We Have Specified Your Canonical

There's been a good discussion lately about a potential Canonical Issue on the Network Solutions Forums and I wanted to explain a little bit about it so that everyone is up to speed. Our top notch ecommerce (v7) development team made a minor software change several months ago based on client-submitted feature requests and the recommendations of our industry-leading search engine optimization experts. We added a canonical link tag to each page. It looks something like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx" />

The intent with this dynamic tag is to indicate to the major search engines which choice is the proper URL for the page that loaded. It's possible that for the example above, a search engine may find multiple links to it formatted as...

• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?ref=foo
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?start=25
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?next

Even though a user loading the pages above would see the same content, the search bots would treat them as different --unless there is a specified canonical.

Google added support to this format to allow sites with content accessible via multiple URLs to specify a preferred URL to be returned in search results. We added this feature to point them in the right direction. This feature is a valuable improvement to help eliminate duplicate content worries.

Clients may see temporary fluctuations to their SERPs rankings as Google re-indexes their site to take into account the new format support. However, given the variables involved and recent Google update, it would be nearly impossible to determine the exact cause of any changes in their SERPs.

The forum discussion revolves around the fact that the home page is specified with a /index.aspx rather than just a /. It's perceived that home page ranking may have fluctuated due to this change. It's certainly possible, but I'm also aware that Google changes all the time and it may be unrelated. The SERPs are showing the /index.aspx for the home page, but that just might be because they are now displaying the canonical choice in the rankings page and does not indicate anything that would affect a site's actual listings.

If you'd like more information about Google and how they treat canonical, please see official Google blog post as well as Matt Cutts' post. In the future, we may be adding a new feature that will allow our merchants to specify their own home page for this link tag. But even so, normal "don't panic" rules of SEO should apply.

Free Ecommerce Software Upgrade! Version 4 to Version 7!

It's time to sign up for your software upgrade! The wait is finally over. All the processes and steps are in place. Check out our Free Software Upgrade page today! The email announcing it went out today. Pay particular attention to ...

A limited number of stores will be upgraded at a time, ensuring each customer receives a superior level of service.

I've been busy this past week training some of the team that will handling the white-glove support for this and I'm excited to see it get started. It may get a bit busy around here, but we are much better prepared this time around.

Email Marketing Solutions from Constant Contact

It's time to start ramping up your relationship contacts with your current customers. If you aren't already keeping in touch with them via email marketing, you will want to have an option available for capturing subscribers. When crafting and sending your promotions, you have got to have a tool for building your newsletters, sending them to your customers and tracking the effectiveness of your media.

View more about Email Marketing Solutions from Constant Contact.

Coming Soon - The E-commerce 7.6 Release!

We are really excited about the new features and enhancements coming soon. Check out the release notes on the Network Solutions Forums.

GrowSmartBusiness Webinar - Register Now on Eventbrite

I wanted to post a quick link to the GrowSmartBusiness Webinar. I have a busy week planned, but I'm going to try and attend. Here is a summary:

On Thursday, April 30 from 2-3pm ET, Network Solutions will host the GrowSmartBusiness Webinar to help small business owners learn from the success of others. Join our all-star line-up of entrepreneurs and experts for this free, live webcast. They'll discuss tips for overcoming challenges to marketing strategy and capital access.

These days, small businesses need all the help they can get.