| As technologically advanced as search engines are, | | | | what I did in a bit as well.Yahoo appears to be the |
| there are a few areas where they still don't quite | | | | worse offender in treating home pages as duplicates. |
| measure up. It's well known that search engines don't | | | | Every variation results in a different number, though |
| like duplicate content on web sites, but did you know | | | | it's comforting that the non www. .index.php shows a |
| you could unknowingly be serving them duplicate | | | | zero as expected. As for the others, these are linking |
| content? It's quite common, really.The problem | | | | issues that I can resolve on my end and then just |
| occurs when search engines spider your site or find it | | | | wait for the search engine to catch up.Implementing |
| through links that use differing URLs to reach the | | | | a SolutionOn most servers, the solution to the www. |
| same page. For example, the following URLs can all | | | | versus non www. issue can be resolved by adding a |
| represent your home page:www. yoursite .comwww. | | | | piece of code to your .htaccess file. It's best to |
| yoursite .com/index.htmlyoursite .comyoursite .com | | | | consult with your web host before editing this file |
| index.html | | | | unless you know what you're doing. Making incorrect |
| But to the search engine, each of these URLs can | | | | changes here can cause your site to crash. Here is |
| represent a different page in your site, each | | | | what we added:RewriteEngine On |
| duplicating the same content. This can possibly | | | | RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} |
| (though unlikely) trigger serious duplicate content | | | | ^polepositionmarketing .com |
| penalties. But the more likely result is that your | | | | RewriteRule (.*) polepositionmarketing .com/$1 |
| search engine rankings will suffer, at least initially, until | | | | [R=301,L]What this does is restrict the search engine, |
| the search engines get around to determining that | | | | and the user's access to the www. version of my |
| these are the same page and therefore treat them | | | | site. In fact, this not only takes care of the home |
| as such.The effect on rankings largely stems from | | | | page but all other pages on the site as well. Give it a |
| your internal linking structure as well as external | | | | try; try to access polepositionmarketing.com |
| inbound links. If multiple sites each link to the various | | | | about-us.php. See what happens? You're automatically |
| "versions" of your home page (though it's really the | | | | redirected to .com/about-us.php. The search engines |
| same page) search engines will view those links as | | | | are redirected too. In fact, this tells them that the |
| leading to different pages. So if you have ten site's | | | | non www. version doesn't even exist, which is what |
| linking to you, you may not get the full benefit of | | | | we want, and what causes the backlinks to report as |
| those ten links because they may have been divided | | | | zero.While this doesn't prevent people from linking to |
| between pages. This is why your rankings could | | | | in favor of it does let the search engine know that |
| suffer.Google is pretty good about figuring out that | | | | they really meant to link to the "correct" version: |
| these pages are not duplicates, therefore combining | | | | www. yoursite .com.As for the index.html (or in my |
| the link attribution to your home page. But the other | | | | case index.php) page, this largely can be fixed by |
| search engines are not and, even with Google, it may | | | | how you manage your own internal linking. The |
| take a while. Until that happens, your rankings may | | | | solution is to make sure that all of your internal site |
| remain understated in the search results.The easiest | | | | links to your home page simply point to site .com as |
| way to determine if the search engines are finding | | | | opposed to site .com/index.htm. When using |
| "multiple" home pages is to run a backward link check. | | | | WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML |
| Put in each of the variations and record your | | | | editors such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage, its quite |
| numbers. Here is what I found for Pole Position | | | | common to attach your links to the .html page. You'll |
| Marketing:www. polepositionmarketing .com | | | | have to consciously remember not to do that. If you |
| Google: 1,030 | | | | use absolute links you need the full URL as shown |
| MSN: 10,219 | | | | above. If you use relative links then to link to your |
| Yahoo: 15,800www. polepositionmarketing .com | | | | home page you want to us "/" rather than index.html. |
| index.php | | | | That will do the trick.The effect of this is to 1) not |
| Google: 1,030 | | | | provide an index.html version of the page that is |
| MSN: 3 | | | | spiderable by the search engines, and 2) not provide |
| Yahoo: 51polepositionmarketing .com | | | | that option for other sites to use in their link. The |
| Google: 0 | | | | page www. yoursite .com/index.html will still be |
| MSN: 10,283 | | | | accessible on the server, but if you have no links to |
| Yahoo: 2polepositionmarketing .com/index.php | | | | that page, users will never find it. In fact, they won't |
| Google: 0 | | | | know whether your home page is index.html, |
| MSN: 3 | | | | index.php or homepage.html. That really leaves them |
| Yahoo: 0You'll notice that Google records the same | | | | only one option for the link with is www. yoursite |
| number of links for the first two URLs recorded. This | | | | .com.Implementing these settings provides a means |
| is because Google has already determined that these | | | | to avoid duplication issues or waiting for search |
| are the same. Take out the ' and you'll see that | | | | engines to resolve the variations, while also allowing |
| Google records zero links. I forced this to happen | | | | you to capture the full link value of every link to your |
| intentionally. I'll explain that in a bit.Let's look at MSN. | | | | home page. It's a small amount of work for a big |
| It appears that MSN records the www. and | | | | payoff in the long run.Read this article and more at |
| non-www. version of the home page as almost the | | | | the E-Marketing Performance Blog. Stoney deGeyter |
| same, but separately from the index.php versions. | | | | is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search |
| Only a few links are pointed to the index.php page | | | | optimization marketing firm providing SEO and |
| and I'm able to click in from the link check results | | | | website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also |
| page to find out why. It looks like MSN found one | | | | a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows |
| other website linking to that page and then some | | | | Community College, as well as a moderator in the |
| internal site pages link to my index.php. I thought I | | | | Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his |
| had eliminated all links to my index.php page but it | | | | E-Marketing Performance eBook. |
| looks like I missed a few. I'll fix them now and explain | | | | |