Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?
-
If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?
-
In my opinion, you want the juice for each article to stay with each article. I wouldn't redirect all your article juice back to the main /blog page. For me, each unique page (and article) gets its own canonical link and one line = one set of information. Article about oranges, article about apples, both canonical links. You should only get juice from same or similar pages, such as
But not
-
hey matt, thanks for the response. let me ask you this. i have a blog page with a bunch of snippets, that when clicked, lead to the full articles, (each have their own custom page/url). if i want all the juice to go to the main blog page i don't want to have canonical tags on each individual post page, right?
-
Agreed. You page can sometimes end up with query parameters as well when people link to your site, and having the canonical in place will help you avoid having duplicate content.
-
It shouldn't hurt you if it doesn't need it but assuming you have www and non-www, wouldn't that part of the canonical always help anyways? By default, you would have
http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded
http://yoursite.com/notagneeded
and if you're on most common CMSs,
http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded/index.php or index.html or index.asp
It would actually be pretty rare to have a page with absolutely no use for rel=canonical but I don't see why it would hurt at all.
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
-
How to fix non-crawlable pages affected by CSS modals?
I stumbled across something new when doing a site audit in SEMRUSH today ---> Modals. The case: Several pages could not be crawled because of (modal:) in the URL. What I know: "A modal is a dialog box/popup window that is displayed on top of the current page" based on CSS and JS. What I don't know: How to prevent crawlers from finding them.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis0 -
Bing Indexation and handling of X-ROBOTS tag or AngularJS
Hi MozCommunity, I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out why BING wont index a test site we're running. We're in the midst of upgrading one of our sites from archaic technology and infrastructure to a fully responsive version.
Web Design | | AU-SEO
This new site is a fully AngularJS driven site. There's currently over 2 million pages and as we're developing the new site in the backend, we would like to test out the tech with Google and Bing. We're looking at a pre-render option to be able to create static HTML snapshots of the pages that we care about the most and will be available on the sitemap.xml.gz However, with 3 completely static HTML control pages established, where we had a page with no robots metatag on the page, one with the robots NOINDEX metatag in the head section and one with a dynamic header (X-ROBOTS meta) on a third page with the NOINDEX directive as well. We expected the one without the meta tag to at least get indexed along with the homepage of the test site. In addition to those 3 control pages, we had 3 pages where we had an internal search results page with the dynamic NOINDEX header. A listing page with no such header and the homepage with no such header. With Google, the correct indexation occured with only 3 pages being indexed, being the homepage, the listing page and the control page without the metatag. However, with BING, there's nothing. No page indexed at all. Not even the flat static HTML page without any robots directive. I have a valid sitemap.xml file and a robots.txt directive open to all engines across all pages yet, nothing. I used the fetch as Bingbot tool, the SEO analyzer Tool and the Preview Page Tool within Bing Webmaster Tools, and they all show a preview of the requested pages. Including the ones with the dynamic header asking it not to index those pages. I'm stumped. I don't know what to do next to understand if BING can accurately process dynamic headers or AngularJS content. Upon checking BWT, there's definitely been crawl activity since it marked against the XML sitemap as successful and put a 4 next to the number of crawled pages. Still no result when running a site: command though. Google responded perfectly and understood exactly which pages to index and crawl. Anyone else used dynamic headers or AngularJS that might be able to chime in perhaps with running similar tests? Thanks in advance for your assistance....0 -
Does Google count the domain name in its 115-character "ideal" URL length?
I've been following various threads having to do with URL length and Google's happiness therewith and have yet to find an answer to the question posed in the title. Some answers and discussions have come close, but none I've found have addressed this with any specificity. Here are four hypothetical URLs of varying lengths and configurations: EXAMPLE ONE:
Web Design | | RScime25
my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (115 characters) EXAMPLE TWO: sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (126 characters) EXAMPLE THREE: www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (130 characters) EXAMPLE FOUR: http://www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (137 characters) Assuming the examples contain appropriate keywords and are linked to appropriate anchor text (etc.,) how would Google look upon each? All I've been able to garner thus far is that URLs should be as short as possible while still containing and contextualizing keywords. I have 500+ URLs to review for the company I work for and could use some guidance; yes, I know I should test, but testing is problematical to the extreme; I look to the collective/accumulated wisdom of the MOZVerse for help. Thanks.1 -
Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
Hi SEOmozers, I have another question. =] Thanks in advance. First question: How important is the breadcrumb for SEO? I know that breadcrumb makes better UX because it shows how the visitor landed on this page and the breadcrumb may show up in the search engine. But other than that, how important is it? Second Question: If I have a page that can be found via 2 locations, how should I handle this in regards to breadcrumb? For example, I have page A. You can access page A via Category A and Category B. Therefore, what I did was list Page A under Category A and when someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it will redirect to the page A that was found via Category A. The problem is on page A, the breadcrumb is Home > Category A > Page A. So if someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it redirects and the breadcrumb shows Home > Category A > Page A. What should I do with the breadcrumb for Category B > Page A? Should I create another page A and just use canonical on it? Should I create another page A but do not index it? or leave it as is? 1 Page A, can be access via 2 categories. Please advise. Thank you!
Web Design | | TommyTan0 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0 -
Pages vs. Posts for SEO
Hi, I would like your thoughts about pages vs. posts for SEO. I understand the difference in terms of WP structure and have read the SEOmoz blog post about setting up your site for SEO success (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). However, if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword, it seems that either one could work, from an on-page SEO perspective, as far as title tag, URL, meta description, etc. So how do you decide whether to set up a page vs. a post? What are the pros and cons, from an SEO perspective, about using one vs. the other? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Web Design | | csmm0 -
How do I properly implement rel=me?
Is there a primer anywhere that will help me understand how rel=me works and how to implement it properly? I do NOT have a blog but I do have a Google+ account. I want to put my mug into my SERPs so I need to understand both the concept and the technical details of implementing this. I am very comfortable with markup so I will be able to do this if I understand WHAT I am doing and HOW it is done. Thanks for your help! Chris Streeter
Web Design | | DVRSystems190 -
How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx? If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad. Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages? And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0