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When can You Use Canonical or 301 Redirect?

Posted on by Mario

when-should-you-choose-canonical-vs-301-redirect

At some cases, you may find you have no opt unless applying a duplicate content which is quite a problem that every web developers will be confronted with. But don’t worry as you can choose to either make use of canonical tags or 301 redirects to avoid any duplicate content. But when you can use the right method between the two of them? Below are several scenarios that you can choose.

Scenario 1: Similar Products with Similar Descriptions in an Online Shop

If you are online shop owners, you may often face a situation where you have similar or almost identical products (e.g. same color or model number). Hence, these products will have similar product descriptions but will be indexed with differing URLs.

Providing an indication of the product in the URLs also will let users know what to expect when clicking on the link. Moreover, multiple URLs for similar products also lead to duplicate content in search engines.

Due to this, you need to avoid having any duplicate content since it is important that only one URL is indexed by Google and canonical tag is the easiest way to do this. With Canonical tag, Google will know which URL to index.

Scenario 2: Conversion of the Website from HTTP to HTTPs

Since the increase of user’s security, many websites are being converted to the encrypted https version. However, this change will lead to much duplicate content, as Google indexes both the http and the https version. In this case, a 301 redirect can be used to avoid this problem since it will redirect the http version of the website to the https version.  By permanently redirecting those sites, you will increase the loading time significantly.

  • The solution for smaller websites: All web pages are redirected to the https version via the 301 redirect.
  • The solution for very large websites: The rel=canonical refers to the https version as the original URL. This way, crawlers are encouraged to index the https version.

Scenario 3: Relaunch of a Website with an URL Alteration

Another case, if your website has reached a top place in Google Page, but because of several reasons you need to turn it down temporarily, and relaunch it again, a search engine indexes the exact URL of an individual web page, and if the structure of the website is changed, almost none of the web pages will keep their URL.

To help you minimize the risk for having any domain transfer, you can forward the old domain URL to the new domain URL via a 301 redirect. By this way, users can find the new URL without have to cope with error pages or receiving browser messages that the complete website is unavailable.

5 Changes on How We Develop Websites Caused By SEO

Posted on by Mario

5 Changes on How We Develop Websites Caused By SEO

Do you notice that the way web developers build a website has changed? At some point, there are things that should be considered recently which are related with SEO to elevate your business reach in Google. Below are several things that have changed the way we develop websites.

  1. Time Is of the Essence

Time is one of the most crucial things since SEO becomes the concern. Savvy business reduces many things on their websites just to increase the speed on their site; therefore they no longer use heavy music and images and optimize every element on their page-including using content delivery networks and compression techniques. They truly understand that site which requires long time to load will cause 25 percent of your visitors to leave your site immediately before they can even reach it; that’s how important load times have become.

  1. Websites are Built on Keywords

In the old days, you only need to create web pages that explain about your products or services, and then wait for people to visit your website. But, today you need to create blog or to create pages that show sales material and indirectly promote your business. This is why keyword research industries to find the most relevant keywords, and then we create content for them. Blogs are not just an important way to share news, but also to rank for specific keywords that drive prospects to your website.

  1. Mobile Users Are Number One

Nowadays, nobody will doubt about how mobile users will affect your SEO optimization, since over 60 percent of all online traffic is from mobile devices. Due to this, Google tries to obligate every web to go mobile and penalize those who are not being mobile friendly.

  1. User Experience is Pivotal

Another thing that you should study is how to make a better user experience to your audience, since high bounce rates can result in Google lowering your ranking, while intense competition means if your website isn’t functional and easy to use on all devices, people will leave your site and go elsewhere.

  1. You can Have a Framework to Follow

Some people argue that SEO has made web developers work harder, but the fact is with good SEO optimization on your website, it helps your site run effectively. Besides, you can get many free tools that help you manage, monitor, and improve your website for SEO, such as Google analytics, Google search console, Google Keyword Tool Planner, Google Page Insights, and Google Mobile Friendly Test.