Looking at my blog today, I realized that yesterday’s post about my Canonical Url Tool has a pretty lame headline and the only folks that will find it via Google will be uber nerds, like me, that know what a canonical url is already.
So, this short post is to put it in proper perspective, slap a more effective headline on the topic, and hopefully generate additional interest.
The Problem
Like any good blogger/webmaster you’ve been building up your backlinks. You’ve examined your internal linking. But looking at your server logs, you notice something odd:
Not all your backlinks are pointing to the same version of your home page.
For example:
- http://yoursite.com/
- http://www.yoursite.com/
- http://www.yoursite.com/index.php
- http://yoursite.com/index.php
You’re looking for every possible edge when it comes to search engine optimization and you’ve read that stupid Mr. Googlebot gets confused and doesn’t give you as much credit for those backlinks as if they all pointed to the exact same url.
The 30 Second Search Engine Optimization Tweak
Go over to my Canoncial URL Tool
Type in the url of your website (http://www.yoursite.com)
You’ll get some “mod_rewrite” code that you copy and paste into a file in your root directory called .htaccess
Before you do, make sure you back up your .htaccess file or your whole site if you haven’t done so in a while
