By: Ryan Gibson
Submitted: 2010-08-23 03:58:56 | Word Count: 460
Most websites will use the http://www.website.com structure as their main website URL and this will be the address used in link building campaigns. However in some circumstances, often that Google has indexed two versions of the homepage. E.g.
These are called “canonical” URLs and for the most effective google search results, always dump all but one, and keep on with it!
Use the Google site command to see if there can be any extraneous URLs. Type in site:www.website.com to determine what pages are indexed. In case you have a sizable site, also try site:www.website.com/index.html or whatever your “index” page is. If both exist, make sure you go through your website links and point all your “home” links to only one of them. Also consider putting a 301 redirect on extra pages to the URL that you have been using various or link building to so that all possible link authority is transferred to page you are using to your link building campaign.
If you have several pages that contain largely exactly the same content, e.g. an e-commerce site containing two URLs for one product – where one is navigated through “Brand” and one is navigated through “Style”, the best thing to do is to 301 redirect the very best URL through your.htaccess file.
This is similar with the www. vs non-www. issue. As in the the trailing slashes, Google Webmaster Central comforts you with advice that it’s not a really bad thing having URLs with both. This is if there is certainly same content on both trailing slash pages and non-trailing slash pages and you are consistent with using the well-liked version in internal links, sitemaps and link building from outside links. Google will usually be capable to detect the preferred version and rarely will penalise you for this sort of “duplicate” content. However, if you're feeling particularly obsessive about taking away the trailing slash for SEO, use a 301 redirect.
Resources:
Google Webmaster Tools
Use to ‘fetch as Googlebot, currently under “Labs” to view what Google sees and also tell Google your preferred domain.
URL Rewriting Examples
This blog explains five useful instances.
Google Page Speed
What status server codes does your page return? Downloadable as a Firefox plugin.
Status Server Codes
Is it a 200, 301 or 404? (and what does it mean?)
Author Resource:-
Ryan James is a successful search engine marketing consultant who works for an award winning SEO Company.
