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Turner Dow Search Engine Optimisation |
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Don't spoil a great site by showing the home page more than once through http://mysite.com, http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com/index.htm. There's three variations of the same page. No, the search engines aren't clever enough to sort it out. You have to. The truth in this assertation can be seen in the differing page rank accross the variations of the same page. Try the currency exchange rate site xe.com (as of late 2006). Now try www.xe.com. See the different page ranks assigned? But they're the same page. The search engines are getting there with this canonical matter, but far too slow, and it's not to be risked, especially with it being so easy to fix. Google have recently added the capacity in their Google Sitemaps (a section of 'Google Webmaster') to nominate which of the variations a webmaster would prefer to see listed for their site in search results - http://mysite.com or http://www.mysite.com. This specification will surely become redundant once they fully sort the conflict out - but until then, we risk an internal dupicate content penalty (significantly more benign than duplicate content accross distinct sites) which is difficult to pick up when it's only one of many potential factors contributing to poor ranking in the SERPS. So how to fix it? Simple. Decide on the root domain to be shown. In most cases this will be http://www.mysite.com (with the www), since it looks prettiest to most visitors. This means that we don't wish to display any starting page (index.htm, or similar), and we don't wish to display any different combination of URL for this same page (or, for that matter, any page - we'll beat the whole problem in one go!). Then go to Google sitemaps and specify the preference to them as per the diagram below.  The above is a screen shot taken from Google sitemaps with the pertinent site washed out (Google are paranoid about revealing any sensitive information, their terms and conditions restrict webmasters from revealing specifics from anything, adwords, adsense, sitemaps, etc. Heck! You already own us all guys - what's the problem?). This is the section to address when changing any site listings Google show in the index to the format of your specification. Therefore if any listing show http://mysite.com because someone has linked to you that way, they'll change it to the preferred format in the display. This is part of the solution. but Google don't indicate whether they'll see the old format as the same URL as the new. So let's be sure and tell them explicitly. How? How else but the trusty old htaccess file, the file that is read for every page requested in the structure beneath it. Enter the following code in the htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] The beauty of this text is that whichever page is requested, we can tell the server to show it inthe format we specify (in this case with the www prefix). So if someone requests page http://mysite.com/widgets_w_to_z.htm our specification tells the server to display it as http://mysite.com/widgets_w_to_z.htm (i.e. with the www prefix). But we're still not all done yet. We need to ensure that the home page cannot be shown by a page name like index.htm (or similar). For this we can set up a permanent redirect in the htaccess file so that the search engines recognise the move and assign any gathered web clout (also known as page rank) to the specified root page, but we also need to ensure any of our internal links for, say, 'home' don't point to index.htm, but rather point to the root (generally by a forward slash '/'). There! We're done. Like your driving test - don't assume the search engines know what you're doing and will sort out the mess. Sometimes they will and sometime not. Be explicit - don't show any duplicate internal content by showing the same page in different guises. Whenever someone ends up at your home page, make the server show them one URL only. Now, have you ever heard of that from any other SEO but TurnerDow? Further Reading: Matt Cutts on Canonical Issues | Best Practice on Canonical URLs | ||||
 Search Engine Optimisation -- Turner Dow -- There's Only One High Street Now SEO House - 9 Silverdale - Wembdon - Somerset - TA6 7PT Tel.01278 426100 - Email: info@turnerdow.com |
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Show the Root Only Once