Bonehead SEO » website content

Getting a Handle on Your Canonicals

Kristine — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:05:52 +0000

Have you ever worried about duplicate content? If you haven’t, you’re definitely in the minority.

Everyone who runs a website has at one point or another worried about whether or not their site is being silently penalized in the search engines for having duplicate content.

Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page let’s first define what duplicate content REALLY is.

When you have two pages that are identical to one another on your own website, this is considered duplicate content. And chances are you likely have duplicate content but you just don’t know it.

Here’s why that would happen…

Let’s say that you have a website located at http://www.Example.com.

You create a new web page on your site and have a few people link to that page.

Person #1 links to you using http://www.Example.com.
Person #2 links to you using http://Example.com (notice the lack of the “www”).
Person #3 links to you using http://www.Example.com/ (notice the trailing slash).
And Person #4 links to you using http://www.Example.com/index.html (notice the “index.html).

To YOU and to the people visiting your site, this is all the same page.

To the SEARCH ENGINES however, these are all different URLs. Surprised?

So as far as the search engines are concerned you have 4 pages on your site that all contain the same exact content – hence, the duplicate content issue.

You see, search engines can’t tell that these are the same URLs (I’m shaking my head as I say that because it’s still beyond me), but, the fact remains, that this is in fact, very true.

So how do you fix this issue? Well, thankfully, there’s a few ways to fix this issue.

When you link internally, that is, link to other pages within your own website, consistently use the same URL. ALWAYS use http://www.Example.com or http://Example.com -whichever one is your preferred way of linking, choose one and stick with it.
Additionally you can also use a 301 redirect to point to your preferred way of linking to your URL. For example, if you prefer http://www.Example.com then set up a 301 redirect on http://Example.com, http://www.Example.com/, http://www.Example.com/index.html, etc. (I’ve listed below the most common ways people would link to your site).
Within your Google webmaster tools area you can TELL Google what you’re preferred way of linking is.
Be sure that when you submit a sitemap for your website that within that sitemap, all of the URLs are using your preferred way of linking.

Some potential issues are:

If you don’t have direct control over the webhost that administers your files, you’ll have to have someone else place that 301 redirect on the URLs you want.
A lot of free web hosts don’t let you create a 301 redirect.
Session IDs on a website can create a huge duplicate content issue. Since each page may be accessed with a different session ID in the URL, that page may be indexed multiple times; even though it’s the same page.

Now if all else fails and you simply can’t implement a 301 redirect to your preferred way of linking, then consider placing the canonical link element on the individual page.

In the head of the individual web page you’d place the following:

Note the trailing slash after “page.html”. This is very important to include.

The bottom line is, using the canonical link element on your website is EXTREMELY beneficial to you. But first and foremost, use the methods listed in the first four items at the top and if those fail, then use the canonical link element.

This information has summarized what Matt Cutts said in his 20-minute presentation; but if you want more information, here’s a few more places you can check out:

The Matt Cutts video.
The blog post at Google webmaster central.
Yahoo’s blog post.
Microsoft

And, as promised, here’s a list of URLs that are all different in the search engines eyes and that might cause duplicate content issues:

www.Example.com
Example.com
www.Example.com/
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/index.html
www.example.com/Home.aspx
example.com/Home.aspx

Where to Find & Get FREE Content & Links

Kristine — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:00:14 +0000

Google search now has a new advanced feature that allows you to locate content that you can use on your own website, for free. Oftentimes with the “OK” from the site owner to re-write it as you wish.

If you’re trying to establish yourself online, you might have found that locating content to use on your own website is difficult. There are PLR (Private Label Rights) products that you can buy and even full PLR memberships that you can purchase that will give you access to content to use at your discretion, but in many cases, not all mind you, they’re not typically of the best quality.

Aside from PLR products, you can always write the content for yourself which is very time-consuming or you can hire someone to do it for you; the higher the cost of the writer, generally, the better kind of content that you’ll get.

Now, while I will always advocate doing most of the work yourself, or at least having people who are trained by you do the work, even with PLR content, I also understand that writing day after day can suck away a lot of your time, when you can be using that time to create your own products or advertise your business or products your affiliated with.

That’s where a new Google Advanced search feature can work well for you in finding content to use as well as pull double-duty by generating links back to your site.

Here’s how it works.

First, visit Google.com. But before you search on anything click the link to the right of the search box entitled “Advanced Search”.

Next, enter in a keyword or keyword phrase at the top of the list just under the heading “Find web pages that have…” I suggest that if you’re locating content for use on your own site that you only enter in one keyword or keyword phrase related to the content you want to locate. When you use this search feature and you have multiple keywords in this area, the search will only pull back sites that contain ALL of these keywords.

Additionally you can also use the second option of “this exact wording or phrase” which will find the entire phrase in any web page or you can also use the third option of “one or more of these words:” where you can specify a variety of keywords and keyword phrases.

To make the job simpler for you, I would just use the first suggestion, and only search for one keyword or keyword phrase. If you’re using a keyword phrase, just place that phrase in quotes in the first search box.

Next, click the plus sign next to “Date, usage rights, numeric range and more.” And then narrow down your choices from what’s listed. The most important point here is the “usage rights” link. This allows you to filter content that allows you to do a variety of things with the content (and where all of the magic happens).

You have 5 options from this list. Here’s what they are and what they mean:

Not Filtered – Exactly what it means. The content you get using this search is not filtered in any way. Not recommended if you’re attempting to locate content to use on your own site.
Free to use or share – These pages are labeled “public domain” or carry a license that allows you to copy or redistribute its content, as long as the content remains unchanged.
Free to use or share, even commercially – The same as “free to use or share” but for commercial sites. So if you have a website that sells products, information or services, this is the option you want. Note that this does NOT allow you to modify the content.
Free to use, share or modify – This search will only pull back those web pages that are labeled with a license that allows you to copy, modify or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
Free to use, share or modify, even commercially. The same as “free to use, share or modify” but for commercial sites. When you’re looking to reuse content on your own site that you can re-word as you wish, this is the option you want.

Once you’ve entered in the terms you’re interested in and chosen a license, click search and Google will return to you a list of websites that have these criteria.

The one thing I recommend is to double-check the license itself. The way that Google is able to determine this kind of content is by using the “Creative Commons” filters. So once you’re at a web page that seems to have some content you’d like to use yourself, check for the “creative commons” license on the page. When you click on the license link, you’ll get more details about the license. The site may require you to link back to them in exchange for you using their content which can help boost their incoming links.

At this point you have to consider at least one thing – whether or not you want to link back to the site that has the content you want to use.

What this means to you in this instance, is to consider if it’s worthwhile to link out to the site whose content you want to use. If you don’t feel comfortable having the link on your web page then keep on looking through the search results that Google gave you to see if there’s a site that doesn’t require a link back to them. While few and far between, this little bit of extra work can mean a great deal of fantastically free content for you.

If you believe that the site will be a good resource for your site visitors, then by all means, link back to them. If you question it in the least bit, it’s best to refine your keywords and find a better resource.

On the flip side of this coin…you might be wondering “Well, if this is how THESE sites are getting incoming links, how can I get one way links to my OWN site?”

Glad you asked! Here’s how to do that:

Visit http://creativecommons.org/choose/ and license your own work. You can also visit a website that is also using the license, click on the Creative Commons link or icon, and then scroll down the page that you’re taken to on the Creative commons site which lists the details of that sites license. If you’d like to use the same kind of license that the site owner is using, click the link that says “Use this license for your own work”.

My suggestion to you when making use of the Creative Commons license is to be careful what you’re licensing. If you only want to license a single blog post that you made (and it’s entirely your own work), then only place the license on that blog post and choose “text” from your list of choices at http://creativecommons.org/choose/ .

If you license your entire blog, then this allows all of the content on your blog to be used by anyone depending upon the license you chose to use.

The reason that choosing text, audio, video, image, or interactive when specifying your license at Creative Commons is because this allows your license to only be used on your text, or your audio, or your video, etc., not the entire blog as a whole.

Secondly, be absolutely 100% certain that it is your OWN work you’re granting a license for.

Using a Creative Commons license will help you generate links for your site because others will find that they can use your work as content for their own sites and, if you’ve specified in the license that they have to link back to you, can generate lots of relevant links back to your own web pages.

So the bottom line is, when you’re looking to find content to use on your own site, use the advanced search feature in Google to find those sites that allow you to use and modify their work. Ideally you’d like to find that content that doesn’t require a link back to their site, but, as I said, these are few and far between. Just keep in mind that if you do want to use someone else’s content, and they require a link back, be sure it’s a site you do in fact want to link back to.

Bonehead SEO Resources & Tools

Kristine — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:39:17 +0000

We’ve been adding a lot of resources for you lately getting ready for the classes to open in 2009. Originally these were going to be kept private and for class members only, however, it just didn’t make sense to not make this available to everyone.

We’ve added information for everyone on the site such as:

Online Sitemap Generators
Website Design Software Resources
Keyword Research Resources (both free & paid)
Web Hosting Resources
Website Content Resources if you’re having trouble writing or finding content to use on your site.

We’ll be adding more information as the days go on.

We’ll talk soon

Important Information About Ezine Articles

Kristine — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:17:55 +0000

EzineArticles.com is widely known as “the” spot to place your well-written articles in order to help you get backlinks to your website.

Whether those backlinks come from Ezine Articles itself or from another website who has published your content.

However, in the future EzineArticles.com will no longer follow the links within your body text. It appears that as of now they will still follow the links in your author’s bio.

This is not yet implemented but look for it very soon in the future.

- Kristine