Do pages with canonicals need meta data?
-
Page A has a canonical to Page B. Should Page A have meta data values such as description, keywords, dublin core values, etc.? If yes, should the meta data values be different on Page A and Page B?
-
Hey Shirley -
Thanks for the question! Short answer is no - the information does not have to be different. What should happen with a canonical is that the search engines will see the canonical and apply the ranking for Page A to Page B.
However, the search engines do tell us that a canonical is a suggestion and that they do not always respect it if they think it was either a) done in error or b) is being done to manipulate. So, assuming Page B really is a duplicate of or a better version of Page A, yet you want to keep Page A around for some reason (PPC landing page or other), then the meta info will likely be similar anyways.
Finally, if you are canonicalling Page A to Page B, make sure that Page A is not in your XML sitemaps!
Good luck!
John
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
-
The importance of meta keywords?
Hello, Is adding meta keywords still worth doing nowadays? I have been reading and hearing some different opinions about it. For a ' beginner ' in this field it is hard to find a definite answer to this questions.. Thank you for reading(and answering) my question!
Algorithm Updates | | EPPD0 -
Does anyone know what causes the long meta description snippet?
You know the ones I mean... Google have been infrequently displaying some meta descriptions as 3-4 lines long for some time now. But recently, I've been noticing them more. Not sure whether it's just a coincidence that I've been seeing more for my searches, or whether Google are displaying more in this format. Does anybody know what causes Google to prefer the longer meta description or extended meta description for some results?
Algorithm Updates | | Ria_0 -
Page Rank Metrics Disapearing
Hi Everyone. I keep hearing from different people that googles PAGE RANK , Will soon be eliminated. Has anyone heard anything more about this ? Or is this a myth? This would make it more complex for the average person to rely on DA and TF etc.. Would love to hear from you guys. I actually like the PR rating system. Also have websites more then a year old which are still not showing actual PR yet .Maybe delayed or maybe not. Robert
Algorithm Updates | | Yellow20000 -
Bing not indexing pages
We have taken all recommended steps to index our site sitegeek.com pages to Bing Bot but failed to index them. Bing bot crawled more than 5,000 pages every day but strange why pages are not getting index ? if we query site:sitegeek.com in Bing Bing Search Engine shows only 1,200 pages got indexed. but we query site:sitegeek.com in Google Google Search Engine show more 546,000 pages got indexed. For example : https://www.sitegeek.com/000webhost Above page crawled by Google but Bing. Can anyone suggest what we are missing on this page? what need to change to index such pages? Thanks! Rajiv
Algorithm Updates | | gamesecure0 -
Home Page not ranking?
Hey guys, I'm working on a relatively new client and have noticed that all the initial rankings that we have point towards a sub page rather than the home page. Only a branded search appears to bring up the home page which seems really strange. Any ideas? Home page; www.geraldmiller.com Sub page (ranking); www.geraldmiller.com/dwi-dui-defense
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Impact of recent On Page Optimisation changes had negative impact !
Hi I recently updated some page titles, H1 tags & on page content which overall has seen search results slip down following the first site crawl by google I assume. My question is, should I try to get back the rankings and test and change one thing at a time to see the impact right now or should i wait for a period of time for it to settle down once goggle has crawled the site a few times or will the subsequent crawls have no impact? Thanks Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshShep10 -
Same page but appearing in Google with different titles
I have a page ranking on position 1 for a key phrase. The key phrase is the title of the page as well. I'll use a mock key phrase to aid my question - "Teeth and Gums" So the page is ranking number 1 for "Teeth and Gums" and "Teeth and Gums" is the meta title. However, I went ahead and did a new search adding an additional keyword to the original search. When I did a new search adding an additional keyword to the original search, Google has done something weird.. Let's say the search is "Dentistry - Teeth and Gums", Google has ranked my page again as number 1 but changed the title. The title in the search result is now "Dentistry - Teeth and Gums" How and why? It's kinda like Google PPC's keyword insertion but the title hasn't got anything weird like {KeyWord: Dentistry}. It's just "Teeth and Gums" Has this happened to you guys? Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Google +1 link on Domain or Page?
Since its release, I've seen Google +1 being used across an entire domain but only reference the root href in the code snippet. At the same time, you see other sites use +1 more naturally with the button being specific to the page you're on. What's your take on this? To clarfiy, do you add: or .. on each page.
Algorithm Updates | | noeltock0