Avoid duplicate content with the link rel canonical tag.

The REL=canonical tag is definitely something that should be included on every page of your site.  This tag solves a lot of potential duplicate content problems and there is no reason it shouldn’t be a standard part of your code.  Another recent advancement in duplicate content prevention is Google’s new dynamic parameter tool.  Actually we should give the credit to Yahoo Site Explorer for coming up with the dynamic parameter handling idea first.    These new tools significantly alter the approach to addressing duplicate content issues although a healthy 301 redirect strategy is also still part of a good duplicate content prevention plan.

If you didn’t see my webinar about View Through Data and how it dramatically changes the way we look at search and social media, you should really check it out.  This data allows you to ask the question, of all the people that I am seeing as bookmark traffic, or alternatively, of all the people who typed my company name into Google, how many were exposed to a specific social media site, video, press release, Website mention, web page with a static advertisement, or any other digital asset.  And the amazing part is, no link needs to exist between the asset in question and your site.   It’s not voodoo and we didn’t make a pact with the devil, but it is amazing.  If you want more information about how you and your company can leverage view through data to give you insight into your analytics that was previously impossible, contact me at catfish@businessol.com and I will set you up with someone who can answer questions specific to your application and analytics platform.  But seriously, this stuff is incredible, its brand new and it can really help you understand what is causing your brand related searches as well as paint a much clearer picture of your social media ROI.

First Link Check - FirstLinkChecker.com

One of the most exciting things we are doing right now is the official public launch of our new tool “First Link Checker” at www.firstlinkchecker.com.  We did some testing and found out that what SEOmoz reported a while back was true.  Only the anchor text found in first link between two pages is counted in Google’s scoring.  So this tool highlights the first links found in source so that you can see which links are being counted and which ones are not.  Benj will be releasing a blog post on the subject this Friday to coincide with our initial public launch of the tool this weekend at DMA (the tool is in Beta right now).  We hope this is the first of many tools we hope to develop that will be useful to the SEO community.

WebmasterWorld's Pubcon

And with all this going on, I am really excited to be headed to Pubcon next month to talk about SEO for Mega sites, meaning very, very large sites.  This topic is very dear to me as many of my clients have absolutely huge sites.  It’s one of the reasons we built our in house SEO tool called SEO Explorer.  It’s been going on for a couple years now.  Hopefully in 2010 we will be able to extend it to people outside of BusinessOnLine.  We will see!  But in the meantime, I have a lot of cool things to share about SEO for really large companies.  So join me in Vegas next month for Pubcon!

Search Engine Strategies

I will also be speaking at SES Chicago in December.  Ill be back on the Beyond the Numbers session where I will look at some ways to augment your analytics data and how that should be driving your ongoing SEO Strategy.

Also look for a new blog post from me next week where I will give everyone a cool excel trick that allows you to measure your long tail keyword performance.  Thanks again for everyone’s patience with my blogging schedule!  Have a great week in search and hopefully I will see you next month in Las Vegas!

Bookmark to:

Related SEO Blog Post

• November 11, 2009 -- Free Long Tail Keyword Analysis, SEO Research and Measurement Tool from BusinessOnLine (6)
• September 14, 2009 -- First Link Checker in Alpha Stage Tested by Initial SEOs from SES (2)
• March 30, 2009 -- My SES New York 2009 Experience: SEO Adventures 3000 Miles from Home (1)
• November 11, 2009 -- Pubcon Link: Attribution Analytics Data (Formerly View Through Data) Free Webinar (0)
• March 3, 2009 -- Eliminate Potential Google Duplicate Content Penalty with SEO Tag "REL=Canonical" (5)

*special note about “duplicate content penalties”: Some people feel that it is very important to be clear that a duplicate content “penalty” is not really a penalty. Google is not punishing your site for having a Web page that has the same content as another Web page. But what it is happening is, if your page is not the original version of the content, it is highly likely that your page will be put into the supplemental index which makes it less likely to rank well for competitive terms. So in effect, it’s the same end result of incurring a penalty but in fact there has been no “penalty.” For some reason this game of semantics is very important to some members of the SEO community, so I wanted to make sure I was clear with everyone that I know the phrase “duplicate content penalty” is not entirely accurate, but it is how most people view the situation.

Having said that, here are some of the issues that the rel=canonical tag can help with:

1. Capitalization: The search engines treat each unique URL string as a separate entity. So any variation in a URL, no matter how slight, creates a new URL in the eyes of the search engine. This includes differences in capitalization, although Google specifically has been much better at figuring this out on its own since the “Big Daddy” update. So for example, when an engine indexes these URLs:
   http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog/ and http://www.businessol.com/Seo-Blog/ it sees two different URLs for the same content.

   This happens often because Webmasters are not standardized in the way that they link to 3rd party websites. Some Webmasters and blogs capitalize letters in URLs out of coding practices or habit.

   In the old days, Google would have not been able by itself to figure out that these two URLs are the same page. And therefore one of these two URLs (most likely the one with the least amount of Page Rank) would have been put into supplemental results and the links that pointed to it would essentially be lost (because now they point to a page in the supplemental results that isn’t going to rank for much and they are not helping the other URL that is listed in Google). But nowadays, Google is pretty good about figuring this stuff out although not perfect. And the other engines are not very good at this kind of thing. So by including the Rel=Canonical tag on every page of the site, you make it easy for all the engines to consolidate URLs that have capitalization problems.

2. Dynamic URL Strings: Whether its tracking codes like www.domain.com?tracking-code or CMS systems that generate multiple URLs for the same page, the issues with these pages are the same as the issues for capitalization. But now instead of an elaborate 301 redirect strategy or costly adjustments to your backend system, this simple tag solves the problem.
3. Other Canonical Issues: Some other issues that Google already does fairly well but that can still cause problems include www versus non www version of the Web site (domain.com versus www.domain.com), session IDs and also linking using IP addresses. This tag if correctly implemented, should fix all of these problems.

Given the number of potential issues that this tag can correct, it should be added to every page of your site. If your site is dynamic, this should be a pretty easy addition.

Bookmark to:

Related SEO Blog Post

• February 13, 2009 -- Google Announces New SEO Tool to Stop Duplicate Content Problems! (4)
• June 27, 2008 -- Stop! Don’t Move – One of the Most Common SEO Mistakes Website Owners Make (6)
• January 18, 2008 -- 301 Redirects and Marketing URLs (0)
• December 12, 2007 -- One More Wednesday Thought (0)
• October 14, 2009 -- Catfish is Back! What’s new in SEO for 2010 (3)

Good news from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live who have announced support for the rel=”canonical” tag. This new tag with the following syntax:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever”>

This should be placed in the head section of each page of the site, with the URL that should be used as the primary URL for that page.

So if for example, if this page is linked to somewhere in the site with this URL:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever&trackingid=1234

where a tracking id has been appended, Google, Yahoo and MSN will now understand that this page is really the original:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever

Therefore the duplicate URL is not indexed and the link connectivity is assigned to the right page. This is a wonderful new tool that now allows sites with extensive tracking codes to use that technology without duplicate content issues. Additionally, sites have CMS systems or dynamic Web platforms that generate multiple URL combinations for the same page can now be brought under control without a huge list of 301 redirects. Cheers to the search engines for getting this one right.

Catfish

Bookmark to:

Related SEO Blog Post

• November 25, 2009 -- Will Google Copy Bing with Categories on the Side Bar? (2)
• August 7, 2009 -- Should I Trust Bing’s Search Engine Results? (2)
• March 3, 2009 -- Eliminate Potential Google Duplicate Content Penalty with SEO Tag "REL=Canonical" (5)
• January 2, 2009 -- 10 SEO Tips from Google’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (5)
• October 3, 2008 -- Why You Shouldn’t Panic if Your Google Page Rank Goes Down (7)

If you are not familiar with Rand, he runs SEOmoz.com, is a very well respected speaker at a number of SEO conferences, and he has contributed a great deal to the SEO community. So it’s very exciting for me to have an opportunity to speak at the same conference as Rand and talk a little SEO. I know that the OMS community will be very impressed with the depth of knowledge and experience that Rand brings to the table. And he is a really nice guy.

I will also be trying to bring some new SEO ideas and tactics to the table for 2009. My presentation this year will be focused on targeting the long tail. If you’re not familiar with the concept of long tail SEO, here is a good reference for you. Essentially we are talking about putting yourself in a position to capture as many of the less competitive keyword phrases as you can, on an ongoing and consistent basis. During my presentation, we will be talking about some of the on page, off page, universal search and social media SEO tactics that will improve your ability to target relevant, long tail keywords.

Some of the SEO topics that we will touch on will include keyword research, page titles, content optimization, internal linking strategies, blogging tactics, other social media opportunities and using analytics to augment your campaign.

It makes a lot of sense for companies to focus on long tail SEO for 2009. Advancements in personalization and Geo targeting are making it less and less likely that any two users will see the same listings for the same search query. That’s not to say that rankings for competitive keywords won’t continue to be a focus of SEO. But rather, just like the stock market, you should be diversified and not put all your SEO eggs in one basket.

One last thing, if you haven’t already signed up for free to be part of the OMS community and checked out all the cool SEO and Internet marketing blog content, visit the OMS Blog and do it!

Original dog image is a modification of a preview image of a 3D dog model by Andrey Kravchenko on his gallery on TurboSquid™

Bookmark to:

Related SEO Blog Post

• February 11, 2009 -- Online Marketing Summit (OMS) 2009 Conference Recap (1)
• November 11, 2009 -- Free Long Tail Keyword Analysis, SEO Research and Measurement Tool from BusinessOnLine (6)
• October 14, 2009 -- Catfish is Back! What’s new in SEO for 2010 (3)
• March 3, 2009 -- Eliminate Potential Google Duplicate Content Penalty with SEO Tag "REL=Canonical" (5)
• February 13, 2009 -- Google Announces New SEO Tool to Stop Duplicate Content Problems! (4)