Fix URL Problem

I have already mentioned 3 Common URL Problems that you can face while running your website in my earlier post. Now I am trying to share that How you can Fix them.

Problem 1: 

Non-www and www Versions of Site URLs

There are a couple of things you need to do to fix this:

• Decide which URL style you want to use, www or non-www.
• Set up a 301 redirect so that any links to your non-preferred URL style will go to the right style. This way you don’t waste link value by splitting it between two URLs.
• Set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools so your search result listings are consistent with your style preference. 

          Direction: Site Configuration(on right side) -> Settings

• Make sure whenever you build links to your site that you use the preferred URL style.

Problem 2: 

Duplicate Home Page URLs

The fix here is very similar to the first one. Here are a few tips:

• Set your main home page URL to be http://www.mysite.com. 301 redirect everything else to this URL since it is the most basic (If your preferred URL style is non-www, then do http://mysite.com)
• If you have to set up different versions for tracking purposes or some other reason, set a canonical tag to show the search engines which version you want showing up in the search results.
• Make sure when you build links to your home page that you link to the correct version.

Problem 3: 

Dynamic URLs

• If possible, make sure that your site is using SEO-friendly base URLs. It’s better to have a base URL that will lead to the content rather than a URL that relies on a parameter. For example: http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html is much better than http://www.mysite.com/category.php?prod=123 where some generic category page is really the base URL.
• Set a canonical tag that tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use parameter URLs like http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html?param1=123&param2=423 to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the official one.
• An even better way to handle this is to capture the data on the server side and then redirect the visitor to the correct URL after you have captured your data. A lot of affiliate networks like ShareASale do it this way, and you can to. The visit basically goes like this: Visitor clicks on links with parameters -> Visitor goes to site, server records parameter data and 301 redirects them to the right landing page – >Visitor barely notices the switch because it happens fast.This way you can get all the data you need, make sure all of the link value goes to the right page, and your visitor still sees what they were after.

  These are some steps, one can follow to fix these problems.