Lost ranking once optimised a page

[RyanKent]

Hi Peter.

I am not clear what you mean by "swapped around". If the position of the href and rel properties were reversed, that is fine.

As far as which version of your link is used, with or without a trailing slash, that is up to your preference. I tend to think that a trailing slash represents a folder while a lack of a trailing slash represents a page. My preference for the conjunctivitis would be without the trailing slash.

The canonical tag, like most tools, can be used correctly to help your results. If used incorrectly, your results can worsen. It is a very important piece of code along with 301 redirects. I highly recommend taking a bit of time learning about both. My best advice is google "Matt Cutts canonical" and reviewing some of the results, along with "Matt Cutts 301".

[kwoolf]

Hi Ryan,

Looks like you're using Wordpress. To take care of those redirect issue, try the following in your .htaccess file. Test thoroughly on a demo site before going live with this. Wordpress plugins that you're using might have options that reach the same effect, so look into that as well.

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks

#Force trailing slash
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.)?mybabyradio.com/$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
    RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
#Redirect non-www to www
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mybabyradio.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1 [R=301,L]