Canonical URL tags help I am not sure what this is
-
I am trying to get an A grade on my webpage and this is one of the critical steps canonical URL tags I cant find much information as to what this even is never mind fixing it. Thanks I am a total newbe at this any advice is appreciated
-
Unfortunately, I don't know Etsy well, but I think Thomas is right on track - you don't necessarily want to pre-emptively add them, especially if you're not clear on how they work. Typically, it's more for preventing duplicate content issues. We're re-evaluating how we grade the canonical tag, since this is a bit confusing. It's a good practice on some pages (like your home-page) that naturally tend to have more than one version, but adding it sitewide can be tricky.
-
Thanks so much everyone huge help
-
The canonical isn't really for feeding google URLs in the a preferred format, it's more for cleaning up duplicate content issues.
Let's say I could track traffic and conversions on my website by adding a source code to a link. So I create a link on SEOmoz. You can reach my page www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php with the url string http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php?src=seomoz and that link is now indexed by Google. Well now I have duplicate content and google must decide which page get's placed into their index. Adding a canonical to the main page
<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php" />
, tells google which page they should place in their index and it helps me avoid splitting my links.
This also applies heavily to shopping carts where the parameters in a URL determine the content, and products that overlap in categories can cause duplicate content issues. Creating canonicals will help avoid indexing issues.
So the point to canonicals is to determine what URL gets indexed and gets the juice for links when there are duplicate content issues created by varying URL stings that lead to the same content.
If you are simply trying to fill in a canonical for a URL to get a "A grade" on a SEO checklist then you will just create the canonical for each page using the exact URL for that page.
-
I think Etsy does all that stuff for you automatically. If you check source code of your store at Etsy it already has rel canonical, so no need to worry.
Make sure your URL for on page report looks like this www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname
It's how canonical is build.
-
Hi Jen
There are some useful blog posts on here which help with understanding the use of a canonical link listed below.
You would place the link on the duplicate content pages, and link these through to the page that you want the link juice to go to. The pages still appear from a user perspective but google does not see them.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
You can use the seo moz crawl to see which pages are duplicates.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks very much for your reply
I am still a little confused how do I know what to change it too ? is there a tool that allows me to see what google url prefers I am selling on etsy does that make a difference ?
Thanks,
Jen
-
It's tag that tells Google which url for given post is most preffered. This helps avoid problems with duplicate content. Use if you have www and non-www url or post with same content within different categories.
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
-
Better to hyphenate URL or no?
Sea Glass Jewelry or Sea-Glass-Jewelry My domain name does not have my keyword in it, so I have been using the category as a means to get the keyword in the URL. My site would say www.abcdefghijk.com/sea-glass-jewelry/sterling-starfish-necklace When I run the review, it tells me that I have too many parameters. Is it too long? Should I remove hyphens? Which is better?
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
Canonical URL Category and Tags
Hello, I would like to know that I want to use both category and tags in my blog StylishMahi. If I index both category and tags, should I use canonical URL tag to pass referring to main category. As I want more my categories in SERP results ranking higher? I have also attached a picture. Can someone please confirm? Photo by Moz ZigdWMx
On-Page Optimization | | PratapSingh0 -
Can someone help with Canonical?
I have a wordpress site that On-Page Grader is saying I don't have Canonical done correctly. Here is the comment. Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical 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. Recommendation: 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. I have quite a few sites and have never had an issue with this. Can anyone help? I tried installing a plugin but that seems to have made it worse. This is the front page of the site btw.
On-Page Optimization | | jonnyholt1 -
Prices in title tag
At our ecommerce site adwords ads generally perform a lot better when the product price is included in the ad title. Does anyone here have any experience and data on CTR with including product prices in title tags of product / category pages?
On-Page Optimization | | ese0 -
Rankings going down and down. Help!
I just joined a company as an in house seo. When I looked at their rankings I noticed a downward trend. How can I reverse that? I'm currently working on their onsite optimization, but is there anything more that I can do? edit
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Hierarchy and consistency in ecommerce URLs
One of the first things I remember reading about SEO and URLs, a long time ago, is that keywords are important, and hierarchy is important, for search engines and for users. Hierarchy in URLs would give the search engines an idea of the structure of the site, and users would be able to edit the URLs to continue navigating. I'm wondering about URLs, hierarchy and usability lately, since I've seen that ASOS uses a new URL structure on their site. At first glance, I thought it was brilliant, so I would like to get all of your opinions as well. For those of you that haven't seen the URLs: for categories, ASOS uses a structure as you would expect it, but for products they don't insert the category in the URL. Instead they insert the brand name as the first part of the URL, followed by the product title. Some examples: Category:
On-Page Optimization | | DocdataCommerce
www.asos.com/women/dresses/... Product:
www.asos.com/french-connection/french-connection-tie-waist-pocket-stripe-dress/... I can see the importance of brand name for a site like ASOS, and like how they stressed this by inserting not the category but the brand for products. I don't know how much ASOS still relies on organic non-ASOS related keyword traffic, but still. Now, for hierarchy, I guess a good internal linking structure will tell the search engines about the hierarchy of a site as well, right? So perhaps hierarchy in the URL isn't that important? Perhaps something like this would be just as good as anything, given a good internal link structure? www.onlinestore.com/category/
www.onlinestore.com/subcategory/
www.onlinestore.com/brand/product-title/ Now, I understand that if you use this structure, you wouldn't be able to have men/shirts and women/shirts, but let's say that you don't have subcategories that use the same names. In this case, how important is hierarchy? And, what do you think about this URL structure for an ecommerce site for which brands are important?0 -
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 -
Canonical links
My website is relatively new, January. We climbed steadily to 6th for our search term then overnight rocketed to 1st. This only lasted a week and have been stuck at 9th ever since. When I use the SEO Moz tools our site should theoretically be top...I only joined today btw. Anyway in Google webmaster tools I noticed it said I had duplicate title tags, when I checked to see what the pages were- it was my home page! Google also seems to have cached two versions of our homepage, the root domain and the Default.aspx page. Now I have fixed this canonical linking issue today (using canonical link tag and 301s) so time will tell but has anyone got any first hand experience of this issue? Was it a big factor? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | SplashBacksNI0