point this out to people, it really is very important!
Isn’t this a default option at Wordpress sites? You choose what version you want to show up: the www or non www.
Thanks for sharing this great piece of knowledge and this is true that we keep ourselves busy with all other SEO services but does not pay much attention over this.
Yes, cannonical issues really affect your SEO. But I have recently heard that 301 re-direct doesn’t transferring full credit
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