Canonical Tag Implementation

Canonical Tag

Code used by search engine crawlers/spiders to tell search engines what URL is the original version of your webpage.

Custom 404 Pages

404s can appear if a URL is mistyped, a search engine link is out of date, or if a link on the site is broken. You want to create a custom 404 page that will not confuse your readers so they can easily be redirected back to your site.

A 404 page should include a link back to the home page or site map of your website so users can quickly get back to what they were searching for. A search box, if you have a site search, is also a good idea to add to a 404 page. Other than that, keep the page minimal, remove distractions and get the user off the 404 error page as quickly as they got on.

Keep in mind most users may not be so savvy when it comes to the use of a custom 404 page and other Internet jargon so simple explanations in English are key! Although, keeping it minimalist does not have to mean "boring" when it comes to the use of a custom 404 page. The steps to make a custom 404 page are simple and this site can explain in detail how to create one depending on your server. By following these steps, even the most novice individual can achieve success in the development of a custom 404 page.

301 Redirects

If you have old pages on your website that you want to remove or rename, use a 301 redirect to preserve search engine rankings and pass on backlinks and/or page rank. You can even redirect whole websites to new ones through the use of 301 redirects. The use of 301 redirects is easy to do and is very search engine friendly.

The term "301" stands for "moved permanently." 301 redirects are created by using a .htaccess file. Follow this guide to learn how to implement many different types of 301 redirects. When pages are deleted instead of redirected with a 301, they turn into 404s Not Found Pages.

301 non-www to www

From what I can tell Google has yet to clean up the canonicalization problem that arises when the www version of your site gets indexed along with the non-www version (i.e. http://www.seoappoint.com & http://seoappoint.com).

<code>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^seoappoint.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.seoappoint.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</code>

The '(*.)$' says that we'll take anything that comes after http://seoappoint.com and append it to the end of 'http://www.seoappoint.com' (thats the '$1' part) and redirect to that URL. For more grit on how this works checkout a good regular expressions resource or two.

Note: You only have to enter 'RewriteEngine On' once at the top of your .htaccess file.

Alternately you may choose to do this 301 redirect from
in the Apache config file httpd.conf.

<code>
<VirtualHost 67.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName www.seoappoint.com
ServerAdmin info@seoappoint.com
DocumentRoot /home/seoappoint/public_html
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 67.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName seoappoint.com
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.seoappoint.com/$1
</VirtualHost>
</code>

Note that often webhost managers like CPanel would have placed a 'ServerAlias' seoappoint.com in the first VirtualHost entry which would negate the following VirtualHost so be sure to remove the non-www ServerAlias.

301 www to non-www

Finally the www 301 redirect to non-www version would look like:

<code>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.seoappoint.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://seoappoint.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</code>

Redirect All Files in a Folder to One File

Lets say you no longer carry 'Best Travel Deal' and hence want to redirect all requests to the folder /besttraveldeal to a single page called /new-offer.php. This redirect can be accomplished easily by adding the following your .htaccess page:

<code>
RewriteRule ^besttraveldeal(.*)$ /new-offer.php [L,R=301]
</code>

But what if you want to do the same as the above example EXCEPT for one file? In the next example all files from /besttraveldeal/ folder will redirect to the /new-offer.php file EXCEPT /besttraveldeal/tours.html which will redirect to /indiatours.html

<code>
RewriteRule ^besttraveldeal/tours.html /indiatours.html [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^besttraveldeal(.*)$ /new-offer.php [L,R=301]
</code>

Redirect a Dynamic URL to a New Single File

It's common that one will need to redirect dynamic URL's with parameters to single static file:

<code>
RewriteRule ^article.asp?id=(.*)$ /seoservices.html [L,R=301]
</code>

In the above example, a request to a dynamic URL such as http://www.seoappoint.com/article.jsp?id=8932
will be redirected to http://www.seoappoint.com/seoservices.html

What is a Canonical URL?

Many conversation about canonicalization and canonical URLs lately. I’ve mentioned URLs and URL framework a few periods in the last. We imagined that we would help show you the concept of canonical URLs. From an SEO perspective here is the description of a canonical URL.

Canonical URL: google optimization helpful URL that you want the google to cure as trustworthy. In other terms, a canonical URL is the URL that you want readers to see.

Quite often canonical URLs were used to describe the homepage. The common example used is that most individuals cure the following URLs as the same:

www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

The truth is that these are all different URLs. From search engines optimization viewpoint, this can cause a bit of a challenge. Hence the idea of canonicalization. Canonicalization is the process of selecting the best URL (to present to the look for engines) when there are several alternatives available. Generally search engines optimization, such as The search engines will attempt to pick the best URL that they feel is the specialist for that website. However, sometimes they may actually choose the wrong one. Now we must recommend that you have product websites that based on how the customer sailed to the pager dividends a different URL… same website but different URL, now we have a repeat content concern. Along with the major problem for interlinking and exterior link selections.

The best way to prevent this is to let the Google and the customers know which is your “preferred URL” a.k.a canonical URL. One idea is to route all of the versions to your canonical URL (the URL that you want to be the authority). In March, google declared another option with the canonical tag. This tag gives you management of the articles that you want the applications (and users) to see.

Matt Cutts of Search engines reputation has mentioned repeat articles and canonical meta data a number of times. One of the concerns that he was requested included:

Q: So when you say www vs. non-www, you are dealing with a form of canonicalization. Are there other techniques that web addresses get canonicalized?

Ans: Yes, there can be a lot, but most people never observe (or need to notice) them. Google can do things like maintaining or eliminating following cuts, trying to turn web addresses with higher situation to lower situation, or eliminating time IDs from message panel or other application (many message panel application programs will work excellent if you take out the time ID).

We have seen websites that have over 20 variations of the same website but with different URLs. The best option is to have one ultimate location URL. An simple way to do this is through the canonical tag or by redirecting all of these pages to one authoritative page. The canonical tag is simple to use, all you need to do is add this tag to specify your recommended edition of a URL in the (head) area of the repeat articles URLs.

Canonical indicates with regards to or that belong. It also indicates decreased to the best and most considerable type. Just keep in mind that a canonical URL is the best and most considerable (authoritative) edition of the URL that you want to be seen.