WEB site creation

Which is best a 301 re direct or Canonical URL?

There has been a lot of debate amongst SEO specialists about 301 or REL=Canonical URLS

in SEO there appears to be a pattern and or common problem with this technique

The questions I often get asked by SEO Link Building Consultants in Glasgow are

* When should I use a Rel Canonical URL

* Can Canonical be a problem for SEO Rankings

* When should I not use a Canonical tag

* What if I don’t have a developer to implement a 301

So I am going to answer these questions here and I hope this will help you

The 301 Re Direct when and how to use it!

A 301 re direct is commonly used to help users of a website and a search engine find pieces of content that has been moved to a new URL. Adding the 301 means that the content has been permanently placed somewhere else.

What it does for users

A user will never notice that the URL does in fact re direct to a new URL unless in the unlikely event they spot the change in the URL itself from within there browser. However even if they where to spot this change, so long as the content itself was the same or is as exactly what they where searching for the visitor will be unlikely to be effected.

What it does for the search engines

If a search engine finds a URL with a 301 re direct on it, in most cases it will follow the re direct to the new URL and remove the old one from its index. Any existing Link Juice should in theory be also passed on when this happens, however it should be noted that it has been professionally noted that not 100% of the link juice gets passed over to the re directed URL or the anchor text within.

Redirecting all pages

A simple mistake I see happen very often is during content migration, an example is say you have 1000 pages that you want to move somewhere else, you really should put 1000 301 redirects on them which will then point to the most relevant pages on the new site. But what often happens is I see SEO or webmasters point all of these URLS back to a single page, more often than not “the home page”.

This is often a manipulative tactic done to pass all link juice to one place, and seen as good seo strength starts from the home page it will more than likely cause Google to come and take a closer look at your site for all the wrong reasons

Matt Cutts Talks about this very issue in his webmasters tools video. [youtube:a70ygsHgvMw?fs=1;[link:Seo Advice from Google Matt Cutts];http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a70ygsHgvMw?fs=1&feature=related]

Want to find out more about Seo Consultants, then visit Michael Devlin’s site on how to choose the best seo company.