exponent cms becomes more seo friendly

20
NEW CANONICAL URL FIELD MAKES EXPONENT CMS MORE SEO FRIENDLY By Chris J. Everett, Principal & Founder Captivate Search Marketing

Upload: chris-everett

Post on 20-May-2015

544 views

Category:

Marketing


0 download

DESCRIPTION

Learn how one of the top search engine friendly CMS platforms has gotten better by allowing webmasters to easily add a header in their webpages.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

NEW CANONICAL URL FIELD MAKES EXPONENT CMS

MORE SEO FRIENDLY

By Chris J. Everett, Principal & Founder Captivate Search Marketing

Page 2: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

Over the years, Exponent CMS has proven itself to be one of the top search engine friendly CMS platforms available in the marketplace – and it just got better.

I recently teamed up with Exponent CMS code ninja Phillip Ball to integrate a new Canonical URL field into the core of the CMS, allowing webmasters to easily add a <link rel="canonical" > tag into the header of their Exponent CMS web pages, on a page by page basis.

Page 3: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

The new Canonical URL field has been integrated into the Exponent CMS page manager configuration, and you can also assign a Canonical URL when creating a new news article or blog post.

Page 4: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

If you're a developer using Exponent CMS and aren't familiar with the SEO ramifications of the Canonical URL field, you might be asking yourself why this new field matters and what its purpose is.

Page 5: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF CANONICAL URLS?

Page 6: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

In layman terms, what the Canonical URL Tag does is it tells the search engines what URL to give credit to in the case of multiple URLs having identical content.

Page 7: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

For example, if you're trying to make finding information easy for your website users by adding the same content in multiple sections of your site, such as pricing information, photo galleries, etc. by using the Exponent CMS content aggregation feature on your website, you've created yourself a duplicate content issue with the search engines.

Page 8: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

In this case, it's important to assign a <link rel=”canonical”> tag on the pages to let the search engine know which URL is the original (and often times only URL indexed) source of the content.

Page 9: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

SEOMoz.org also suggests that the rel=canonical tag be utilized on each page of your website, even if you don't have a duplicate page, in case of future developments on your site that might cause a duplicate content issue.

Page 10: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

HOW DO I USE THE NEW FEATURE?

Page 11: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

As Phillip and I have collaborated on this feature, we tried to make it as easy and straight forward as possible from an administrative perspective. If your website will be using Exponent CMS version 2.2.0 or newer, you'll find the Canonical URL field on any content page configuration under the “SEO” tab.

Page 12: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

You'll also be able to find this Canonical URL field on the Exponent CMS blog, news, and ecommerce modules when adding or editing a post or product.

Page 13: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

If you do not manually assign a Canonical URL within this field, the <link rel=”canonical”> tag will default to the SEF URL for that particular page/post/product.

Page 14: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

In order to manually set a Canonical URL for a piece of content, simply type or paste in the FULL URL that you want to assign the canonical tag to.

Page 15: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

WHAT DOES THE CANONICAL URL MARKUP LOOK LIKE?

Page 16: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

The canonical URL tag, whether you assign it manually or let it default automatically, will show up in the header tag of your Exponent CMS website, directly under the meta description tag:

Page 17: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

WHAT IF MY VERSION OF EXPONENT DOESN'T HAVE

THE NEW CANONICAL URL FIELD?

Page 18: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

If your website's version of Exponent CMS isn't the latest and greatest and you don't want to spend the time upgrading your theme in order to implement this new feature, Phillip Ball has come up with a work around that you can drop right into the header of your site's theme.

However, because you should be assigning Canonical URLs on a page by page basis to eradicate duplicate content issues, this work around is not an ideal solution if duplicate content is what you're trying to fix.

Page 19: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

If you simply want to assign a Canonical URL tag to your web pages because it's a “SEO best practice” for pages not at risk of duplicate content, here's what you need to do.

Navigate into the backed files of your website, accessing the theme folder and adding this code snippet inside the header tag of your default theme and any subthemes you might have for your site:

 <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo "http://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]" ?>"/>

Page 20: Exponent CMS becomes more SEO friendly

Here's what that looks like in the theme file:

While not ideal, this relatively easy process will automatically add a rel=canonical tag on each of your web pages.