Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
-
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
-
It's always hard to speak in generalities, but my gut reaction is that Alan's right - if the canonical tags were implemented properly, having your rankings tank from this kind of implementation seems very unlikely. A couple of possibilities:
(1) Are your canonical URLs being used in internal links? If you tell Google that one version is canonical but then act as if another version is canonical, it can cause problems.
(2) Are you sending any other, conflicting cues, like 301-redirects or Webmaster Tools parameter handling?
(3) Is it possible that your canonicalization was too broad? In other words, did you end up de-indexing some product variations that were driving long-tail traffic? For example, let's say you had a product in red, blue and green and you canonicalized them all to the "root" product page. In theory, that might be a good thing, but if people were searching for specifics and you had a lot of long-tail rankings ("buy product in red"), then it could be bad.
-
Yes, they were set up site wide and point to the proper URL for each individual product.
-
Okay so to be sure, you simply set up canonical tags to point to your newly identified "proper" URL for each product, correct?
If so, given the lapse in time between the change and the drop, I would need to assume something else has happened. Some other factor would need to be the cause, if your canonical implementation was executed properly and there's not a major flaw at the code level in the results.
While there is a slight chance it's tied to the canonical change even if that was done properly, I'd definitely look at other factors as well.
-
On every product page.
Here's why: when a new product was added to the website it automatically gave it a url like this one, www.website.com/product/productname1234. And whenever it was added to a product category such as "corner desks," a new url and page were created, www.website.com/product/cornerdesks/productname1234. Google was indexing both (or all - in the case they were in multiple categories) thus creating almost 2,000 duplicate product pages.
We added the canonical tag at the end of April and didn't really see a drop in rank until this week.
-
a canonical tag on every product page? Pointing to a different page or pointing to themselves? And what was the reason for doing so?
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
-
Duplicate page titles and hreflang tags
Moz is flagging a lot of pages on our site which have duplicate page titles. 99% of these are international pages which hreflang tags in the sitemap. Do I need to worry about this? I assumed that it wasn't an issue given the use of hreflang. And if that's the case, why is Moz flagging them as an issue? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | ahyde0 -
Titling and H1 Tag Question
What to do if you have hundreds of thousands of a particular product. Comic Books for example. Is it ok to have the words Comic Book in the title and H1 tag as long as it is qualified? For example, if I have the following as both the Title tag and the H1 tag. Comic Book - Spider Man Versus Wolverine Comic Book - Silver Surfer Goes Home to Visit Mom. Comic Book - Superman Gets a New Kitten Comic Book - Wonder Woman is More Wonderful Than You Know As of now, I have been doing it this way, but only in the title tag. However, Google has been using my H1 tag as my title, so in the search results, I am only getting: "Superman Gets a New Kitten" And I am afraid that that is leaving out important info for searchers, especially qualifying that the product is a Comic Book and if someone is searching for a Comic Book, I need that to return. But I don't want any 'more' trouble from the Panda. Again, this will be hundreds of thousands of products. Thanks for your help! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
I'm using Canonical URL but still receiving message - Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Hello, I checked my site and it looks like everything is setup correctly for canonical url but I keep getting the message that it's not. Am I doing something wrong? SORRY I FIGURED IT OUT! THANK YOU! HOW DO I DELETE THIS?
On-Page Optimization | | seohlp440 -
Redirecting pages (old site to new site)
I have a question- there is one location, one set of pages for both the old and new site on the same host environment so when I did the redirect it get into a loop trying to redirect from itself to itself Not sure how its gonna affect SEO. Will pages get hit for duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Yanez0 -
Site structure question
I'm currently working on a very awkward custom-WP setup, in which I can't maintain the present drop-down navigation menu without having those pages under a parent or without completely recoding everything. I have two requirements, for SEO purposes I'm looking for the following structure for each targeted landing page: www.example.com/landing-page as opposed to www.example.com/sub/landing-page Of course, having my landing pages as a child, I get the latter of the two. For navigational purposes they need to fall under a specific category in a drop-down menu. With any other theme or setup this is an easy fix, but not here. What I have now is that the landing pages are currently placed under a parent category page. But, they have custom permalinks. The permalinks are setup as follows www.example.com/landing-page But, technically the exact structure is still www.example.com/sub/landing-page which then redirects to the custom permalink. So, my question is - in an attempt to get my most important landing pages close to the root for better PR and crawlability, do I still get the same benefit with my current setup? Is this structure I have, better, worse, or indifferent? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320 -
Site Wide Link
I have just run up the link explorer on my site and discovered that every page home page link points back with the text home - I assume this is bad in terms of SEO , my site name is ccie and I assumed that it put the site wide link of ccie to the entire site, however it seems to be the breadcrumb default of home which is doing it/. www.rogerperkin.co.uk/ccie Should I be looking to change this so my top keyword points back from each page to the home page. I am running wordpress and assumed the site name was the home link on all pages. Can anyone advise the best practice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rogerp0070 -
Tags or Categories: Which is best?
I seem to have duplicate issues on my website due to tags and categories having the same title. If I was to delete one of the two, which would be better to delete? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | IoanSaid0 -
My site has been dropping, not sure why!
My site has been dropping in the rankings, not sure - my metrics seem better than my competitors. Historically I have been a very stable #2 for my main term, but now it's down to 7! According to SEO Moz, my domain authority is 32, while my better performing competitors are are 26, 11, and 1! Have more links than they do. Trying to think it through, not sure what is happening. My home page bounces at a low 20%-ish, other Google Analytics are good. I have a company Facebook account, occasionally upload YouTube vids, do online press releases, etc. I do have to target several metros scattered across the state, while my competitors usually focus on one major metro. I do have some SEO Moz errors, which focus on dup content due to our web editor's naming system. An example would be domain.com/keyword-keyword-i-14 vs. domain/differnet keyword-different better keyword-i-14. 14 would be the actual page number. Our system lets me change the page title keywords, as I've added new links and pages over the years there are some dupes. The only major change is I've added a password protected section for sales rep materials. The hosting/web guru firm we use has assured me Google doesn't see pages behind the password portection. Not sure if Google is testing a new SERP formula. All social media or non-website results seem to have dropped out of search for my terms. Just local business sites like mine and some directory sites remain. Any advice or private consult would be greatly appreciated as I am a ... self taught 'OneManBand' for high tech marketing in our company. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | OneManBand0