Webmasters often face a prickly problem when it comes to people linking to them or when using dynamic URLs. Sometimes, it’s necessary to show the same content using two URLs. For example, a product can be classified in two different ways and depending on the path the user has taken, the URL might be different. Another example, is when an affiliate links to your product with their own identification number in the querystring. A single product page therefore might be accessible via thousands of URLs.

Search engines now have to decide which of these URLs are important and which ones are not. In some cases, it may split the PageRank between URLs – and that’s not a good thing. In others, the bot makes up its own mind based on various parameters. However, Google and other search engines recently came up with the “canonical” tag. Using this, webmasters can specify which URL is the “primary” URL and Google will pass the PageRank to that page.

All you need to do is use the tag like this: <link rel=”canonical” href=“primary url here” /> . Insert this tag into the head section of your pages and whenever Google accesses the page through another URL, it will know that the real and most important link is the one you have mentioned. Just another example of fine tuning your site to get the most juice!

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