Many people think www.yourdomain.com, yourdomain.com, yourdomian.com/html, etc.. are all the exact same url. This is a false belief. Each of those urls could contain unique content, images, videos, styling and much more. Your canonical url is the url google sees as your websites url. You are probably thinking; “so what, that doesn’t effect me”. Yet again another false belief. If you want to get a better ranking on Google you will need to use the right canonical url and only this url when creating links to your website or you will not get the boost from that link.
Example:
Your websites canonical url is yourdomain.com, however whenever you created links to your website you use www.yourdomain.com. The link works so you think great I just picked up a new link – NOPE. This link will not count in the same way a correct canonical link. (Many SEO experts use a juice analogy when explaining SEO, they further explain that you need to spread the juice around and not just put it all in one glass cause you can’t fit a pitcher of juice in just one cup.) For this example that cup of juice dedicated to link building has a hole in it.
Fixing Canonical Urls
Now the good news!!! though it can be very time consuming the probelm can be fixed very easily.
- Go to your homepage and copy the exact url that you see, every time.
- Correct all of the wrong links that you may have already created.
- Change the canonical url settings in Google Webmaster Tools:
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Click the gear icon , and then click Site Settings.
- In the Preferred domain section, select the option you want.
- Not required but as a best practice create a 301 redirect so other search engines know that this specific domain is your canonical url.
I know many of you are thinking there has to be an easier way, a faster way… just remember there are always short cuts, but to have great SEO don’t use short cuts or unethical black SEO techniques.