Finally the Duplicate content issue is sorted forever.
Thanks to big lord of Search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, for announcing they are now supporting a new “canonical link element” to help webmasters and blog editors get rid of self-created duplicate content in the indexes.
What is rel=”canonical”?
It’s an element that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If you have multiple versions of a single page, which is very common in wordpress blog, this new element allows webmasters to specify which version search engines should use for the content. In short it tells Google and other search bots to consider all those pages and one. It also helps you consolidate authority, link popularity and Pagerank to your preferred version.
How do I use it?
The simplest way to add this tag in your html code is to install Canonical URL Links Wordpress Plugin and activate it. But don’t worry if your site is not WP blog, implementing rel=”canonical” is not a rocket science. You just need to add following tag in to header section where you put Title attribute and Meta Description tag. To Specify the canonical version.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.bloggerslab.com" />
This will tell search bots that the page it indexing should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.bloggerslab.com . And that all of the link & content measures the engines apply should technically go to that URL.
What are the benefits of this tag?
In past we all have faced the issue of multiple version of smaller content on various url. For instance all your blog post can be accessed from author page, categories, tags and sitemap (one like mine on Navigation bar) which creates big problems (confusion would be batter phrase for it)
- Search engines can’t determine which version it should include/exclude from its index. (This leads to another puzzle)
- Search engines can’t decide whether to direct the link metrics such as link popularity, link juice, authority, etc. to one page, or keep it separated between multiple versions.
- Search engines don’t know which version(s) to rank higher in SERP.
When this happens, you suffer huge rankings and traffic losses and engines suffer lowered relevancy. In order to sort out this issue Google and other big search engines have come up with this new link element.
Will this affect my internal page rank?
This tag works only with very similar or identical content, so it won’t send all the link value from your entire site to your home page. Google have applied this safeguard to prevent abuse by other methods such as redirects.
You should use this tag if:
- If your web page is a blog that displays similar content on different pages such as categories, author page and tags.
- If you are selling product or services such as SEO or Web templates. That requires you to put one product in many categories or sub-categories.
This new tag won’t completely eliminate duplicate issues on the web, but it should help make things quite a bit easier. Webmasters and SEO practitioners have been asking for help with these issues for a long time so this should be a greatly welcomed addition.
You can read more about rel=”canonical” at Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Search Blog and
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Thanks for the info. I have had a problem with just this issue, I will try this and see if it works.
I will definitely install this plugin as I have had this problem a lot in the past. Thanks for the share!
Salwas last blog post..Create Better Blogging By Defining Your Niche
Thank you, thank you! I’ve been trying to work through the duplicate content issues for the longest time. And there’s so much contradictory information out there.
I know that canonical won’t totally solve the dup content issue. But, is there any downside to using the WordPress plugin? That is, are there any reasons a WordPress blogger shouldn’t be using it?
Thanks!
Spots last blog post..The Best Hosting Companies For A WordPress Blog
I installed this plugin not too long ago as duplicate content was something I kept hearing bloggers should be concerned with. From what you’ve written, it sounds like this will do the trick. I sure hope so so I can stop worrying about it.
Barbara Swaffords last blog post..What’s In A Name
@Spot there is no reason for not using this pluging, at least none that i know about
@Barbara rel=canonical wont solve your problems completely, you will need to do few more tweaks in your control panel.
like no index for category, tags, author page and and disable self ping (track backs) to fully get rid of duplicate contents.
This sounds like a useful plugin. I have three blogs that I try and manage and using this will take some of the worries out of duplicate content on each site so I can spend more time worrying about all these posts I am trying to write for each so they are all unique.
Tracys last blog post..Protecting Teens From Abduction
Thanks for the information. I’m technically challenged when it comes to these things, so I’m glad there’s a plugin to make it easier.
i was crying for that info! really, helped me a lot!
i do not think that twice published article can be so dangerous
well this canonocal is new for me,thx for sharing it
Good post. Some very usefull info. I have had problesm when search pick up certain pages and then redo rank for other pages. This does make it easier to control what search engines list.
Wow great tip…. especially the code for non-wp themes. Although I am using this plugin but was not sure how it works.
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