Canonicalization is an internal content duplication issue on a website, and occurs when the same information can be accessed (and indexed by search engines) from different URLs. This occurs when URLs have not be standardised correctly, and the most common form is being able to access sites from both www and non-www headers.
For example, the same content can be accessed using 4 variations of the same homepage:
http://www.domain.com
http://www.domain.com/index.htm
http://domain.com
http://domain.com/index.htm
http://www.domain.com/index.htm?selection=26
Search engines may cache all the versions of the URLs resulting in site-wide duplication, which can lead to content duplication penalties. Surprisingly, canonicalization is a very common problem.
Canonicalization can be prevented by setting your preferred domain in Google webmaster tools, and using 301 re-directs to permanently direct the browser to the preferred URL.
A blog is basically an online journal, usually available within the public domain for other people to view. Blogs are also used in the form of news sections to websites. There are lots of blog platforms available on the web, with the most popular being wordpress, blogger and livejournal.
The activity of updating a blog is called “blogging”, and someone that owns or uses a blog is called a “blogger”.
Blogs are great for creating discussion, and are reasonably easy to setup on your website. Many websites use blogs as news pages in order to get more traffic to websites, as they can be search engine optimised and Google favours news and blog sites as they tend to be regularly updated, with unique content.
Adwords is a system to advertise on Google (and partner sites including Yahoo! and AOL) on a CPC (Cost Per Click basis). Adwords is an incredibly popular advertising scheme, as there is no monthly charges involved. Additionally, Adwords includes some advanced settings that allows users to present their advertisement to specific users searching for their key terms. This effectively qualifies the searcher to make sure they are in fact looking for the business or service being offered.
Adwords links appear at the top of the Google search engine results page, as shown in the figure above. Although statistically only 35% of users ever click on paid links, PPC campaigns can have an enourmous impact on a websites internet marketing campaign, and in competitive industries companies can bid as much as £5 per click!
