Is it better to use XXX.com or XXX.com/index.html as canonical page
-
Is it better to use 301 redirects or canonical page? I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc.
-
Glad you got it sorted out. If you're 301-redirecting a lot of domains, I'd suggest doing it gradually or maybe holding off on the lowest-quality domains. Google can see a massive set of redirects as a bit of a red flag (too many people have bought up cheap domains and 301-redirected to consolidate the link equity). If the domains are really all closely related or if you're only talking about a handful (<5) then it's probably not a big issue.
-
I think things may be sorted out, but I am not sure. I actually put in 301-redirects from a bunch of domains that I own to this new domain, the content of which will eventually replace my main domain. But, I need to get the domain properly set up and optimized before I move it to my primary domain to replace the ancient web site. At that time, I will also redirect this site to the new, old site.
I used to have Google ad-words tied to some of the domains that I 301-redirected to the new web site that I am building. Those were just a waste of money, however, so I put them on hold. I also had a lot of problems with semel and buttons for web bouncing off those pages that I re-directed. I put in .htaccess commands to stop those spam sites and that seems to work.
-
Google seems to be indexing 30-ish pages, but when I look at the cached home-page, I'm actually seeing the home-page of http://rfprototype.com/. Did you recently change domains or 301-redirect the old site? The cache data is around Christmas (after the original question was posted), so I think we're missing part of the puzzle here.
-
So, I think I may have had things wrong. For one thing, it seems like moz and Google are only indexing 2 pages, while the site index shows something like 80 pages. (I suspect an image is a page, and there are a lot of images. But, there are about 10 or 12 distinct pages at the moment. Also, Google and moz do not seem to show the correct key words in any sense like they should, leading me to think that they were just spidering 2 pages. I don't know why. I added the following to my index.html header:
and
I assume I put them in the correct place. I also believe I don't need canonical pages anywhere else.
Should these changes to my index.html make the proper changes?
-
Yeah, I'd have to concur - all the evidence and case studies I've seen suggest that rel=canonical almost always passes authority (link equity). There are exceptions, but honestly, there are exceptions with 301s, too.
I think the biggest difference, practically, is the impact on human visitors. 301-redirects take people to a new page, whereas canonical tags don't.
-
In terms of rel=canonical that will pass value the same as a 301 redirect - for evidence have a look here:
http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
"Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to utilize the rel=canonical tag. The rel=canonical tag passes the same amount of link juice (ranking power) as a 301 redirect, and often takes much less development time to implement."
See DR Pete's response in this Moz Q&A:
http://moz.com/community/q/do-canonical-tags-pass-all-of-the-link-juice-onto-the-url-they-point-to
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?rd=1
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical
Matts Cutts stated there is not a whole lot of difference between the 301 and the canonical - they will both lose "just a tiny little amount bit, not very much at all" of credit from the referring page.
-
Ok, this is how I look at the situation.
So you have two URLs and the question is either to redirect301 or use canonical? In my opinion 301 is a better solution and this is because it will not only redirect people to the preferred version but the link value as well.
Whereas, with canonicals only search engines will know what is the preferred page but it will not transfer the link value which can help you with organic rankings.
Hope this helps!
-
You would put the canonical link in the index file and I would point that at the xxx.com version rather than the xxx.com/index.html version as people visiting your sites homepage are going to enter the domain and not the specific page so xxx.com rather than xxx.com/index.html.
There are some great articles on Moz explaining all this which I would suggest that you read -
http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
Dr Pete also did this post answering common questions on rel=canonical.
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
In terms of 301 redirects and canonicalization both pass the same amount of authority gained by different pages. If you are trying to keep it as clean as possible you need to be careful you don't create an issue redirecting your index file to your domain - here is an old post explaining how moz solved this 301 redirect on an Apache server
http://moz.com/blog/apache-redirect-an-index-file-to-your-domain-without-looping
I personally find that if all your links on your site reference your preferred(canonical) URL for the homepage so in this case xxx.com and you redirect the www version to this or vice versa depending on your preference then you add a canonical in the index.html file pointing at xxx.com in this case unless you prefer to do it the other way round with www.xxx.com for both you will be fine.
Hope this helps
-
I forgot. Of course, there is no xxx.com page, per se. It is actually xxx.com/index.html so if you needed to put the canonical reference on xxx.com, how would you do it?
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
-
Spam pages being redirected to 404s but sill indexed
Client had a website that was hacked about a year ago. Hackers went in and added a bunch of spam landing pages for various products. This was before the site had installed an SSL certificate. After the hack, the site was purged of the hacked pages and and SLL certificate was implemented. Part of that process involved setting up a rewrite that redirects http pages to the https versions. The trouble is that the spam pages are still being indexed by Google, even months later. If I do a site: search I still see all of those spam pages come up before most of the key "real" landing pages. The thing is, the listing on the SERP are to the http versions, so they're redirecting to the https version before serving a 404. Is there any way I can fix this without removing the rewrite rule?
Technical SEO | | SearchPros1 -
How long does Google/Bing take to index
Hello we have 2-3 new pages being submitted every night to google/bing via our sitemap. Two issues I am noticing. Wondering if anyone else has same issues. a) 22 URL submitted via sitemap but only 1 indexed in two weeks. there are no errors showing b) If i submit manually using "Fetch As Google" and request indexing - the page gets indexed right way but after a day it seems to be unindexed - it will show up when i search (site:domain.com) but then disappear from the results doing the same search a few days later. Is this normal or do i have a problem that needs addressing? thank you
Technical SEO | | sancarlos0 -
Pages Not Getting Indexed
Hey there I have a website with pretty much 3-4 pages. All of them had a canonical pointing to one page and the same content ( which happened by mistake ) I removed the canonical URL and added one pointing to its page. Also, I added the original content that was supposed to be there to begin with. It's been weeks but those pages are not getting indexed on the SERPS while the one that they use to point with the canonical does.
Technical SEO | | AngelosS0 -
No existing pages in Google index
I have a real estate portal. I have a few categories - for example: flats, houses etc. Url of category looks like that: mydomain.com/flats/?page=1 Each category has about 30-40 pages - BUT in Google index I found url like: mydomain.com/flats/?page=1350 Can you explain it? This url contains just headline etc - but no content! (it´s just generated page by PHP) How is it possible, that Google can find and index these pages? (on the web, there are no backlinks on these pages) thanks
Technical SEO | | visibilitysk0 -
Fixing Duplicate Pages Titles/Content
I have a DNN site, which I created friendly URL's for; however, the creation of the friendly URL's then created duplicate page content and titles. I was able to fix all but two URL's with rel="canonical" links. BUT The two that are giving me the most issues are pointing to my homepage. When I added the rel = "canonical" link the page then becomes not indexable. And for whatever reason, I can't add a 301 redirect to the homepage because it then gives me "can't display webpage" error message. I am new to SEO and to DNN, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | VeronicaCFowler0 -
Best way to handle indexed pages you don't want indexed
We've had a lot of pages indexed by google which we didn't want indexed. They relate to a ajax category filter module that works ok for front end customers but under the bonnet google has been following all of the links. I've put a rule in the robots.txt file to stop google from following any dynamic pages (with a ?) and also any ajax pages but the pages are still indexed on google. At the moment there is over 5000 pages which have been indexed which I don't want on there and I'm worried is causing issues with my rankings. Would a redirect rule work or could someone offer any advice? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:outdoormegastore.co.uk+inurl:default&num=100&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvnsl&filter=0&biw=1600&bih=809#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:outdoormegastore.co.uk+inurl%3Aajax&oq=site:outdoormegastore.co.uk+inurl%3Aajax&gs_l=serp.3...194108.194626.0.194891.4.4.0.0.0.0.100.305.3j1.4.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.SDhuslImrLY&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=ff301ef4d48490c5&biw=1920&bih=860
Technical SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Non-Canonical Pages still Indexed. Is this normal?
I have a website that contains some products and the old structure of the URL's was definitely not optimal for SEO purposes. So I created new SEO friendly URL's on my site and decided that I would use the canonical tags to transfer all the weight of the old URL's to the New URL's and ensure that the old ones would not show up in the SERP's. Problem is this has not quite worked. I implemented the canonical tags about a month ago but I am still seeing the old URL's indexed in Google and I am noticing that the cache date of these pages was only about a week ago. This leads me to believe that the spiders have been to the pages and seen the new canonical tags but are not following them. Is this normal behavior and if so, can somebody explain to me why? I know I could have just 301 redirected these old URL's to the new ones but the process I would need to go through to have that done is much more of a battle than to just add the canonical tags and I felt that the canonical tags would have done the job. Needless to say the client is not too happy right now and insists that I should have just used the 301's. In this case the client appears to be correct but I do not quite understand why my canonical tags did not work. Examples Below- Old Pages: www.awebsite.com/something/something/productid.3254235 New Pages: www.awebsite.com/something/something/keyword-rich-product-name Canonical tag on both pages: rel="canonical" href="http://www.awebsite.com/something/something/keyword-rich-product-name"/> Thanks guys for the help on this.
Technical SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Using Blogger.com
I have a client that is currently using blogger.com for their blog. I don't have much experience with this site as I have mostly used Wordpress in the past. Are there any good SEO plugins/tools for this site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0