Canonical URLs and SEO
-
After publishing my new wordpress website my on page analysis shows two canonical urls on my homepage. In checking the source code the Yoast SEO plugin states my canoncial url is www.homepage.ca/ This is the only one showing. Having said this I do not add the trailing slash to anything on my url structure. Could this be why the on page analysis tool says there are 2? If so is there any way to resolve this?
-
-
no it is not checked
-
Ah I think I may have found it.
Under Permalinks on the Yoast menu on the left do you have
"Enforce a trailing slash on all category and tag URL's" ticked or not?
-
They do not have the slash but the Yoast SEO package has it in the automatic rel=canonical which I cannot find to change
-
Oh I see, you've got a specialised set-up. Okay.
In which case the actual place you want to be checking is under Settings > General and look at your Wordpress and website address to see if those have a trailing backslash or not.
-
all done through the widgets per attached example
-
And can you show me the screen/section when you're editing the homepage text?
(we will get to the bottom of this one, it's just taking time).
-
-
Can you take some screenshots so I can see what you're seeing?
Can you post firstly the page you see when you are editing the home page content? (not the layout/design).
-
i created the home page through the appearance/widgets menu using an agentpress theme built on the genesis framework. there is no "home page" appearing as either a page or post in these menus (unless I am missing something)
-
Don't open up the Yoast SEO on it's own. Go edit the home page text as you would do normally. It will be under 'Pages' or 'Posts' depending on which way you created your home page.
Then edit the page/post in the normal way and then the Yoast box is under the normal editing window.
If it's not there make sure you're running the most up-to-date version of Wordpress and Yoast SEO and re-try
-
Hi Martin, I must be looking in the wrong place. When I open up Yoast SEO I can find menus for dashboard, titles&meta, social, sitemaps, permalinks, internal links, rss, import&export and edit files (which gives me acess to htaccess). I can find the advanced tab for all pages but the home page. Where do I find it? thanks
-
In which case I suggest you do the following:-
- Edit your home page as normal through the WP back end
- In the 'Wordpress SEO by Yoast' box under the editor select the 'Advanced' tab
- Enter your Canonical URL without the backslash there.
Publish and refresh the 'live' page and it all should marry up.
You're still probably not losing out with or without the trailing backslash, but it definitely makes it cleaner if your incoming links are precisely the same as your canonical definition.
Let me know if this works out for you.
-
Using the SEOmoz on page analysis tool. The source code shows rel canonical for www.homepage.ca/ yet my site url is www.homepage.ca with all redirects there
-
What tool are you using for your on-page analysis?
Have you done a Google search for : site:www.homepage.ca and see if two URLs are listed?
If the source code is only giving you one rel canonical tag then regardless of your analysis there's only one canonical URL so I don't think you have anything to worry about, so long as you agree with the URL given in that tag
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
-
301 to canonical
I'm doing some work on a website, they have a very popular product search where you enter a specific part code (6 digits) and it takes you to the product. So for example Search: 123456 Page redirected to domain.com/product/123456 With a canonical of domain.com/product/this-is-the-product-title Would it be beneficial to redirect from /product/123456 to /product/this-is-the-product-title Google seems to be indexing both versions. For some of these products a reasonable amount of links are built.
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasHarvey0 -
SEO for E-Commerce Sites
Hi Everybody, I have two e-commerce sites just launched with not much content at the moment just user login pages for the clients to avail the service. The management is not interested to put much content there i think. Maximum what they will be putting only 5 pages of content in total, not more than this. Any practical tips how to optimize such sites especially when there is not much content. Best
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
SEO Ecommerce Consulting Firm
We are currently designing and developing our new ecommerce website. Due to the complexity involving in duplicate contents as well as the structure of ecommerce websites, we are looking for a firm who can help us on this. We have a team of 15 people here developing our site and need guidance for URL structure and general flow of the website (Site optimization) that is SEO friendly. This would enable us to build links effectively. Anyone can recommend us some strategic consulting firm for this work? We have seen moz recommended lists and still waiting for their reply. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | WayneRooney0 -
Canonical tag help
Hi, We have a product which is marketed by affiliates . Affiliates send referrals to our sale page by adding their affiliate IDs to our product page like http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345. We want to avoid the content duplication impression to Google by using canonical tags but we are not clear about its use. Should we use it on http://www.mysite.com/products.php ( actual page) or we should create temporary pages for each referral id i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345 and then add canonical tags to all those pages linking to proper page i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php ? Thanks, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0 -
Canonical to the page itself?
Hello, I'd like to know what happens when you use canonical to the same page itself, like: Page "example.com" rel canonical="example.com" Does that impact in something? Bad or good? See ya!
On-Page Optimization | | seomasterbrasil1 -
What do you think about Alexa SEO audit?
I wonder if somebody had an experience with alexa's audit. What kind of information they provide? Is it completely useless?
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0