Canonicalization

Marketing
1

Hi

I’ve been told Google is dividing the authority of our ‘home page’ between 2 URLS:

http://www.example.com/

and

http://www.example.com/index.php

Google suggest here

‘Specify the canonical link for each version of the page’

So in our case would we add

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/">

to the to the <head> section of index.php?

Thanks for your help.

2

That’s exactly it. The ‘canonical’ tag tells Google what URL you want it to use for that page. It’s particularly useful when you have multiple routes to a page, eg with/without www. on the front (although there are better ways of getting round that), with/without index.htm on the end, where you’ve got a query or rewritten URL the comes in different forms, etc. Using it ensures that Google will treat all the variations as a single page, rather than indexing them all separately.

3

Great help!

4

yes… You will need to add it to the <head> section of index.php. Check this link…

5

Yes, you need to do the same.
But if you have not done this, you no need to do it.
Now google will count all links same to one domain, and there will not be any canonical issue.

You can read about this @ Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Reorganizing internal vs. external backlinks

6