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Canonical and Alternate Advice

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  • JH_OffLimits
    JH_OffLimits Subscriber last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 7:03 AM

    At the moment for most of our sites, we have both a desktop and mobile version of our sites. They both show the same content and use the same URL structure as each other. The server determines whether if you're visiting from either device and displays the relevant version of the site.

    We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.

    Would the way of us doing it at the moment be correct?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
    • BlueprintMarketing
      BlueprintMarketing @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:27 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:27 AM

      That would normally be the case but not tonight.

      LOL, I am picking up a lot of the UK Q&A I will be at BrightonSEO and search love London if any of you guys will be in the area I'd love to grab a pint?

      sincerely,

      Thomas

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Nigel_Carr
        Nigel_Carr @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:13 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:13 AM

        The reason we answered 'quickly' by the way is because we are in the UK -  you were still in bed lol! 🙂

        BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:27 AM Reply Quote 1
        • Nigel_Carr
          Nigel_Carr @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:11 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:11 AM

          There is only ONE URL that is the point.

          If they share the same URL then you only have one page of code so ONE canonical

          Regards

          Nigel

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BlueprintMarketing
            BlueprintMarketing @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:10 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:10 AM

            Sorry Nigel

            was not trying to make this more complicated was just trying to make sure that we were all on the same page.

            FYI if you need a method of adding the rel canonical to your website quickly you can use Google tag manager or if you want to add to the header

            https://support.stackpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001445283-EdgeRules-Adding-a-Canonical-Header

            Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:13 AM Reply Quote 0
            • JH_OffLimits
              JH_OffLimits Subscriber @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:09 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:09 AM

              So a self referencing canonical on both mobile and desktop versions of the site, regardless if they chuck out two version with the same content?

              Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:11 AM Reply Quote 1
              • Nigel_Carr
                Nigel_Carr @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 1:46 PM Feb 19, 2019, 11:06 AM

                Hi JH

                I'm sure Thomas means well with his multiple complicated posts but all of this is totally unnecessary.

                Both sites are serving the same URL

                You can't put a rel=alternative because there is nothing to point to.

                Just put a self-referencing canonical. I said that 2 hours ago!

                That is all.

                Regards Nigel

                BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:10 AM Reply Quote 2
                • BlueprintMarketing
                  BlueprintMarketing @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 11:05 AM Feb 19, 2019, 11:05 AM

                  Use a self-referencing canonical

                  https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-recommend-self-referencing-canonical-tags/

                  Please let me know if you want me to remove the image below?

                  you can use this one if needed http://bseo.io/c1vMSv

                  mgkic5E.png

                  JH_OffLimits 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:09 AM Reply Quote 0
                  • JH_OffLimits
                    JH_OffLimits Subscriber @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:58 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:58 AM

                    I've been told to pass on a URL, thanks for your help Thomas!

                    https://www.stag.com/

                    BlueprintMarketing Nigel_Carr 2 Replies Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 11:06 AM Reply Quote 1
                    • BlueprintMarketing
                      BlueprintMarketing @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:53 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:53 AM

                      Hey man I understand is a big deal

                      could you do me a huge favor and run your site through screaming frog SEO spider send me a couple of pages with the domains whited out so I can tell you 100% what to do in this situation because I am basing this on what you have told me and honestly I would like to look at what a tool can show me and that will tell me what I need to do.

                      Or you can tell me if the mobile version of the site hit's Google's index yes or no?

                      respectfully,

                      Tom

                      JH_OffLimits 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:58 AM Reply Quote 0
                      • JH_OffLimits
                        JH_OffLimits Subscriber @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:47 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:46 AM

                        So both mobile and desktop require a self referencing canonical(in both headers)?

                        Sorry for the questions, just need to make sure! It's a very touchy subject!

                        BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:53 AM Reply Quote 0
                        • BlueprintMarketing
                          BlueprintMarketing @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:46 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:46 AM

                          The single self-referencing URL will work.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • BlueprintMarketing
                            BlueprintMarketing @JH_OffLimits last edited by Sep 6, 2020, 11:52 PM Feb 19, 2019, 10:44 AM

                            What URLs are you  using with the “alternate” tag on?

                            You said 
                            ”1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.

                            2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.”

                            thats Dynamic serving same URL

                            Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML (and CSS) on the same URL depending on which user agent requests the page (mobile, tablet, or desktop).

                            that would NOT give you the mobile or m.example.com & www.example.com different URLs

                            **But If you do have  a different  m.example.com & www.example.com  URLs you should use this code or  XML site maps **

                            for different URLs use this:

                            Annotations in the HTML

                            On the desktop page (http://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:

                            <linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only>

                            On the mobile page (http://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:

                            <linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:>

                            This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.

                            Or

                            Annotations in sitemaps

                            We support including the rel="alternate"annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:

                            <urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<="" span="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

                            <loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
                            <xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></urlsetxmlns="http:>

                            You should have the same URL on mobile and desktop

                            You should have the same rel canonical tag on your URLs unless and this is a big unless you're talking about using Google AMP?

                            If the URL you want to be indexed is the same URL point everything to that URL if that makes it easier to understand.

                            respectfully,

                            Tom

                            BlueprintMarketing JH_OffLimits 2 Replies Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:46 AM Reply Quote 0
                            • JH_OffLimits
                              JH_OffLimits Subscriber @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:43 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:41 AM

                              Just to confirm, are we suppose to have a canonical on desktop and mobile or just desktop?

                              This would mean removing the alternate?

                              Want to confirm everything before iterating this across to others.

                              We are not using AMP, just a standard site setup.

                              BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:44 AM Reply Quote 1
                              • BlueprintMarketing
                                BlueprintMarketing @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:41 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:41 AM

                                Unless you are using AMP?

                                Then you would add

                                Linking pages with

                                In order to solve this problem, we add information about the AMP page to the non-AMP page and vice versa, in the form of  tags in the .

                                Add the following to the non-AMP page:

                                <link rel="amphtml" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp/document.html">
                                
                                

                                And this to the AMP page:

                                <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/full/document.html">
                                

                                are you using AMP pages?

                                https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

                                https://www.ampproject.org/docs/fundamentals/discovery

                                I hope that helps you if not please let me know.

                                Respectfully,

                                Tom

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • BlueprintMarketing
                                  BlueprintMarketing @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:36 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:36 AM

                                  Cool, that's what I thought when I heard your description I just wanted to be very thorough because sometimes you get very little information and I appreciate you letting me know that.

                                  dynamic  serving URLs are identical to each other so you should have a self-referencing canonical tag because the URL does not change the real canonical tag just decides what should be in the index and the same URL.

                                  You're Rel canonical should be something like this example below

                                  Example URL https://www.example.com/example-url/

                                  because the end URL is the same and URL that you want to be indexed in Google you want to be certain that you have a self-referencing URL to prevent query strings and other things like that and you do not need to point a URL to an identical URL you just need a self-referencing canonical if that makes sense.

                                  See: https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/

                                  I hope that is of help,

                                  Tom

                                  BlueprintMarketing JH_OffLimits 2 Replies Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:41 AM Reply Quote 0
                                  • JH_OffLimits
                                    JH_OffLimits Subscriber @BlueprintMarketing last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:39 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:26 AM

                                    Hi,

                                    I can't give off too much information as it's not my call, but I can answer your questions without mentioning the brands.

                                    1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.

                                    2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.

                                    3. Our sites would quite clearly fit in the dynamic serving category.

                                    We have 301 redirects on none www to www and http to https.

                                    BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:36 AM Reply Quote 1
                                    • effectdigital
                                      effectdigital @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:23 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:23 AM

                                      This is the correct solution!

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • Nigel_Carr
                                        Nigel_Carr @JH_OffLimits last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 10:21 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:21 AM

                                        The URLs are identical it is just the content that is served that may be slightly different.

                                        Since you can only specify one canonical for each URL it makes no difference. Just self-reference and that is it.

                                        If you had to different URLs then it would be an issue where you woudl need a rel=alternative so there is nothing to worry about.

                                        Regards

                                        Nigel

                                        effectdigital 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:23 AM Reply Quote 2
                                        • BlueprintMarketing
                                          BlueprintMarketing last edited by Sep 8, 2020, 5:52 AM Feb 19, 2019, 10:20 AM

                                          You guys are fast I was going to answer this and had to do some other things but let me weigh in on couple things.

                                          as you said

                                          “We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags**. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.”**

                                          so what you’re saying is that you have a dynamic site so you don’t need to add “alternate"media” tags to the site.

                                          https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving

                                          As it is not immediately apparent in this setup that the site alters the HTML for mobile user agents (the mobile content is "hidden" when crawled with a desktop user agent), it’s  recommend that the server send a hint to request that Googlebot for smartphones also crawl the page, and thus discover the mobile content. This hint is implemented using the Vary HTTP header.

                                          **you don’t need this **

                                          Annotations in the HTML

                                          On the desktop page (http://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:

                                          <code dir="ltr"><linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only></code> 
                                          

                                          On the mobile page (http://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:

                                           <code dir="ltr"><linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:></code> 
                                          

                                          This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.

                                          Annotations in sitemaps

                                          We support including the rel="alternate"annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:

                                           <code dir="ltr"><urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
                                            <url><loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
                                              <xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></url></urlsetxmlns="http:></code> 
                                          

                                          The required rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL should still be added to the mobile page's HTML.

                                          **to be sure **

                                          Are you willing to share your domain with us? Or one domain?

                                          1. We're talking about multiple websites that all have the identical site structure or at least mobile and desktop site structure?

                                          2. Your server is making the change for you?

                                          3. Would you be kind enough to install this plug-in on chrome in order for you to show a couple examples of the canonical and the URL?

                                          • https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/portents-seo-page-review/babgchcegnkbiojmdpnoilficladccfm?hl=en-US
                                          • https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-redirect-trace/nnpljppamoaalgkieeciijbcccohlpoh?hl=en

                                          In addition, would you be kind enough to run your site through the two tools here ( 100% free and very easy to use)

                                          • https://varvy.com/mobile/
                                          • https://varvy.com/
                                          • &
                                          • https://redbot.org/

                                          If you would not mind doing this and sending screenshots it would mean a lot to us and getting your canonical's straightened out.

                                          screenshots https://snag.gy/  then upload to http://imgur.com/

                                          everything is on the same server I'm assuming?

                                          Of the three below how would you categorize your site?

                                          1. https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
                                          2. https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
                                          3. https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/responsive-design

                                          Respectfully,

                                          Tom

                                          JH_OffLimits 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:26 AM Reply Quote 1
                                          • JH_OffLimits
                                            JH_OffLimits Subscriber @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 9:59 AM Feb 19, 2019, 9:59 AM

                                            Would this mean we need canonical only on desktop or mobile site?

                                            Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 10:21 AM Reply Quote 0
                                            • Nigel_Carr
                                              Nigel_Carr @effectdigital last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 8:57 AM Feb 19, 2019, 8:57 AM

                                              You are right - you could only use teh rel=alternate if there was an m. version or similar

                                              Regards

                                              Nigel

                                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                              • effectdigital
                                                effectdigital @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 8:56 AM Feb 19, 2019, 8:56 AM

                                                The self referencing canonical advice was solid and I 100% agree with it. The rel=alternate advice, I felt would cause problems (IMO). But as we all know, fiddly issues like this are highly subjective

                                                Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 8:57 AM Reply Quote 1
                                                • Nigel_Carr
                                                  Nigel_Carr @effectdigital last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 8:56 AM Feb 19, 2019, 8:55 AM

                                                  Then there is no problem simply putting a self-referencing canonical. There is in effect no mobile version as there is a single URL so no need for a rel=alternate.

                                                  It's an even easier solution. Well, there isn't a problem in the first place.

                                                  rel=alternate is only necessary if you have two different URLs! The fact they are the same takes away the problem.

                                                  Regards

                                                  Nigel

                                                  effectdigital JH_OffLimits 2 Replies Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 9:59 AM Reply Quote 1
                                                  • effectdigital
                                                    effectdigital last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 8:51 AM Feb 19, 2019, 8:51 AM

                                                    Your problem is that you have two different sites loading on the same URL. If you are returning both the mobile and desktop / laptop site on the same URL, you would be expected to be using responsive design. In-fact, you may have re-invented another different way to implement responsive design which is probably, slightly less fluid yet slightly more efficient :')

                                                    Since your mobile and desktop pages both reside on exactly the same URL, I'd test the page(s) with this tool (the mobile friendly tool) and this tool (the page-speed insights tool). If Google correctly views your site as mobile friendly, and if within PageSpeed insights Google is correctly differentiating between the mobile and desktop site versions (check the mobile and desktop tabs) then both URLs should canonical to themselves (self referencing canonical) and no alternate tag should be used or deployed. Google will misread the alternate tag, which points to itself - as an error. That tag is to be used when your separate mobile site (page) exists on a separate URL, like an 'm.' subdomain or something like that

                                                    Imagine you are Googlebot. You are crawling in desktop mode, load the desktop URL version and find that the page says, it (itself) is also the mobile page. You'd get really confused

                                                    Check to see whether your implementation is even supported by Google using the tools I linked you to. If it is, then just use self referencing canonical tags and do not deploy alternate tags (which would make no sense, since both versions of the site are on the same URL). When people build responsive sites (same source code on the same URL, but it's adaptive CSS which re-organises the contents of the page based upon viewport widths) - they don't use alternate tags, only canonicals

                                                    Since your situation is more similar to responsive design (from a crawling perspective) than it is to separate mobile site design, drop the alt

                                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                                    • effectdigital
                                                      effectdigital @Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 8:43 AM Feb 19, 2019, 8:43 AM

                                                      The problem with this is, where you say "corresponding mobile URL" - there isn't one as OP has stated that, two different source codes  (pages) can be rendered on the same URL depending upon the user's screen size / user-agent (however they are detecting mobile, and serving different pages)

                                                      Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 8:55 AM Reply Quote 0
                                                      • Nigel_Carr
                                                        Nigel_Carr last edited by Feb 19, 2019, 7:57 AM Feb 19, 2019, 7:57 AM

                                                        Hi JH

                                                        This is very straightforward.

                                                        Use the following annotations:

                                                        1. On the desktop page, add a  rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site’s mobile pages.
                                                        2. On the mobile page, add a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.

                                                        It is that simple and doing this will not create duplicate content

                                                        More here: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls

                                                        Regards Nigel

                                                        effectdigital 1 Reply Last reply Feb 19, 2019, 8:43 AM Reply Quote 0
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                                                          SEO Advice for Angular JS

                                                          We are changing our homepage (and gradually the rest of the site) to Angular JS.
                                                          In order not to lose anything in terms of SEO we are implementing Hashbangs + escaped fragment snapshots. Are there any other SEO considerations you think we should have and/or additional elements that we could add to the page to improve it in terms of SEO?

                                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 30, 2014, 4:31 AM | theLotter
                                                          0
                                                        • nicole.healthline

                                                          Why is "Noindex" better than a "Canonical" for Pagination?

                                                          "Noindex" is a suggested pagination technique here: http://searchengineland.com/the-latest-greatest-on-seo-pagination-114284, and everyone seems to agree that you shouldn't canonicalize all pages in a series to the first page, but I'd love if someone can explain why "noindex" is better than a canonical?

                                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 14, 2014, 4:30 PM | nicole.healthline
                                                          0
                                                        • Zanox

                                                          Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?

                                                          A customer of ours has a website in Belgium. There two main languages in Belgium: Dutch and French.
                                                          At first there was only a Dutch version with a .be extension. Right now they are implementing the French Belgium version on the URL website.be/fr. All of the content and comments will be translated. Also the URL’s will change from Dutch to French, so you've got two URL’s with the same content but in another language. Question: Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country? I think Google will understand this is just for the usability for a Multilanguage country. What do you guys think???

                                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 7, 2013, 6:14 AM | Zanox
                                                          0
                                                        • askotzko

                                                          Does rel=canonical fix duplicate page titles?

                                                          I implemented rel=canonical on our pages which helped a lot, but my latest Moz crawl is still showing lots of duplicate page titles (2,000+). There are other ways to get to this page (depending on what feature you clicked, it will have a different URL) but will have the same page title. Does having rel=canonical in place fix the duplicate page title problem, or do I need to change something else? I was under the impression that the canonical tag would address this by telling the crawler which URL was the URL and the crawler would only use that one for the page title.

                                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 11, 2014, 10:45 AM | askotzko
                                                          0
                                                        • Jellyfish-Agency

                                                          Rel=canonical tag on original page?

                                                          Afternoon All,
                                                          We are using Concrete5 as our CMS system, we are due to change but for the moment we have to play with what we have got. Part of the C5 system allows us to attribute our main page into other categories, via a page alaiser add-on. But what it also does is create several url paths and duplicate pages depending on how many times we take the original page and reference it in other categories. We have tried C5 canonical/SEO add-on's but they all seem to fall short. We have tried to address this issue in the most efficient way possible by using the rel=canonical tag. The only issue is the limitations of our cms system. We add the canonical tag to the original page header and this will automatically place this tag on all the duplicate pages and in turn fix the problem of duplicate content. The only problem is the canonical tag is on the original page as well, but it is referencing itself, effectively creating a tagging circle. Does anyone foresee a problem with the canonical tag being on the original page but in turn referencing itself? What we have done is try to simplify our duplicate content issues. We have over 2500 duplicate page issues because of this aliasing add-on and want to automate the canonical tag addition, rather than go to each individual page and manually add this tag, so the original reference page can remain the original. We have implemented this tag on one page at the moment with 9 duplicate pages/url's and are monitoring, but was curious if people had experienced this before or had any thoughts?

                                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 28, 2012, 1:56 PM | Jellyfish-Agency
                                                          0

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