What is difference between Canonical URL and 301 Redirect??

Can anybody tell me about the difference between canonical url and 301 redirect??? I have tried to understand but still confused. Please explain simply if anybody can.

 

In canonical two URLs are live in your website but Google considers only the canonical URL to remove the duplication but 301 redirectiion, one URL will be redirected to the second URL and pass all the credits to the second URL.

 

that's a good summary ~

 

Spot on. The implementation is different for each too:

Canonical: add a tag to the duplicate page
301: update a .htaccess file (for Apache), add a PHP redirect or use IIS settings (for Windows)

 

the SEO plugins for wordpress like the Wordpress SEO provide this tag by default.

 

Canonical tag is used when you have two version of same page. So to redirect both to one we use canonical tags. But 301 redirect is used to redirect any page to some other page.

Like if you have two version of your homepage.

http://www.xyz.com/default.aspx
http://www.xyz.com then use canonical tag.

But when you want to redirect www.xyz.com to www.xyz.com/aboutus.aspx then use 301 redirect.

 

Canonical issue means we use .htaccess file for adding www in front of our website url name and 301 redirect, we redirect our website with another website.

 

okay. Now I completely understand the difference. Jeff Collision replied the best.Thank you so much others too.

 

Excellent reply. Thanks for sharing this wonderful information. I also had same query.

 

If you're still feeling a bit unsure....

This website has some great info related to this topic.

http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/301-redirects-www-non-www-canonical-problems.html

 

With canoical URLs you tell your preferred version of URL to the search engines where as in 301 redirection you are redirecting the search engines permanently from one domain to another. The domain from which redirection is made will be no more accessible to user as well as to the bots.

As far as Google is concerned, it ignores rel=canonical in HTML body.

 

you can check out here : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/

 

Can you please provide the details as to how to use the tag?

 

A canonical Url is the url that you want visitors to see only one page when they found same page on one word. 301 redirect is the method who give power the move your visiting links without change your page name.

 

301 is used redirect url to different url and canonical is used to remove url dulicacy.

 

hi guys i am trying to use 301 redirect for my site so that there would not be 2 url duplicacy with www and non www. Can anyone give me some guide on how to do it? Thanks a lot.