[az_column_text]I have several sites running on Joomla! but I have been suffering with the my search engine optimization ever since google released Panda. I think the primary reason was due to duplicate content. After researching on the issue I really could not find a good solution that met my specific need.
What I wanted, was if I had several menus that pointed to the same article generate a <link rel=”canonical” href=””> meta tag.
Below is the code that I came up with to generate a meta tag on every page. I will attached a text file with the code to the post also and you can download the joomla_code here. Simply copy this code and put it in between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags if your /template/[TEMPLATE_NAME]/index.php file.
To see this code in action visit my Pest Control Site at www.callprobest.com and view the source and you will see that every page has the new meta tag.[/az_column_text]
[az_column_text]
<?php
$db =& JFactory::getDBO();
$menu = &JSite::getMenu();
$active = $menu->getActive()->id;
$query = "
SELECT m2.".$db->nameQuote('alias')."
FROM ".$db->nameQuote('#__menu')." m1
JOIN ".$db->nameQuote('#__menu')." m2
ON m1.".$db->nameQuote('link')." = m2.".$db->nameQuote('link')."
WHERE m1.".$db->nameQuote('id')." = ".$db->quote($active)."
AND m2.".$db->nameQuote('published')." = ".$db->quote('1')."
ORDER BY m2.".$db->nameQuote('ordering')."
LIMIT 1;
";
$db->setQuery($query);
$relLink = $db->loadResult();
printf("<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"%s/%s\" />\n",JURI::base(),$relLink);
?>