Steven Mooner Usher

In technology, or moreover, computer science, canonicalisation is the operation of transfiguring data that has multiple potential representations into a single, canonical representation.

In search engine optimisation, this refers to the avoidance of having more than a single representation of your data, ie; website. Millions of websites have two options to their website, firstly, website.com, and secondly, www.website.com. This may seem like a trivial point, but when it comes to the indexing of your website, the algorithm by which your pages are ranked may or may not choose the best option, and that is something out of your control, except for removing the options in the first place.

Avoiding canonicalisation is extremely simple to achieve, but many websites fall in to the trap of believing that having two sites indexed, two likely identical sites its worth mentioning, will improve their rankings, or at the very least increase brand/site exposure.

The fact is this just isn’t the case. If you’re a webmaster, or business owner with a website through which you wish to receive traffic and potential custom, it’s important that you correctly and clearly define the channels through which a search engines spider should travel.

This is unlikely to lead to any ‘duplicate content’ penalisation, but its good practice, and is ultimately one of the fundamental actions that should be taken upon the launch of any website, particularly one of significant depth.

If you are unsure whether your domain has correctly taken the steps to avoid canonicalisation, simply type website.com in to your browser (replacing website.com with your own URL of course). If this redirects you to www.website.com, then you are fine, but do not fear if it doesn’t, there is a simple procedure to ensure you communicate your site correctly.

Firstly, open your text editor of choice, and copy the following code in:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.website.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Then, replace website.com and www.website.com with your own domains equivalents, and save this with the filename .htaccess, with which you can perform other techniques to improve your chances of ranking your site correctly, including rewriting your URL’s, but this is generally for smaller sites as you will need to include the code for each URL individually. For larger sites this is usually done through a combination of database category allocation and PHP (or similar) code.

Once you have saved this file, place it in your local root directory, save, then upload it to the root directory of your remote (hosting) server. Now, give it a try and you will find that if you type in website.com it will automatically redirect to www.website.com,thus avoiding canonicalisation and incorrect indexing of your sites information/services.

Try some examples. Follow the first link:
http://harrisfowler.co.uk - good personal injury site, you will find yourself at www.harrisfowler.co.uk.

Now, try the following link:
http://youclaim.co.uk - bad personal injury site, you will find you are at the URL originally shown.

Remember, if you have a website, let it serve it purpose.

Personal Injury Solicitors/Lawyers operate on a very fine line between hero and harassment. By the nature of their work, ie; accusing businessmen and women of malpractice in its various forms for financial benefit, you could argue they are soaked in hypocrisy, and using the money of innocent business owners across the globe to dry themselves off. But what of the claimants? Shouldn’t these people be the bearers of the blame? Are they really only making the claims they are because of all the television advertising? It’s my personal opinion that these claimants are entitled to their day in court, and the injury solicitor in charge of the claim is entitled to represent his/her client as so they wish.

Its’ too easy to suggest that they are carrying out the devils work, when in actual fact this industry would not exist were it not for complacent business owners, motorists, medical practitioners, and everyone else it seems. A claim would not succeed if the person/business accused were not at fault. And I dread to think of the day when a drunken motorist or faulty highway causes me to lose my legs and I feel unable to claim for the devastation to my life for fear of public response.

Of course, there is a clear distinction to be made in severity of case, and it’s true to say that America has ran away with the idea to no limit, and people are now making claims for being born with hair, and not having enough fries with their Extra large McDonalds’ meal. But when we consider that this is a country who willingly put a small child in charge of their economy it comes as no surprise.

In the 90’s new practices were introduced that allowed legal firms to operate a no win no fee strategy, and in doing so this opened up the market to many new and potential clients, but it also forced them to consider each case carefully, only moving forward with legitimate and worthy claims.

It is this distinction that determines whether a case is blatant money chasing or legitimate need for compensation. If there is a genuine claim, my view is that the injury solicitors are doing a fair job for a needy victim, the problem arises when we’re compelled to claim for a paper-cut after buying an A5 note-pad on which to write down all our woes.

No Win No Fee

Article Source: Here

Harris Fowler Personal Injury Solicitors, based in Taunton, Somerset, have long established themselves at the fore of the injury solicitors market.
In their own words:
“What we do
Personal Injury
If you’ve suffered an accident or a personal injury you could be entitled to make a compensation claim. We have specialist teams of dedicated and experienced personal injury lawyers who can help you claim compensation on an no win, no fee, no risk basis.

Serious Injury
Harris Fowler has extensive experience of dealing with high value injury claims, typically involving brain, head and/or spinal injuries – normally referred to as ‘catastrophic injury’.

Military Injury
The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme is the compensation package for members of the Armed Forces. It provides compensation, irrespective of fault, across the full range of circumstances in which illness, injury or death may arise as a result of service.

Professional Negligence
Because of our depth of knowledge of Personal Injury work we can and do bring negligence cases against other solicitors for mishandling personal injury cases.”