One of the key factors in SEO is understanding your own customers or website visitors. This is the sort of information that a website server log file tracks and maintains for you.

For most Web developers, the term “log file” means keeping track of traffic and other vital statistics on their web pages. Log files record what pages your visitors go to, how they navigate your site, and how long they spend on a given page. This information is key to improving your website, which is a major component of on-page SEO.

Unsightly, awkward website designs can cost a business customers and ranking on most of the major search engines, but log files can pinpoint where your site is lacking and what areas you should leave alone. Perhaps you’re more familiar with Google Analytics, which produces data and reports gathered, in part, from log files.

Useful Data to Improve Your Website

Log files can also keep you informed of how visitors use your website. For example, if you have a number of articles, but only certain topics seem to be getting visitor interest, you could tie that subject in to other areas or products you want to promote to increase your traffic on those items.

You could also find that some search engines lead visitors directly to pages on your site, bypassing your homepage. Chances are, the pages visitors see without ever visiting your homepage are ranking high on search engines and may have a structure or keywords you should consider utilizing elsewhere on your site.

What is a Log File and How Do I Access Them?

Wikipedia defines a log file as a file (or several files) automatically created and maintained by a server of activity performed by it. Your ability to access log files would depend on your Website host and what type of hosting you have.

If you have shared Web hosting, you may not have access to all your log files as the host does not want to segment out the server logs for all the different users and domains on the shared hosting. They may only provide data on error logs, which can still be useful but shows one of the drawbacks of shared Web hosting. Consider this factor when making a decision on your Web host and type of server.

For neat examples of log file case studies, see this interesting and useful article by Eric Lander.

Find Out What People Are Searching For

In SEO, this is one of the most important aspects in creating content for a Website and targeting traffic. You can use your log file to find out how people are getting to your site, as well as what words or searches they are using to get there. You may discover that visitors are stumbling across your page by searching for words or phrases you had never even considered using as keywords.

The log file may also indicate when visitors are coming to your site from a link elsewhere on the Web, which is not only good marketing for your company or blog, but helps to boost your place in search engine results.

Rel canonical, a.k.a. rel=”canonical”, is an HTML element that helps prevent duplicate content appearing on search results by specifying the webmaster’s preferred version of a particular web page. This element, or tag, is placed up in the header of a website. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all support the rel=”canonical” when producing their search engine results.

Duplicate content usually happens when the same information is available on multiple URLs (think a shopping page with items listed by price, type, date). This can occur within the same website or when content is on one website and then used on another site. It’s important to take steps to avoid duplicate content, as not only can it be confusing for users, it can also adversely affect your search engine rankings.

Just because the rel=”canonical” is an available option for duplicate content doesn’t mean it’s a best practice. Though Google has stated that it would honor the rel canonical tag, it prefers the use of 301 redirects. Google’s algorithm can choose to either follow or ignore the tag, but it is typically taken into account along with a number of other signals.

Though you may want search engines to follow each command you give them, for the sake of their search users, they take more into consideration so that users get accurate information. Making it optional also helps to cover for you if you have made a mistake in your coding. If you happen to make an unavailable page canonical, other factors will come into play to determine whether a particular page appears in a link back to your site on a search.

When to Use Rel Canonical and When to Avoid it?

This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of the rel canonical tag. Domain name changes can be a pain for both you and your visitors, but by using the tag as an indicator, you can send searchers directly to the page on the site where you want them, rather than sending them to a redirect page. Redirect pages can deter visitors and potentially cost a site hits or sales.

If, say, you operate a shopping site that carries a number of different colors of the same table, it would be appropriate to link to the most popular color. However, using the rel canonical tag on an entirely different make and style table would not be appropriate.

Other Positives?

Another good use of the rel canonical tag is when you have a new website and you want to include content from a prior website on your new website but you can’t access your old website to add the 301 redirect code. In brief, only use rel canonical when a 301 redirect is not feasible. Don’t use rel=”canonical” as a solution to an and all duplicate content issues.

Using the 301 redirects that Google prefers are slightly more complicated, but rel canonical tag is easy to implement on a site. Another great use for the tag is to sort between otherwise identical sites developed for the web and mobile browsers.