Link value when with parameter ?

[VasilTasev]

Hi all,

I added some links to my website, but because I want to track traffic and other things, all links were created with Google URL Builder and slightly customized.

So the end result looks like this:  http://www.example.com/example_home.asp?acs=986lfqa&utm_source=keyword.fr&utm_medium=RP&utm_content=example_Link&utm_campaign=General

All links are containing keyword as anchor text. And the question is if Google is smart enough to figure out that the anchor text is for  http://www.example.com and not for the whole /example_home.asp............

I'm afraid that it will see it as entirely different page and don't pass link value.

[VasilTasev]

Yes, thanks a lot for the answer.

[rasmusbang]

Hi Vasil,

What you can do is add a canonical link to the page.

This ensures that Google sees the page as the given URL no matter which query strings are passed.

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/home.asp" />

So if you link from another page with:

Really good anchor text

Then the canonical link makes Google ignore all the query strings, giving juice to just this one URL. For more information? Check out this blog:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Hope this can help you.

-Rasmus