The Canonicalization Problem

Entrepreneur Apr 10th, 2007 No comments

When creating websites one thing you should pay attention to is the URL which users are using to get to it. What you may not know is that there are actually 4 different URLs that could be used to get to the same page. Google sees this as 4 different URLs and 4 different pages when in fact it is only one. One of them will rank higher in Google than the rest. Google calls this the canonicalization problem.

These all go to the exact same page:
http://www.entrepreneurswealth.com/2007/04/
http://erikkarey.com/2007/04/
http://www.entrepreneurswealth.com/2007/04
http://erikkarey.com/2007/04

Besides being ranked higher on one URL than the others, the other problem that can occur is in link building. Let’s say you get a nice link on a PR7 website? Well that is only going to improve one of the links, not all four. The good news is that this can easily be fixed for all four cases in a matter of seconds.

Open (or create) an .htaccess file and enter the following into it. Be sure to replace erikkarey.com with your domain of course.

Options +Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myblog\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myblog.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myblog.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

Save the .htaccess file and then upload it to your server and that’s all! Now all your links will go to: http://www.entrepreneurswealth.com/2007/04/

Good Luck!

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