Help with steps to take when fixing cannonical url structure?
-
I would like to 301 redirect all the variations of my site to a single url but would like some clarification on some issues. I have always been confused about how to handle cannonicalization and hopefully this can clear it up for me and others.
This particular site is about 1 year old and gets approximately 15k uniques a month in a great niche. I want to make sure I do this correctly as to not hurt my existing rankings which are quite good. Here is is what I am unsure about.
- Basically I should pick the best url structure to redirect all the others to correct? What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com?
- Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site? Or is picking the best url to redirect to based on what url starts to rank in google and you then use that one?
- Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page? On this particular site ALL of my urls in google have no www. or http but instead show up in the SE as domain.com or domain.com/inner-page/html. In that case what do I do?
- I know the slow way to do redirects. I use my hostgator account and do it in cpanel and do it one by one. Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once? Maybe I can choose all the variations and put in the one I want them all to redirect to?
- After I figure the above out is fixing all of this as simple as redirecting ALL variations to the one I will use moving forward for each page on my site? Then I am done?
Thanks again for the help!
Jake
-
is there a simple code I put somewhere in there?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]replace "mysite" with the name of your site
do you see on there that he says its important to leave trailing / on folders
Generally speaking a URL that ends in a slash represents a folder. A URL that ends without a slash represents a page or file.
With respect to www or non-www, there is absolutely no preference from a pure SEO perspective. Either way you chose I would use the http:// prefix as it represents the complete URL.
-
Awesome Ryan! Thank you. This kind of stuff is the part I am SO lost about. I bet I would increase my rankings 500% if I could figure out the technical stuff!
Ok just quick clarification.
So there is no "better" version between http:// and http://www.? That is what I thought but on this guide it says that http://www. is best? http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
I guess to be safe I could do that but I wonder if it really matters?Also do you see on there that he says its important to leave trailing / on folders.
I do know how to access my htaccess file is there a simple code I put somewhere in there? I am going to go with http://
Thanks for the awesome help!
Jake
-
What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com?
The "http://" portion is required for a complete URL. "http://www.domain.com" is the same as "www.domain.com". If you omit the "http://" prefix, all major browsers understand your request and will prepend the URL appropriately.
You can choose either the "www" or "non-www" form of the URL to represent your site. It doesn't matter to search engines. What does matter is that you make a choice and remain consistent.
For an existing site, examine the links you have to both URL forms. As a guide, I would recommend choosing the URL format which has the most authorative linking domains.
Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site?
Yes. You should choose before the site begins attracting traffic.
Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page?
You should make one choice for your entire site. It would be a really bad idea to have some pages use the "www" subdomain while others do not. You would be dividing your traffic into two separate domains which you do not want to do.
Use OpenSiteExplorer.org and Google WMT to determine which domain has the most linking authority.
Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once?
You can redirect your entire site with a single statement in htaccess. Since you are using cPanel there is probably a "Redirect" application you can use to make this change. I would recommend contacting hostgator and informing them of your wishes. It is very quick and easy for a managed host to make the change for you. If you are not familiar with the process, it is far better to allow them to make the change for you.
Summary: review your backlinks, make your choice, inform hostgator and request them to make the change. After, test the change. If you choose to keep the "www" prefix, try accessing a few pages without the prefix. You should reach the page and see the "www" portion added to the URL. If the process is set up correctly you are 100% done.
Some SEOs may advise you to use canonicals or update your choice in Google/Bing Webmaster Tools. You can do both but once you set the redirect correctly the results will take care of themselves. Expect it can take up to a month for all of your URLs to appear correctly in SERPs. If you update the change in WMT, it will appear faster in SERPs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URL Change, Old URLs Still In Index
Recently changed URLs on a website to remove dynamic parameters. We 301'd the old dynamic links (canonical version) to the cleaner parameter-free URLs. We then updated the canonical tags to reflect these changes. All pages dropped at least a few ranking positions and now Moz shows both the new page ranking slightly lower in results pages and the old page still in the index. I feel like I'm splitting value between the two page versions until the old one disappears... is there a way to consolidate this quickly?
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Best action to take for "error" URLs?
My site has many error URLs that Google webmaster has identified as pages without titles. These are URLs such as: www.site.com/page???1234 For these URLs should I: 1. Add them as duplicate canonicals to the correct page (that is being displayed on the error URLs) 2. Add 301 redirect to the correct URL 3. Block the pages in robots.txt Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Help fixing the traffic drop that started on 4 September 2012.
I'm happy to be a part of this wonderful community here and request help analysing my situation and would appreciate suggestions to fix the issues I'm facing. First, The Website Setup - We've a WordPress powered technology blog on main domain - http://www.crazyengineers.com & community forum on /community/ In the last 60 days, I've made following changes to the site that might have gone against us. 1. I added a sidebar to all the pages of our community forums to offer more useful information to the users, like recent threads, our latest exclusive interviews etc. 2. I added a descriptive welcome notice on all the pages of community at the top. 3. I added two ad-spots above the fold, didn't hurt user experience (IMHO). 4. I removed a LARGE number of unwanted tags from our WordPress blog that offered no value to visitors; resulting into Google Webmaster Tools reporting a large number of 404 - Page Not Found errors. Point To Note: Since September 4, I've been noticing significant drop in our traffic to the 'community' forums. The traffic is down almost 40-50%. Corrective Measures I've Taken - 1. Made sure that all the removed tags show proper 404 HTTP status. I added a search box to the 404 pages so that users have opportunity to find what they're looking for. 2. Removed the two ad-spots and placed only one 728x90 leaderboard above the fold. 3. We never engaged in any black-hat SEO techniques, link-building or content-copying. I double checked whether there are any suspicious activities reported in GWT but haven't spotted any. I'd really appreciate analysis of what might have really gone wrong and the direction in which I should proceed to recover our traffic.
Technical SEO | | TheBigK0 -
Canonical URL Issue
Hi Everyone, I'm fairly new here and I've been browsing around for a good answer for an issue that is driving me nuts here. I tried to put the canonical url for my website and on the first 5 or 6 pages I added the following script SEOMoz reported that there was a problem with it. I spoke to another friend and he said that it looks like it's right and there is nothing wrong but still I get the same error. For the URL http://www.cacaniqueis.com.br/video-caca-niqueis.html I used the following: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.cacaniqueis.com.br/video-caca-niqueis.html" /> Is there anything wrong with it? Many thanks in advance for the attention to my question.. 🙂 Alex
Technical SEO | | influxmedia0 -
Why is the ideal rel canonical URL structure?
I currently have the rel canonical point to wepay.com/donations/123456. Is it worth the effort making it point to wepay.com/donations/donation-name-123456? I would also need to track histories if users change the vanity URL with this new structure.
Technical SEO | | wepayinc0 -
Help With Analytics Data
Hello, I'm seeing the following Analytics data for some of my keywords: Multiple Visits Pages/Visit: 1 Avg Visit Duration: 00:00 % New Visits: 100% Bounce Rate: 100% The data is the same on all "affected keywords". What is going on and how do I fix it? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | AWCthreads0