Author: Dr. Manus Ward │Head of Digital Strategy and Data Protection │Hotelconsultant.com is a qualified and experienced former hotel manager, culinary Olympic team manager and hospitality Head of School who is passionate about passing on the knowledge he gained from one of the few hotel digital strategy doctorates in the world to you the hotelier. Bonus: If you have any problems with this contact me (100% free) at manus@hotelconsultant.com or 086 8185829 on this or any aspect of your hotel’s digital strategy.
Why do we need to do this
Google penalises duplicate content. This even applies if you have different addresses for the exact same page. If you can’t only have one address for each page use a Rel=”Canonical” tag.
What does this mean
Basically some sites mostly in error assign different URLs for the same page. An example is the four URLs below:
http://www.examplehotel.com/
http://www.examplehotel.com/
http://examplehotel.com/
http://examplehotel.com/home
Basically Google then believes you have 4 pages that contain identical content which may cause penalisation of your site.
What do I do: Firstly endeavor to have only one version of each page. However should this not be possible for whatever reason use a rel=”canonical” tag instructing Google as to which page to credit as being the original.
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.examplehotel.com/” />
How do I check if there are duplicate pages on my site: Click on http://seositecheckup.com/tools/url-canonicalization-test and do the following:
You will then get this page. You are fine and should do nothing if you have the following page:
If you get a different answer copy and paste me the information and send me an email to manus@hotelconsultant.com.
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