My Website - Domain Canonicalization Issue

[SeanFace101]

I am using "SEO Engine" to crawl my website & tell me things that need improved.
It is saying my website has "Domain Canonicalization Issue".

The SEO Engine help page says..
"This occurs when your Web Server is serving the same data on different Subdomains. For example, http://www.mydomain.com and http://mydomain.com returning the same data would be a Domain Canonicalization Issue."

I don't have any sub-domains! So i dont understand that!
I think this problem is causing other problems too! SEO Engine is also saying..
"Exact Duplicate Webpages are present"
"Duplicate META Titles are present"
"Duplicate META Descriptions are present"

I dont know how this can be because my website only has one page!

Can anybody help me with this at all?
Any pointers on how to solve this issue?

 

[NaXuh]

You always have the subdomain www.

You can add something to your .htaccess file to either make everyone have to go to www.yoursite.com or just yoursite.com. If you tell me which one you want, I can give you the code to add to your .htaccess to fix this. 🙂.

 

[David]

In all seriousness, it isn't a major issue, if it is even considered an issue. The tools are usually outdated and this is not going to impede on your results in a significant way. Content is still probably the most important factor in SEO and rankings.

Anyway, to prevent such a thing from happening, just apply one of the follow codes:

Redirect domain.com to www.domain.com

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Redirect www.domain.com to domain.com

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This goes into a .htaccess file on the main folder (ie. make a new page and name it .htaccess). Just make sure you change "domain.com" to what ever your domain is.

 

[SeanFace101]

I know its not majar or nothing.
Just want to put it right so all my visitors end up on the same address.

 

[Darknite]

Hello SeanFace101,

the part that says "www" is your sub-domain.

thus if you have a web domain called "mycompany.com", you have:

* one domain called http://mycompany.com

usually people add a sub-domain to the above. so that it becomes:

* http://www.mycompany.com

but these are two different urls!, canonical url means, that both end up on one domain eg:

* http://www.mycompany.com

even if someone types:

* http://mycompany.com

 

[SeanFace101]

Yeah, thats what i want.
I want it so that when people visit.. http://xboxlivefan.org
They are taken to http://www.xboxlivefan.org

Is this an easy thing to do?
Does this help SEO to have to first one change to the second one when visited ?

 

[Deleted member 5665]

Yeah, thats what i want.
I want it so that when people visit.. http://xboxlivefan.org
They are taken to http://www.xboxlivefan.org

Is this an easy thing to do?
Does this help SEO to have to first one change to the second one when visited ?

If you read DavidL post he tells you exactly how to do it. Just put the first code he showed you in the .htaccess. If you don't have a .htaccess just make one and put that code in it and upload it to the root.

 

[SeanFace101]

Yeah, i tried it, but it didnt work.
The urls both just stayed the same 😛

 

[Patrick S.]

Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xboxlivefan.org [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.xboxlivefan.org/$1 [L,R=301]

Try dat?

 

[SeanFace101]

What type of file will this go into ?
And where will i upload it too? (the main directory)

 

[Deleted member 5665]

What type of file will this go into ?
And where will i upload it too? (the main directory)

I explained which file the code goes into. Then where you upload it in my first post are you even bothering to read our posts? :lol:

 

[sapper]

What type of file will this go into ?
And where will i upload it too? (the main directory)

.htaccess needs to be uploaded to your root directory

 

[Tecca]

1. Make sure you're using an FTP client such as FileZilla (or another, doesn't matter). You can't see .htaccess files in cPanel.

2. Go to your /public_html folder and navigate to the root of your xbox forums. Where all of the files are located. Look for a file called .htaccess

3. Open it with a simple text editor (like Notepad) and paste one of the options DavidL posted above into it.

4. You're done!

If you don't have a .htaccess file, simply open Notepad, paste what DavidL posted into it, save it as htaccess.txt. Upload it to your forums root folder, and rename it to .htaccess

 

[Patrick S.]

As tecca said but I do have to do one thing

1. Make sure you're using an FTP client such as FileZilla (or another, doesn't matter). You can't see .htaccess files in cPanel.

:lol: :lol: sorry but I just gotta laugh at that.
All you have to do is click file manager and hit show hidden files 😛

 

[Tecca]

As tecca said but I do have to do one thing

1. Make sure you're using an FTP client such as FileZilla (or another, doesn't matter). You can't see .htaccess files in cPanel.

:lol: :lol: sorry but I just gotta laugh at that.
All you have to do is click file manager and hit show hidden files 😛

Oh, nice. I never saw that because I hit the checkbox not to show that message anymore.

 

[Patrick S.]

Ya I always hit both.
I also check disable coding check.
Well now you know 😉