Set Canonical for Paginated Content
-
Hi Guys,
This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors#
I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible.To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website.Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help!Joost
-
Joost - that's correct! Yes, I assume woocommerce, since they are product pages.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the explanation.
Ok so I block 24 and 48 for Google but users can still use them to navigate through the site.
I assume this is woocommerce related because Woocommerce creates the output for the productpages right?Thanks again!
Joost
-
Joost
I think you'll need to get a developer or someone involved to help execute, but here's the ideal scenerio:
- Add meta "noindex" tags to ?show_products=24 and 48
- Make your 'view all' URL ideally just /product-category/t-shirts/ - with no parameter - or if you have to, maybe /t-shirts/all/ - your goal here is to keep it consistent and NOT the same parameter as the other pages
- Then, whatever consistent URL you have for the 'all' - don't add "noindex" to that (keep it indexable).
- Wait for Google to remove 24/48 URLs from the index (you have to just check every week or two with site: searches)
- Once they are noindexed, block crawling with robots.txt with this line:
Disallow: /?show_products= <---but ONLY use that if you've changed your 'view all' URLs to something else! You ideally want a different URL structure for 'view all' vs. not view all to control crawling and indexation more easily.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your reply.
For the category t-shirt I've got this:/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=24 (24)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=48 (48)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=41 (when All selected)Let me know! And thanks again for your time! Really apreciate it!Joost
-
Hi Joost
Can you provide examples of how all your URLs are setup? What does the URL look like for view all, 24 items etc etc?
-
Wow Dan!
Thanks for looking in to this!
I assume you are totally right but have no idea how I should implement this strategy on my site. It just a plain wordpress install with woocommerce. I use Yoast (ofcourse) but never went in-depth with robot.txt.
How can I provide you with more info? Or better; myself
Thanks again,
Joost
-
Hi Joost
It would be better to just "noindex" anything except view all. Then once they are gone from the index, set a block in robots.txt so they can't be crawled anymore. That fixes the issue at the source, the canonical is more of a bandaid. So:
1. Add a meta "noindex" tag to everything except view all (I am not 100% sure how in your wordpress setup - there's no one way, it depends on your setup).
2. Monitor the indexation of these pages in Google and wait for them to be removed (you can check with just searching for the URL in the search bar).
3. Once they are all gone from the index, block crawlers from accessing them by adding a line to your robots.txt file blocking the 24/48 URLs - again, I don't know the exact code for your robots.txt because I am unsure of your URL setup, but a dev or someone can help - or feel free to write back with these details and I'll try to help further.
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for helping out. I've read a lot about the theory behind View All and why & when it's better to set canonicals on page 2 and 3 to View All.
But I can't seem to find any information how to implement the rel canonical in wordpress/woocommerce.I know that Google will try to sort it out by itself (if View All) is available but helping them with a canonical will solve a lot of 404 crawls on our site.
Any ideas?Joost
-
Hi Joost
Did you happen to take a look at SEO Guide to Google Webmaster Recommendations for Pagination? There are some great tips in there that can help you implement this.
Also, View-all in search results & 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical from Google also has some tips.
Hope these help a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Page content not being recognised?
I moved my website from Wix to Wordpress in May 2018. Since then, it's disappeared from Google searches. The site and pages are indexed, but no longer ranking. I've just started a Moz campaign, and most pages are being flagged as having "thin content" (50 words or less), when I know that there are 300+ words on most of the pages. Looking at the page source I find this bit of code: page contents Does this mean that Google is finding this and thinks that I have only two words (page contents) on the page? Or is this code to grab the page contents from somewhere else in the code? I'm completely lost with this and would appreciate any insight.
Technical SEO | | Photowife1 -
Duplicate Content
HI There, Hoping someone can help me - before i damage my desk banging my head. Getting notifications from ahrefs and Moz for duplicate content. I have no idea where these weird urls have came from , but they do take us to the correct page (but it seems a duplicate of this page). correct url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/Antique-Vintage-Rings-c152.htm Incorrect url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/vintage-Vintage-Rings- c152.htm This is showing for most of our store categories 😞 Desperate for help as to what could be causing these issues. I have a technical member of the ecommerce software go through the large sitemap files and they assured me it wasn't linked to the sitemap files. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Duplicate Page Content but where?
Hi All Moz is telling me I have duplicate page content and sure enough the PA MR mT are all 0 but it doesnt give me a link to this content! This is the page: http://www.orsgroup.com/index.php?page=Scanning-services But I cant find where the duplicate content is other than on our own youtube page which I will get removed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnjh9jkAWuA Can anyone help please? Andy
Technical SEO | | ORS-Group0 -
Content on subdomain...
We recently moved our Wordpress site to a new host (WPEngine). We had forums on the old web host, which we need to migrate to a new forum platform (Xenforo) and integrate into the WP site. Since WPEngine only allows Wordpress on their servers, we need to install the forums at another web host, on one of our other domains. We might point to the forums through a subdomain, like this: forums.our-primary-domain.com The main reason we're re-installing the forums is for SEO value. HOWEVER, since our forum content will be on another domain, will we have an issue? If so, is there a workaround that would give us 'credit' for that content? Thanks much.
Technical SEO | | jmueller08230 -
Duplicate content or titles
Hello , I am working on a site, I am facing the duplicate title and content errors,
Technical SEO | | KLLC
there are following kind of errors : 1- A link with www and without www having same content. actually its a apartment management site, so it has different bedrooms apartments and booking pages , 2- my second issue is related to booking and details pages of bedrooms, because I am using 1 file for all booking and 1 file for all details page. these are the main errors which i am facing ,
can anyone give me suggestions regarding these issues ? Thnaks,0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, My site is being checked for errors by the PRO dashboard thing you get here and some odd duplicate content errors have appeared. Every page has a duplicate because you can see the page and the page/~username so... www.short-hairstyles.com is the same as www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor I don't know if this is a problem or how the crawler found this (i'm sure I have never linked to it). But I'd like to know how to prevent it in case it is a problem if anyone knows please? Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Dismal content rankings
Hi, I realize this is a very broad question, but I am going to ask it anyways in the hopes that someone might have some insight. I have created a great deal of unique content for the site http://www.healthchoices.ca. You can select a video category from the top dropdown, then click on a video beside the provider box to see. The articles I've written are accessible by the View Article tab under each video. I have worked hard to make the articles informative and they are all unique with quotes from expert physicians. Even for strange health conditions that don't have a lot of competition - I don't see us appearing. Our search results are quite dismal for the amount of content we have. I guess I'm checking to see if anyone is able to point me in the right direction at all? If anything jumps out... Thanks, Erin
Technical SEO | | erinhealthchoices0 -
Up to my you-know-what in duplicate content
Working on a forum site that has multiple versions of the URL indexed. The WWW version is a top 3 and 5 contender in the google results for the domain keyword. All versions of the forum have the same PR, but but the non-WWW version has 3,400 pages indexed in google, and the WWW has 2,100. Even worse yet, there's a completely seperate domain (PR4) that has the forum as a subdomain with 2,700 pages indexed in google. The dupe content gets completely overwhelming to think about when it comes to the PR4 domain, so I'll just ask what you think I should do with the forum. Get rid of the subdomain version, and sometimes link between two obviously related sites or get rid of the highly targeted keyword domain? Also what's better, having the targeted keyword on the front of Google with only 2,100 indexed pages or having lower rankings with 3,400 indexed pages? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Hondaspeder0