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What is Canonicalization? and Cross-Domain Content Duplication

Canonicalization is the process of avoiding duplicate content on websites pages. A canonical tag is a way of telling search engines that a specific URLs represents the original copy of a page.

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What is Canonicalization?

Due to content duplication search engines demote your websites. we can lose website traffic because of duplicate content and how to get back our traffic and avoiding duplicate content by using link tag with the rel=”canonical” attribute.

The link tag with the rel=”canonical” attribute avoid whole page “Duplicate Content” and “cross-domain content duplication“.

1. Canonicalization

If your site contains multiple pages with largely identical content, there are a number of ways you can indicate your preferred URL to Google This is called “canonicalization“.

Canonicalization is the process of avoiding duplicate content on websites pages. A canonical tag is a way of telling search engines that specific URLs represent the original copy of a page. If the website has similar or duplicate pages, Consolidate duplicate URLs define with the help of the canonical link tag element.

Before cross-domain rel=”canonical” link element, Google introduced two meta tags called syndication-source and original source. These tags were designed to avoid content duplication on website pages. After introducing the rel=canonical tag, google had been depreciated the above meta tags.

In the year of 2009, Google has announced and its support for using the rel=”canonical” link element across different domains.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask have announced to offer a way to reduce cross-domain content duplication and make things easier for everyone.

With the help of rel=canonical tag, bots can easily understand which one is the original and duplicate content on website pages.

Canonical Tag Representation Code Example:

Canonical Tag Representation

The rel=”canonical” tag is an HTML attribute that action to indicates the page on which the tag appears should be treated as a duplicate of the specific URL.

2. The main problem with URLs

Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. Google can assume the website URLs split or separate in multiple variations. It Consolidates duplicate URLs. For example, search bots or crawlers may be able to reach your site homepage in all of the following ways. Here is a list of all URL variations that the site would be likely visible as follows.

  • https://www.yourdomain.com/
  • http://www.yourdomain.com/
  • https://yourdomain.com/
  • http://yourdomain.com/
  • https://www.yourdomain.com
  • http://www.yourdomain.com
  • https://yourdomain.com
  • http://yourdomain.com
  • https://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
  • http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
  • https://yourdomain.com/index.html
  • http://yourdomain.com/index.html

Modern dynamic websites and content management systems (CMS) are facing more problems. Many websites automatically add tags, allow multiple paths or URLs to the same content, and also add URL parameters to the searches, filtering sorts, and currency-related options. we can’t realize it but your websites have thousands of duplicate URLs.

3. What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is content that appears on the many places or many web pages or across domains on the Internet. search engines can crawl URLs with identical or similar content on multiple URLs, it may cause the number of SEO problems.

Search engines will choose any one URL version to serve, which may not always be the original or best one. Search engines don’t know which version to either include or exclude from their indexes.

Why would I have similar or duplicate pages?

In dynamic web applications and Modern CMS, the content or data (blog articles) on a website will automatically appear on different Page URLs based on the dynamic functionality of the websites that’s why the Google or any search engines should be considered as duplicate or copy content means similar or duplicate pages. Every dynamic page should have similar or duplicate pages based on the dynamic functionality basics.

4. Consolidate duplicate URLs

If the website has multiple URLs or different pages with similar or duplicate content on both a mobile and a desktop version, Google will consider as duplicate versions of the same page. It will choose any one URL as the canonical version and crawl that, and remaining all URLs will be considered as duplicate URLs and crawled frequently.

If you don’t specify, to tell Google which URL is canonical, It will choose for you or may consider them both of equal value, which may guide to unwanted behavior, and we are explained below about Why should I choose a canonical URL?

5. Why should I choose a canonical URL?

Google or any other search engine doesn’t like duplicate content that is not unique so. When a duplicate or Non-Original content is present on Your Site Will Hurt Your Rankings and traffic losses across Your Domain.

If your site contains multiple pages with largely identical content, you should use the canonical tag to your site pages to avoiding duplicate content. If you are not using a canonical tag, the site will lose rankings and traffic, and sometimes they would downgrade a website for having a lot of duplicates or copy content.

6. What is Cross-Domain Content Duplication

Search engines support for using the rel=”canonical” link element across different websites across different domains (like as main domain, the subdomain, and other domains on the server). Similarly, the duplicate content that appears on the cross-domain URLs, for example.

  • https://www.twinztech.com/difference-between-absolute-and-relative-urls/
  • https://www.twinztech.com/blog/difference-between-absolute-and-relative-urls/
  • https://blog.twinztech.com/difference-between-absolute-and-relative-urls/
  • https://www.otherdomain.com/difference-between-absolute-and-relative-urls/

The above examples URLs shows the similar or identical content, this type of content on the web pages (page URLs) is said to be as Cross-Domain Content Duplication.

Read More:- Handling legitimate cross-domain content duplication

a) How to give Cross Domain Canonical tag URLs

There are two ways to give canonical tag on web pages to avoid duplicate content.

#1. The content should be own and not duplicate to the other page (page URL) content; the Canonical link element structure should give the same URL (protocol) on the page load. It should be applicable to cross domains on your website. See the below example.

Canonical Tag Representation

#2. The content should not include your own and copy or duplicate from the other site page (page URL) content; the Canonical link element structure should give the path of the copied page URL (protocol) where you are copied from that URL should be taken as the canonical link. The below example process represents how to avoid the Cross-Domain Content Duplication.

Cross-Domain Content Duplication Representation

The above example represents the canonical URL of the other site in which the content is the copier or duplicate from other sites. In this way, we can tell search engines to which is the original content page URL.

b) Which URL does Google consider canonical (or duplicate)?

Based on the Index Status report to determine which page URLs are considered as a canonical or duplicate. Duplicates page URLs will be marked as invalid, and the canonical page URLs will be marked as valid.

The rel=”canonical” tag added pages considered as original (valid page URLs) and not specified pages are considered as duplicate(invalid page URLs).

Note: Even if you specified a canonical page, Google might pick a different canonical for various reasons based on the content.

7. The Impacts of Duplicate Content

  • Without original or unique content, it is difficult for a search engine to identify what version of the duplicate content is the most trustworthy.
  • Due to Duplicate, content search engines can slow down in finding new or original content.
  • Search engines don’t know which version to either include or exclude from their indexes.
  • Original or unique content is one of the key factors of the search engines (Google). Due to duplicate content, it will be the effect on SEO rankings.
  • Due to Duplicate page content, the trust flow and page authority of the site will be decreased.
  • Due to Duplicate or copy content loses the Search engine rankings and marketing values will be decreased.

8. How to Identifying Duplicate Content

  • Web Search via Search Operators like site:twinztech.com see the examples on (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en).
  • Google Search Console is a powerful tool for identifying duplicate content. Go into the Search Console for your website and then go to Search Appearance » HTML Improvements, looking specifically for duplicate page titles and meta descriptions.Google Search Console Duplicate Content
  • Crawling the site by using SEO tools, such as ScreamingFrog and DeepCrawl, to identify duplicate page titles and content.
  • Navigating through the website also find the duplicate or copy content.

9. Sources of Duplication

  • Page Pagination URLs
  • Comment Pagination URLs
  • Duplicate URLs (search query parameters, session IDs, and Tracking IDs)
  • Web Sorting (Filtering the data)
  • Cross-Categories Pages (For an example: Having one Apple page is listed under the Fruits category page and having another Apple page is listed under the Pome Fruits category page.)
  • Cross-Tags Pages (For an example: Having one Apple page is listed under the Fruits tag page and having another Apple page is listed under the Pome Fruits tag page.)
  • Cross-domain URL, sub-domain URL, and subfolder URL duplication
  • Website Search Functionality Results (URL strings or URL query parameters)
  • Internet Protocols (HTTP vs HTTPS URLs, www vs non-www versions URLs and with or without forward slash of the domain)
  • Website’s Printer-friendly and Mobile-friendly versions of page content.

10. Duplicate Content Solutions

  • 301 redirections
  • Using of rel=”canonical” tags for page URLs.
  • Using of rel=”prev/next” tags for pagination URLs.
  • Using of hreflang=”en-US” tags for language page URLs.
  • With the help of search engines parameters handling features like Search Console and Webmaster Tools

11. General Guidelines by google webmasters

General Guidelines by google webmasters was explained about:

  • Where we can use canonical
  • How to deal with HTTPS pages
  • Where we can ignore dynamic parameters
  • How to add redirections from the HTTP to HTTPS pages.
  • How to deal with SSL/TLS certificate for implementing canonicalization methods

You should follow the general guidelines, for all canonicalization methods on (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066)

Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical?

Yes, we can. Google and other search engines will recognized relative path URLs for an example

Relative URLs Canonicalization

12. What if the rel=”canonical” returns a 404?

Google will continue to index your content and it has an algorithm to find a canonical, but we it recommends that you specify existing URLs as canonicals.

NOTES:

1. Google doesn’t get angry and penalizes to have duplicate content on the website. It’s not that they would demote a site for having a lot of duplicate content.

2. Source From (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html)

Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains. So site owners can suggest www.example.com vs. example.com vs. help.example.com, but not example.com vs. example-widgets.com.

Also Read : Robots.txt File vs Robots meta tag vs X-Robots-Tag

Blockquote tag

The link tag with the rel=”canonical” attribute avoid whole page “Duplicate Content” and cross-domain content duplication.

The Blockquote tag with the cite=”https://www.example.com” attribute is the great thing is that you can mark a small part of the page as taken from the other side, which the Search engines consider blockquote content should not be counted as original content.

HTML5 Blockquote tag is Beneficial

Many Top Sites using Blockquote tag with the cite=”https://www.example.com” attribute for avoiding the small portion of the snippet or duplicate content which is taken from the other site.

I’m not sure that if you know, but there’s a Blockquote tag with the cite attribute in HTML5, which I believe only will be positive for your search engine rankings.

For an Example

<blockquote cite=”https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/”>
The world’s leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by more than one million members in the United States and close to five million globally.
</blockquote>

Helpful Resources:

1. How to Flush The Rewrite Rules or URL’s or permalinks in WordPress Dashboard?

2. 16 Best Free SEO WordPress plugins for your Blogs & websites

3. What is an SEO Friendly URLs and Best Permalink Structure for WordPress?

4. 16 Most Important On-Page SEO Factors To Boost Your Ranking Faster in Google

5. 16 Best (free) AMP – (Accelerated Mobile Pages) WordPress Plugins

We are an Instructor, Modern Full Stack Web Application Developers, Freelancers, Tech Bloggers, and Technical SEO Experts. We deliver a rich set of software applications for your business needs.

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Business

7 Must Have Digital Marketing Tools For Your Small Businesses

7 Must Have Digital Marketing Tools For Your Small Businesses, The stepping stone for success for startups is the easy availability of resources and tools

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7 Must Have Digital Marketing Tools For Your Small Business

It’s not easy to start a business, and to make it successful is an even greater challenge. A majority of startups fail, and just a handful can survive. Amidst those who exist and achieve success, only the creme de la crème become world-famous.

Of course, in the dreamy, the more or less filmy startup world, dreams do come true. But it’s not just sheer luck for once startups such as UberCab to transform into one of the world’s most valued privately held ubiquitous companies, Uber. Behind the scenes will reveal a lot of belief, grit, resilience, and hard work goes into building a successful startup.

Call me Captain Obvious, but it’s no secret that running a small business is hard work. You have enough on your plate and a continually growing to-do list. And to top it all off, at times, what is the most crucial part often tends to feel like the hardest one to do consistently and well.

1. What Do All Startups Need?

The stepping stone for success for startups is the easy availability of resources and tools. This is where the internet comes in; it’s a significant enabler for startups as it provides an unlimited number of tools and resources at your fingertips that every founder can imagine.

An added advantage is that the internet is big on functionality and easy on the pocket – two elements which founders like, which is why online advertising has an insatiable appeal for startups. Not only is it a cost-effective method for brands which are newly established to showcase their products and services in front of a targeted audience but also, they can do so in a highly precise manner.

Gone are the days when you need a multimillion-dollar budget to get ahead of your competitors. Whether you are investing your hard-earned cash or your time, there is high ROI in digital marketing. Other than great returns for a small budget, there are several marketing tools out there which can take the weight off your shoulders.

For a successful small business, lets say a digital marketing company like infinity digital –, these tools are valuable. Especially those small businesses who have limited resources when it comes to a dedicated in-house marketing team or a restricted budget to outsource the work to an agency. They will soon prove invaluable to your business success; they will help collect data for you to analyze and optimize your campaigns, automate repetitive tasks, and help plan and organize marketing activities.

Without further ado, here’s a list of tools that will help a startup get the biggest bang for your buck, ensure you invest your precious time wisely, and sail merrily into the sunset.

2. Website Analytics Tools

It’s essential to keep an eye on the events and data that occur on your website from conversions to clicks, and beyond.

a) Google Analytics

Google Analytics

All startups have a lot of data, and Google Analytics is the best friend of every market, which helps track content that you upload.

Google Analytics is a free to use web-based tool which helps collect, track, and analyze data about those who visit your website and their activity.

Chances are you have heard of this powerful tool. You might have even installed it, but are you utilizing its power to help boost your online marketing results? For a small business, it’s a valuable tool.

Google Analytics lets you record and analyze data about visitors and traffic to your website. If you use this tool effectively, you can increase your conversion rates and the site’s user experience. Plus, you can also analyze real-time data, measure engagement on-site, unique visitors, and referral sources among several more points.

Pro tip: Google Analytics works in tandem with Google Tag Manager. Use them both for improved results. Another great Google tool is Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

b) Kissmetrics

An analytics tool which helps increase conversions throughout your website. You can find out which customers are most engaged and even track and map a customer’s journey to your site to eventually convert prospective customers.

It’s a useful customer engagement tool developed to understand your customers’ behavior. It tracks a visitor’s conversion journey and gives you a broken-down report regarding each part. With this, you can increase revenue and sales or fine-tune the process of conversion.

3. Email Marketing Tools

Email Marketing Tools

a) MailChimp

The first email was sent way back in 1971, who would have thought that after 48 years later, the email will still play an important role in digital marketing.

Today, 99% of consumers check their email every day! So, it’s clear that no matter how small or large your business is, email marketing should definitely be a part of your overall strategy.

MailChimp is a platform which puts all your marketing needs in one place. It’s a tool which brings marketing channels, audience data, and insights together so that you can attain your goals faster. From a single platform, you can promote your business across email and track its performance.

The real beauty MailChimp is its easy integration, usability, and sliding price tag, which depends on your email list size. Their ‘forever free’ plan is best-suited for small businesses who want to get a feel of email marketing.

When a customer signs up to your mailing list, they are practically inviting you straight into their inbox which allows you to market to them directly. Hence, despite being old-school, email marketing offers a higher ROI than other marketing activities.

Did you know that email usage grows roughly about 4 percent every year and shows no signs of slowing down in the near future.

MailChimp can quickly become your “all-in-one” weapon for your marketing arsenal.

4. Search Engine Optimization Tools

a) SEMRush

From tracking to social media to content marketing, SEMRush is a research tool that does everything for you. It’s a new found toy for SEO experts.

Its built-in features help both experts and rookies to track and improve their search rankings. It even draws a comparison for your domain with competitors, monitors their fluctuations in ranking, collects information about your competitors’ keywords, pull out information about your competitor’s backlinks, find new competitors in the segment and even conduct a full competitive analysis. The best part is that all this is carried out organically!

SEMRush’s SEO tools help track your competitors’ keyword strategy plus the platform also looks for good backlinking opportunities and runs an SEO audit of your content.

5. Content Marketing Tools

a) WordPress

WordPress

If you require a content management system (CMS), then WordPress is your answer.

In 2019, it powers more than 34% of the internet, and this is a 4% rise since last year. There are more than 44,000 WordPress plugins which you can install.

WordPress presents unlimited options, and when it comes to stats, with WordPress, it’s possible to go on and on which is proof enough to show that this is one of the best of the best CMS systems.

With WordPress, you have the tools to create a website that’s packed with features or a blog which presents written content, images, videos, and a lot more.

WordPress can be easily downloaded, and you can create a fully customizable website from scratch with just a few tools, add detailed information like your company’s vision, mission, etc. and even include a full-fledged blog which helps in marketing due to SEO keywords and high-quality content. If you wish, you could also host your website on the WordPress.com service for free.

One of the best features of WordPress is the tens of thousands of plugins which you can pick and add to your page. These plugins have a variety of features like adding a contact form,
customizing your theme, monitoring analytics, and much more!

The biggest advantage is that it comes with an intuitive interface, which is super easy to use even for lay users. As it’s a self-contained and self-maintaining website, it doesn’t require any HTML editing or an FTP software, making it easier. Plus, it can be used on any computer or mobile device.

All these reasons and more make this application a sought-after one.

It’s the best CMS out there for small businesses, and it’s reasonably priced as well.

Pro tip: If you have WordPress, you must have Yoast. It’s an SEO tool which goes hand-in-hand with WordPress that checks the SEO compatibility of your content compares it with its own readability tests. Yoast helps improve engagement and optimize content.

6. Social Media Marketing Tools

a) Hootsuite

If your small business is present on multiple social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. you are no stranger to how much time, effort and coordination it takes to brainstorm, research, write, revise, schedule, and publish your posts. This doesn’t take into account engagement with your followers and fans which east into your time as well.

Here’s presenting Hootsuite, a free digital marketing tool, which integrates with popular social media platforms so all you handle all activities from one place.

The guided tour and walkthrough helps you familiarize yourself with the website’s layout so that you can easily navigate and begin the process in no time.

While a few features come at a price, there’s plenty of free options that small businesses can use. From scheduling posts in advance to publishing posts immediately to monitoring your feed to basic analytics to comment, like and share, and integrate with third-party apps, there is so much on offer!

7. Project Management And Collaboration Tools

a) Slack

Slack

In the world of digital marketing, efficiently communicating between team members determines the outcome of a task or project, which is why you need to invest in a software that’s easy to use and comes with uninterrupted data sharing and interaction.

In the past, project management efforts took place primarily via email. With email, it’s difficult to cater to the dynamic and fast-paced demands of digital marketing.

Slack is a popular collaboration software. It’s easy to message option, and simple data sharing has made this a sweet tool which has won the hearts of many marketers. Plus, Slack comes integrated with all major tools for project management, sales, office management, design, productivity, and developer tools which makes it easy for you to stay on top of every digital marketing activity.

8. Plagiarism And Proofreading Tool

a) Grammarly

Unless you have a proofreader checking everything or you are a grammar guru, you need Grammarly. It’s a free tool with a paid option, but the free option works just as well.

As you open the website, the online dashboard and the interface and clean and simple to use.

Once you have a written document, you can upload it onto the platform or copy and paste it and immediately Grammarly will start checking that write-up for grammar and spelling. For future reference, you can save the document as well.

The free tool includes spelling, basic grammar, a limited number of plagiarism checks, and a detailed explanation regarding your spelling/grammatical mistakes.

Alternatively, you can install the software as a plugin for your browser, which automatically proofreads everything you type online without having to visit the dashboard.

While the paid version thoroughly checks the document and provides alternative options, the basic version is a lifesaver for all content including emails, blogs, proposals, social media, and more.

9. Virtual assistant services

The most valuable asset anyone has today is time, and then comes money. Successful businesses recognise this and they like to use their precious seconds to think strategically, develop ideas and forge new relationships. In order to reclaim your time, you should search for the best virtual assistant services and learn to delegate. Also, business growth requires capital so by a VA, you can substantially reduce your spending, since the cost of hiring a virtual assistant significantly less than hiring domestically (for most Western countries).

10. Over To You

Today’s digital marketing landscape is competitive and to survive, you need to be persistent, intuitive, social media savvy, and a jack of all trades. To make things easier and simpler, you can rely on a variety of digital marketing tools. Whether it’s developing a content marketing strategy or analyzing off-page backlinks, these tools will help you focus on things that matter and get the work done while also keeping you sane.

We’ve introduced you to a bunch of them. Use them and start to build a whole new digital world for yourself. Hold your head up high, keep pushing, and keep marketing – soon, you will be on the path to success.

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