The major search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN – recently each announced that they were uniting on support of a tag that allows you to specify the canonical version of a page. It may sound technical, but in layman’s terms it is actually straight forward, and will help you to avoid duplicate content issues.
Duplicate Content Issues
Often, sites can unwittingly create duplicate content by having the content accessible on different URLs. This is a typical problem for large e-commerce sites and content management systems built without search engines in mind. The search engines don’t want to return multiple versions of the same content in search results, so they try to determine the original or most authoritative version of the content – also known as the “canonical” version.
This is great, but what about those alternative versions? If they become accessible to search engines, the link popularity passed through your site could become diluted, meaning you are shooting yourself in the foot in terms of optimising your site structure for search engine rankings. Optimal link popularity flow involves passing link popularity into just one URL, not several URLs with the same content. If you already had this problem the resolution was technical and depending on the scale could be expensive to fix.
Fixing duplicate content
The search engines now support a tag which allows you to determine the canonical version of a page. By including the following tag in the <head> of your duplicate pages, the search engines will recognise the canonical, or original version of the content.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish"/>
Apparently, the search engines will also pass any accumulated link popularity from the duplicate URL into the canonical version, meaning your rankings could be strengthened.
Will this fix duplicate content issues?
The search engines have stated that they accept the canonical tag as a “hint”, meaning they won’t always necessarily follow the directive and there may be teething problems in terms of recognising the tag and passing link popularity correctly. It would still be wise to structure your site optimally and avoid having duplicate content across multiple URLs, as well as using search friendly redirects to ensure duplicate issues are avoided and link popularity passed on.
Still need help?
If you require help with a duplicate content issue or aren’t sure if it affects your site, the search engine optimisation service from Fusion Unlimited will help you identify and resolve your issues and improve your natural search visibility.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:17 am
The trouble with SEO and Google, is that you\’re forever playing catchup. If you do too much of one thing to optimise your site, that then runs the risk of diluting your entire site with respect to rankings.
However, if you are very careful, you can achieve very successful results. Where do you draw the line with Optimisation?
March 17th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I’m starting to hear a few tales about Google, with regards to duplicate content. Apparently, Google treats trusted sites in a different way to new site. If say Nike decided to produce duplicate content on their sites, Google would ‘turn a blind eye’. I dont fully understand the in’s and out’s at the moment, but it is something i am looking into. If there is anyone who knows more about this, could you let me know.
Also, if you are looking to improve your SEO, why not try adding a booksmark add-on. You can get them from addthis.com. - Worth a try.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Just another thought, how would you become a trusted site in the eyes of Google. If there is anyone who knows what angles to take or steps, that could take a site towards this goal, then please leave a message.
Cheers
March 17th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Hi James. In terms of “turning a blind eye” as you put it, not sure if this is the case. The core problem of duplicate content is the split of link equity - your site doesn’t get penalised as such, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot in terms of your internal link juice flow. I’ve seen this first hand for big brand sites and the improvements that fixing such an issue bring.
I think what you may be seeing in terms of big trusted sites seemingly overcoming duplicate content issues is that the sheer strength of their domain can still help a page rank, even without being fully optimal.
Trust comes with time and with high quality links from authority sites.