IP canonicalization in SEO
IP canonicalization in SEO is a technique sometimes used for better SEO (search engine optimization) results. It works when a website’s IP address is canonicalized. It means the physical website IP address should redirect to the domain name. For example, if visitors enter the website IP address (177.17.1.0) in their web browser, they should be redirected to domain name i.e. www .example .com Here www. example .com represents your domain name.
Otherwise, a search engine may index your site under both the IP address and the domain name. This duplicate content could potentially harm your site’s search engine ranking.
In order to understand IP canonicalization you can refer google guide. Google has defined canonicalization in details at Consolidate duplicate URLs You can have a look for better understanding of canonicalization.
This is not must to have technique but always good to have technique. You can meet one extra parameter of SEO by using this.
Why does canonicalization matter?
Canonicalization is important to control Duplicate content because is a complicated subject in SEO. But when search engines crawl many URLs with identical (or very similar) content, it can cause a number of SEO problems. There are multiple issues but the most common issue is when search crawlers have to go through too much duplicate content, they may miss some of your unique content. Apart from this, large-scale duplication may affect your website ranking ability. Finally, even if your content does rank, search engines may pick the wrong URL as the “original.” Using canonicalization helps you control your duplicate content. Dealing with duplicate content is not an easy task for website owners. Canonicalization could make it easy for you. It is an easy process.
FAQs- IP Canonicalization
In order to add canonicalization, you could follow given below basic steps.
1. Open Search Console , identify the different versions of your website. (http or https and www and non www versions)
2. Select your website version.
3. Click the settings icon.
4. In the Preferred domain section, choose the site you want to be preferred.
A canonical link element is an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues in search engine optimization by specifying the “canonical” or “preferred” version of a web page. It is described in RFC 6596, which went live in April 2012. Sources: Wikipedia
There are two different methods by which you could solve canonicalization issues.
1. Add permanent redirects (301 redirects)
2. Add rel=canonical tags to your website pages and tell Google which of several similar pages is preferred. Depending on kind of issue, you could choose between these two options.
Hope these steps would help you to understand what is IP canonicalization in SEO and resolve canonical issues on your website.
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