Tutorial explaining how to integerate canonical URLs or link in Blogger for better SEO.
Canonical URL is the most talked about word in the SEO world recently. In simple words, Canonical links are HTML links in the HTML document asking the search engine bots to consider this copy of the link or page as the preferred link for all corresponding duplicate contents.
In Feb, 2009 canonical URLs were started to get supported by Google, Yahoo, MSN live and Ask.comas mentioned on their official blogs. Bing also supports canonical tags now.
In a different way, canonical URLs correspond directly to a 301 redirect from SEO point of view.
Note: Blogger already supports canonical URLs by default to some templates.
Go to one of your blogspot article, where there are some comments. You should see something called as the comment permalink as shown below:
Let's assume that your article permanent URL is:
Your comment permalink would be:
So, here you can see that the same article has two different links. Even, if you click on the comment permalink, there won't be any change to the content of that page.
This is a duplication problem. At this point, we need to have a canonical tag to say the search engine that the canonical URL is http://example.blogspot.com/2012/04/example-article.html and not any other duplicates. So, please consider only one copy of the URL which should have all the PageRank and other related properties and be transferred to one preferred link.
This is simple!. You need to add a rel tag in your links similar to nofollow or dofollow tags.
Here is an example:
Step 1) Go to Dashboard > Select the blog > Template > Edit HTML
Step 2) Search(Ctrl+F) for the following line of code:
If you find it, that means Blogger has automatically implemented canonization for your blog or website.
Step3) Don't find that in your template HTML. Then add the following before </head>:
Step 4) Save the template. You are done!!!
Step 1) Open any article or your home page.
Step 2) Click on view source of that page.
Step 3) Search for the term canonical to find the link your article with the canonical tag.
Step 4) Verification done.
Make sure, that canonical tags are implemented in your Blogspot website as well. If not, update your blogs with the canonical tags to implement better SEO of your blog on a overall basis. Remember, that all the major search engines now support the canonical tags to help fight duplicate content problem with a website. This is going to help us fight duplication for the future.
~iTechColumn
Canonical URL is the most talked about word in the SEO world recently. In simple words, Canonical links are HTML links in the HTML document asking the search engine bots to consider this copy of the link or page as the preferred link for all corresponding duplicate contents.In Feb, 2009 canonical URLs were started to get supported by Google, Yahoo, MSN live and Ask.comas mentioned on their official blogs. Bing also supports canonical tags now.
In a different way, canonical URLs correspond directly to a 301 redirect from SEO point of view.
Note: Blogger already supports canonical URLs by default to some templates.
Real case scenario of Canonical Tags (Example)
Go to one of your blogspot article, where there are some comments. You should see something called as the comment permalink as shown below:
http://example.blogspot.com/2012/04/example-article.htmlYour comment permalink would be:
http://example.blogspot.com/2012/04/example-article.html?showComment=1338887646385#c
Something like that.
So, here you can see that the same article has two different links. Even, if you click on the comment permalink, there won't be any change to the content of that page.
This is a duplication problem. At this point, we need to have a canonical tag to say the search engine that the canonical URL is http://example.blogspot.com/2012/04/example-article.html and not any other duplicates. So, please consider only one copy of the URL which should have all the PageRank and other related properties and be transferred to one preferred link.
How to make a URL canonical?
This is simple!. You need to add a rel tag in your links similar to nofollow or dofollow tags.
Here is an example:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://example.blogspot.com/2012/04/example-article.html' />How to add canonical links in Blogger?
Step 1) Go to Dashboard > Select the blog > Template > Edit HTML
Step 2) Search(Ctrl+F) for the following line of code:
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>If you find it, that means Blogger has automatically implemented canonization for your blog or website.
Step3) Don't find that in your template HTML. Then add the following before </head>:
<link rel='canonical' expr:href='data:blog.url'/>How to check whether the canonical tags got implemented or not in Blogger?
Step 1) Open any article or your home page.
Step 2) Click on view source of that page.
Step 3) Search for the term canonical to find the link your article with the canonical tag.
Step 4) Verification done.
Make sure, that canonical tags are implemented in your Blogspot website as well. If not, update your blogs with the canonical tags to implement better SEO of your blog on a overall basis. Remember, that all the major search engines now support the canonical tags to help fight duplicate content problem with a website. This is going to help us fight duplication for the future.
~iTechColumn
