HTTPS in Rel Canonical
-
Hi,
Should I, or do I need to, use HTTPS (note the "S") in my canonical tags?
Thanks
Andrew
-
Thanks Alan all done so far so good thanks for your help
-
Yeah, definitely agree - the how/why of using https in general is a much broader and more difficult question.
You said the first link was http (not secure), but it looks like it redirects to a secure page? I'm not seeing any crawl issues, although I wonder if the combination of a footer link and the page looking like a lead-gen page is causing Google to ignore it. Honestly, though, it feels more like a technical issue. I'm not seeing any red flags, though.
-
in iis cp find the folder secure, slect ssl settings from the mail window, and tick "require https", they will now be forced to use https for that folder.
Next if you haven't already, using web platform installer, install url rewrite in IIS, best grab SEO toolkit while you are there. Restart IIS cp after install
Select the site then go to url rewrite,
click add rule
Select blank rule
fill in as per screen shots here
http://screencast.com/t/6qUxduZ7UxWz
http://screencast.com/t/cvivbdFsm
If any problems get back to me. I did this without testing.
If you installed seo toolkit also, you will see there are some ready built rules at bottom, see tutorials here if needed.http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials
Note with the rule remove append trailing slash, I always select remove as when people type out your url they never put a slash on the end.
When your done select the site again and have a play with the SEO toolkit, do a scan on your site.
let me know how you went
-
-
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks, we are using IIS, could you please explain how to do this further please. Do you think this maybe the cause of google not seeing and indexing HTTPS page?
Thanks
Andrew
-
In Microsoft IIS server you can require uses use https on a folder basis, you seem to want to force to not use https, this can be done by writing a urlrewrite rule.
If your site does not use https at all, then just remove the binging for SSL. If you have some https pages and some without then you need to do the above.
If you are using a lynix type server then you will have to look it up, if you are using
IIS I can show you how to do this. -
Hi
Thank you both for your responses. Alan your point is very interesting. The main reason for asking the question is because we are desperately trying to find a solution to why our HTTPS page is not being indexed by google 6 weeks after going live. There are 2 other SEOMoz posts by us that have not been able to answer this "Mystery"
www.seomoz.org/q/why-isn-t-google-indexing-our-site
www.seomoz.org/q/why-is-our-page-will-not-being-found-by-google
The HTTPS page in question HTTPS://www.invoicestudio.com/Secure/invoiceTemplate is in fact references via a link at the bottom of HTTP://www.invoicestudio.com (note no "S").
Alan could you please explain your answer further as I do not fully understand what you are saying but it sounds like the HTTP link to HTTPS maybe causing the issue and would like to explore further to solve this long standing issue that is very important to us.
Thanks
Andrew.
-
Dr Pete as usual is correct here, but I would ask a further question, is your page accessed from both http and https? if so I would make the page "https required" so it is not, and use a 301 if you all ready have links to http.
I work on Microsoft IIS servers this is very easy to do, not sure how you do it on lynix
-
If the canonical version of your URLs is secure (HTTPS), then yes - you should use absolute paths with "https://" in the them for your canonical tags.
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
-
Relationship Between Cross-Domain Canonical Versions and Backlinks
Hi All, I am looking for some community insight on how backlinks on the different versions of a canonical page are handled for ranking purposes. Suppose that I have two versions of the same page on two different domains: 1. https://www.mysite.com/tshirts <--Canonical Version 2. https://www.mywebsite.com/tshirts <--Non-Canonical Version that points to page #1 Also consider a third domain that is being linked to from the article. Since it is identical content, both pages contain the same outbound links to this page: 3. https://www.myclothing.com I am wondering how the backlink authority transfer is handled for page number two. Since it has the canonical tag pointing to page 1, only page 1 should be considered for indexing/ranking purposes as a whole page. However, my question relates to what happens to backlink flow since both #1 and #2 above contain links to site #3. In the above example, would both mysite.com and mywebsite.com be passing a backlink to myclothing .com, or would it only be the first domain (www.mysite.com) passing link authority since it is marked as the canonical for ranking purposes. Thanks for any thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evan_Wright0 -
Google-selected canonical makes no sense
Howdy, fellow mozzers, We have added canonical URL to this page - https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/houston-tx/margot-schurig-8715369/share, pointing to https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/houston-tx/margot-schurig-8715369 When I check in Google search console, there are no issues reported with that page, and Google does say that it was able to properly read the canonical URL. Yet, it still chooses the page itself as canonical. This doesn't make sense to me. (Here is the link to the screenshot: https://dmitrii-regexseo.tinytake.com/tt/MzU0Mjc0M18xMDY2MTc4Ng) Has anyone dealt with this type of issue, and were you able to resolve it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
How does a page with a canonical for another domain impact SEO?
Hi, We have a requirement to host files that contains .html, .css, .js, and .pdf files externally on AWS S3 bucket. We have a landing page on our site that contains a link to those external links (i.e. pdf). On our site's (hosted on Drupal), landing page we already have a canonical link for the current landing page. On the .html file which is hosted externally, we were thinking to add the same canonical link that exists for the landing page so that search engines will go to the externally available .html file and interpret that the externally hosted file is related to our landing page. I was wondering if this is an acceptable solution without any SEO penalty. If there is a penalty, what would be the alternative solution to this so we can host files externally and drive most of the traffic to our landing page? Example Landing page: absolute url = https://www.site-domain.com/page-url ...... Externally available .html file (static) ......
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KendallHershey0 -
Canonical Chain
This is quite advanced so maybe Rand can give me an answer? I often have seen questions surrounding a 301 chain where only 85% of the link juice is passed on to the first target and 85% of that to the next one, up to three targets. But how about a canonical chain? What do I mean by this:? I have a client who sells lighting so I will use a real example (sans domain) I don't want 'new-product' pages appearing in SERPS. They dilute link equity for the categories they replicate and often contain identical products to the main categories and subcategories. I don't want to no index them all together I'd rather tell Google they are the same as the higher category/sub category. (discussion whether a noindex/follow tag would be better?) If I canonicalize new-products/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 to /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 I then subsequently discover that everything in kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 is already in /kitchen-lighting-c17 and I decide to canonicalize those two - so I place a /kitchen-lighting-c17 canonical on /kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217. Then what happens to the new-products canonical? Is it the same rule - does it pass 85% of link equity back to the non new-product URL and 85% of that back to the category? does it just not work? or should I do noindexi/follow Now before you jump in: Let's assume these are done over a period of time because the obvious answer is: Canonicalize both back to /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17 I know that and that is not what I am asking. What if they are done in a sequence what is the real result? I don't want to patronise anyone but please read this carefully before giving an answer. Regards Nigel Carousel Projects.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nigel_Carr0 -
How (or if) to apply re canonical tags to Shopify?
Anyone familiar with Shopify will understand the problems of their directory structure. Every time you add a product to a 'collection' it essentially creates a duplicate. For example... https://www.domain.com/products/product-slim-regular-bikini may also appear as: https://www.domain.com/collections/all/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/bikinis/products/product-slim-regular-bikini etc, etc It's not uncommon to have up to six duplicates of each product. So my question is twofold: Firstly, should I worry about this from an SEO point of view? I understand the desire to minimise potential duplicate content issues and also in focussing the 'juice' on just one page per product. But I also planned on trying to build the authority of the collection pages. If I request Google not to index the product pages which link off the collections, does this not devalue these collections pages? Secondly, I understand the correct way to fix these is using 'rel canonical' tags, but I'm not clear about HOW to actually do this. Shopify support has not been very helpful. They have provided two different instructions, so just added to the confusion (see below). Shopify instruction #1: Add the following to the theme.liquid file... <title><br />{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} – tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} – Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} – {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}<br /></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz
{% if page_description %} {% endif %} Shopify instruction #2: Add the following to each individual product page... So, can anyone help clarify: The best strategic approach to this inherent SEO issue with Shopify (besides moving to another platform!)? and If 'rel canonical' tags is the way to go, exactly where and how to apply them? Regards, Murray1 -
301 or Canonical - Ecommerce Site Question
We are making a change to our Navigation and this includes having to change the URL structure of a few pages of our site. Due to issues with the CMS (that are out of my control) we are unable to keep the current URL structure of two of our highest ranking pages. Our site is an E-commerce Site The Structure is changing from..... www.domain.com/page/highrankingpage <----OLD PAGE RANKED WELL to www.domain.com/category/highrankingpage <----NEW PAGE Generally I would have 301 'd this page but I found out that our Tech team added a Canonical to this page instead....(showing the high ranking page to the Search Engines) and on our site the visitors are able to browse the website getting the new page. BOTH PAGES ARE BASICALLY IDENTICAL (Same Content) http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical# Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMcMullen0 -
301 redirect or rel=canonical
On my site, which I created with Joomla, there seems to be a lot of duplicated pages. I was wondering which would be better, 301 redirect or rel=canonical. On SeoMoz Pro "help" they suggest only the rel=canonical and dont mention 301 redirect. However, ive read many other say that 301 redirect should be the number one option. Also, does 301 redirect help solve the crawling errors, in other words, does it get rid of the errors of "duplicate page content?" Ive read that re-=canonical does not right? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
Hi Mozfans! I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it. I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why. Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A). Thanks! Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday0