On-Page Report Rel Canonical and keyword density and backlinks...

[onyx808]

Hey guys,

1- In the On-Page Report the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" is not checked and it says

<dl>

<dt>Canonical URL "http://www.mydomain.com/"</dt>

<dt>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank.</dt>

<dt>the domain points to the right page... Im not understading why its checked off..??? could it be because the canonical url has the ".com/" instead of just ".com" ???</dt>

<dt>2- it also shows that the Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 33 , is this good or bad? too little or too much?</dt>

<dt>3- Also when building backlinks should I include the ".com/" or ".com" ??</dt>

<dt>Thank you in advance! </dt>

</dl>

[adriandg]

1. you need to add a rel=canonical to the of your index page. a quick google search will get you the right syntax.

2. Seems pretty heavily optimized, but i wouldn't worry about it much more at this point. focus on link building.

3. doesn't matter as far as i am aware.

[RyanKent]

You need to decide on a single URL structure to your website.

http://www.mydomain.com/hello

http://www.mydomain.com/hello/

http://mydomain.com/hello

http://mydomain.com/hello/

The above four URLs could lead to the exact same page depending on how your site is set up. This would cause confusion for search engines. Which page do they index? Also, when someone links to your site, the links would split between the various URLs so your backlink power would be divided.

The solution? Make a choice, then 301 or canonicalize your site based on that choice. If you decide you want the "www" version with the trailing slash, then the canonical code for your page would be:

Adding this code lets search engines know which page to index and to consolidate your links to that page.

With respect to your keywords, in general you wish each page to focus 1 or 2 keywords. I try to ensure they are used about 4 times on the page. If you see 33 keywords on a page you may be targeting too many words, or using them too often. It could also be that everything is just fine. It depends on a few factors.