The Big Canonz

Or how I learned to love .htaccess and solutions to canonicalization.

Canonicalization is becoming a very hot topic in SEO circles just now and it is something that we have become mindful of at Matchmaker Marketing. So what the heck is it all about you may ask? The word canonicalization (note US spelling which is the correct form in this case) is taken from the word ‘canonical’ which itself has Greek origins and is used to describe a process which conforms to an orthodox structure or rule of some kind. In the context of SEO this specifically relates to the cognitive or semantic interpretation of URLs but this is a bad thing in a sense as we need to have only one form of the URL directing a browser or other agent through to the website pages.

Canonicalization is used to describe an issue that arises from a web page being called on a URL with or without the (www’s) but the issue now also extends to the problematic trailing back-slash that many linking agents will append to a URL. Canonicalization issues will arise when these different forms of the URL are spidered, the search engine robots are not smart enough (yet) to be able to tell that both URLs are essentially the same and directing it to the same website. Instead they perceive these URLs as different addresses directing to websites with duplicate content and this can be very bad for your Google ranking.

You can check to see if you may have potential canonicalization problems simply by typing your site URL into a browser with and without the www’s or with and without the trailing back-slash. If the page is returned and yet the address that you typed in remains the same in the address bar then you could have a problem with canonicalization. The solution is simply a case of employing friendly 301 redirects (server side) to force the visitor to just one URL format for the page. At Matchmaker Marketing we consider this to be an essential basic requirement for a site which is being optimised on highly competitive search terms and which would require a huge amount of back-linking and off-site optimisation.

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