Help with Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
-
Whenever i enable Canonical URL through the 3DCart Control panel I get this Critical Factor error when running the on page report card:
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://rcnitroshop.com/Nitro-Monster-Truck"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
</dl>
Now if I disable Canonical URL then run the on page report card again the critical error goes away but I get this Optional Factor error instead:
Canonical URL Tag Usage
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt>
<dd>0</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd>
</dl>
So basically I disabled it because obviously a Critical error is much worse then an optional error. Is there a way I can get rid of both errors?
-
We are a creative design and development agency as well as a search marketing agency, we can build and develop ecommerce websites and look after all migration, hosting and configuration - we can manage everything basically. We are based in the UK though so unsure if you are looking for someone a bit nearer to you.
I also appreciate that it's not really a recommendation if we are pushing our own services to you so if I were to recommend another company that I have no affiliation with, in terms of anything Magento related, Inchoo would be my recommendation.
-
It will not let me change that part. I wish I could. It would look a lot better.
I didn't really think about hiring someone to do it. Is there anyone you would recommend talking to about doing something like that (Switching over to Magento).
-
Glad you identified the setting, thought it looked something like that.
Site is looking a little better, is there any way you can change the layout of the product pages, perhaps putting the price and options alongside the image gallery or anything similar to that? Any kind of layout options available from the admin panel?
Appreciate your decision to stick it out with 3dCart for now, can sometimes prove a daunting task migrating to a new ecommerce provider - it should be a relatively smooth transition if you hire the right person/company if you decide to do so in the future though.
Happy to advise on your current site as required based on what the platform will allow you to do though.
-
Well in 3DCarts control panel I noticed that in Settings>Store Settings all the way at the bottom it says Store URL : The URL was "rcnitroshop.com". I just added "www." in front of that. BTW after listening to what you told me about my website I did some redesigning if you want to check it out. I added a phone number at the top, decreased white space, added some images on the sidebars to gain some trust, overall I feel I made the site a little more trustworthy and hopefully will be a little more efficient. I'm just going to stick with 3DCart for a little while until I feel like putting a week into switch all of my products over. I will just try to make the best of it for now lol. Still got a lot of work to do though.
From You:
Conversions
- Design is not fluid.
- Too much whitespace.
- Everything just appears in one wide column, needs to be split into easily digestible sections with call to actions.
- There is nothing catching my attention and no existing call to actions.
- Ask yourself - Why should people buy from you?
-
No problem Bill, glad you sorted it - what was the cause in the end?
-
I figured it out. Thanks for the response!
-
Potentially an issue with 3dCart's canonical URL feature?
I think there is potentially a bigger issue with your site / URL structure causing this maybe. Have you recently changed whether your website makes use of www / non www in the URL's? Instances of both versions are indexed in Google currently - did you enter the canonical URL in 3dCart with the www or without. And if you use Google Webmaster Tools, is this set to display URL's with or without the www?
There is currently a www redirect from non www to www however, so one would presume www is preferred - so just ensure any settings in 3dCart's admin panel that include your domain, are inserted with the www included.
Maybe on this page.
Hope this helps initially.
-
Someone has had to run into this before : /
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Exclude sorting options using nofollow to reduce duplicate content
I'm getting reports of duplicate content for pages that have different sorting options applied, e.g: /trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/
On-Page Optimization | | benbrowning
/trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/?sort=title&direction=asc&page=1
/trips/dest/africa-and-middle-east/?sort=title&direction=des&page=1 I have the added complication of having pagination combined with these sorting options. I also don't have the option of a view all page. I'm considering adding rel="nofollow" to the sorting controls so they are just taken out of the equation, then using rel="next" and rel="prev" to handle the pagination as per Google recommendations(using the default sorting options). Has anyone tried this approach, or have an opinion on whether it would work?0 -
Does RSS Feed help to rank better in Google?
Hello, I heard RSS Feed helps in ranking. However, I am not sure if I should enable RSS Feed or not. Whenever I publish an article on my site , I see that many other websites have leeched my Feed and get's the same article I written published with a nofollow backlink to my website article. The worst part is that my article doesn't appear in Google search, but the website which copied my article gets ranked in Google. Although the article gets index on google (checked by using site:website.com). Although some articles show up after 24 hours by ranking higher from the sites which copied my article. Any idea what should I do? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2010 -
Does adding ™ help or hurt?
I have a client who rents kids' party products that are branded (Batman, Curious George, etc.) Does it help or hurt to put the superscript "TM" in the Meta Title, or other meta or actual content of their product listings? I have some guesses, but am curious for other opinions / data! Thanks very much!
On-Page Optimization | | measurableROI0 -
SEO Issues with Avactis Shopping Cart Please Help
The home page title duplicates on all cms pages. this is causing the title to be over 70 characters. This is my first experience with Avactis so I am not exactly sure how to handle. Does anyone know?
On-Page Optimization | | MACameron0 -
Removing old URLs that are being used for my on page optimization?
Is there a way to remove old URL's that are still being used for my keywords for my on page optimization? They are giving me grades of F since they no longer exist and if I change the URL to the current one, the grade becomes an A, but they are still showing after the new crawl.
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
Canonical Help?
This canonical thing is brand new to me and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Here is my situation: I use Wordpress. I am showing duplicate content with the following url's http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/ http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/page/2/ Would setting a canonical link solve this? If so, what do I put in the Canonical box for this category (online workout blog). I use Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin. Any help is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | carbbon0 -
Using rel="nofollow"
Hello, Quick question really, as far as the SERPs are concerned If I had a site with say 180 links on each page - 80 above suggested limit, would putting 'rel="nofollow"' on 80 of these be as good as only having 100 links per page? Currently I have removed the links, but wereally need these as they point to networked sites that we own and are relevant... But we dont want to look spammy... An example of one of the sites without the links can be seen here whereas a site with the links can be seen here You can see the links we are looking to keep (at the bottom) and why... Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | TwoPints0 -
Confirmation regarding canonical and syndication google tags
Hi, We are in the process of improving our CMS upstream to resolve our duplicate content issues. We were hit pretty hard by the Panda update. One of the steps we have taken is implementation of the canonical link tag across all domains in our site. You see, we are a news release service with muliple channels and websites to represent each. The problem is that a client will submit a release and in many cases the news item is relevant to multiple channels I.E. multiple websites under the same IP range. Site Examples:
On-Page Optimization | | jarrett.mackay
www.hotelnewsresource.com www.restaurantnewsresource.com
www.travelindustrywire.com From a user perspective, it makes sense that they should be able to access the article from the site they are browsing without being redirected to the site we feel carries the most relevance. We hope the canconical tag will resolve this issue for us. I have also read about the syndication tag and was looking for feedback or recommendations if we should implement that also, but it may be overkill as the two tags objectives seem to be similar. I guess my first question is if the syndication tag is only used by Google News. Secondly, and a little off topic is that we also offer an API and like many other sites, I have read, our content partners are now doing better in primary and long tail rankings even thought we are the original source. My assumption is that we should modify the API to force using both caconical and syndication tags as well. Lastly, I´m curious if anyone has tested the original source tag and if we should implement that as well. Thanks everyone. Jarrett0