SEO Elements for Canonicalized URLs?
-
I am helping a client with SEO for their ecommerce store. They have around 65 products, but close to 500 URLs all for those same products. Basically they have a bit of an index bloat problem but long story short restructuring was too much of a lift for them, so I got them set up with a canonical URL strategy to ensure all duplicate pages point to one "main" product page.
Getting to the point:
They also need an on-page overhaul. I've created keyword optimized titles, metas, H1s, etc. for each product. Do these elements need to be added to every single one of the 450+ product pages OR do I only need to add them to the 65 "main" product pages that everything else is pointing to, since that will ultimately be the page that gets crawled?
-
Happy to help
-
Thanks for your response! This is how I was leaning as well, but the client is doing the implementation and asked if they needed to update all their URLs, so I wanted to get a second opinion. Maybe this implementation will push them to consolidate
Thanks again!
-
Hiya, my instinct here would be to update both if possible - canonicals are a hint rather than a command, Google will still crawl canonicalised pages and could decide to ignore the canonical if it doesn't think the pages are closely related enough.
Updating the titles etc. on the canonicalised pages can help confirm that they _are _the same content as the pages you're canonicalising them _to. _Plus, worst case, if Google decides to ignore the canonical, the page is at least optimised until you can take stronger action.
If those additional pages really don't have any additional value for visitors I would keep pushing the client to consolidate if you can. Even if they can't do it now, they could be thanking you in a year.
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
-
Dynamic Url best approach
Hi We are currently in the process of making changes to our travel site where by if someone does a search this information can be stored and also if the user needs to can take the URL and paste into their browser at find that search again. The url will be dynamic for every search, so in order to stop duplicate content I wanted ask what would be the best approach to create the URLS. ** An example of the URL is: ** package-search/holidays/hotelFilters/?depart=LGW&arrival=BJV&sdate=20150812&edate=20150819&adult=2&child=0&infant=0&fsearch=first&directf=false&nights=7&tsdate=&rooms=1&r1a=2&r1c=0&r1i=0&&dest=3&desid=1&rating=&htype=all&btype=all&filter=no&page=1 I wanted to know if people have previous experience in something like this and what would be the best option for SEO. Will we need to create the URL with a # ( As i read this stops google crawling after the #) Block the folder IN ROBOTS is there any other areas I should be aware of in order stop any duplicate content and 404 pages once the URL/HOLIDAY SEARCH is no longer valid. thanks E
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
URL Change, Old URLs Still In Index
Recently changed URLs on a website to remove dynamic parameters. We 301'd the old dynamic links (canonical version) to the cleaner parameter-free URLs. We then updated the canonical tags to reflect these changes. All pages dropped at least a few ranking positions and now Moz shows both the new page ranking slightly lower in results pages and the old page still in the index. I feel like I'm splitting value between the two page versions until the old one disappears... is there a way to consolidate this quickly?
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Using 302 redirect for SEO
Hello, I'm in charge of SEO for an information website on which articles are only accessible if you have a login and password. Most of the natural links we get point to our subscribers' subomain : subscribers.mywebsite.com/article1 If they follow these natural links, visitors who are not logged get redirected (302) to www.mywebsite.com/article1 on which there is an extract of the article and they can request a free test subscription to read the end of the article. My goal is to optimize SEO for the www.mywebsite.com/article1 page. Does this page benefit from the links I get to the subscribers.mywebsite.com/article1 page or are theses links lost in terms of SEO? Thanks for your help, Sylvain
Technical SEO | | Syl200 -
OSE says URL redirects to URL with trailing slash but it doesn't.
Site is www.example.com/folder/us and OSE says this URL redirects to www.example.com/folder/us/, but it does not. When I look at the OSE report for the latter version with the "/" it says "No Data Available For This URL". Why would that be? The original URL is www.example.com and it redirects to www.example.com/folder/us. Is this anything I need to worry about? I thought that the trailing / doesn't really mean much anymore but nonetheless, why does it think it redirects there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Picking a URL co.uk vs .net vs .biz which is best for SEO?
Hi I was always told that you only want a .co.uk or a .com is this still true? I am setting up an ecommerce site and the ideal .co.uk is gone! Am I better to have a longer ulr with maybe a hifen or a uk in it or is it ok to have a .biz or a .net these days? You help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks James
Technical SEO | | JamesBryant0 -
Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website?
Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website? I have downloaded sh404sef but I don't want to change my URL's and make them longer than they are at the moment. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Regarding Canonical Url
We have a e-commerce website. Our own homegrown:-) We recently visited Google Webmaster tools and could see that Google mention we have double Meta tags for some main and subcategories. Each Product Category on our site have a subcategory/ Sub url - "Bestseller", "On Sale", "just arrived". The sub url is not a really a real category and we can therefore not make totally unique description and title for does urls. domain.com/category domain.com/category/bestseller
Technical SEO | | areygie
domain.com/category/on-sale
domain.com/category/just-arrived We are thinking about 2 solutions. 1. Canonical Url on subcategory pointing to main category.
2. Or add a word bestseller, on sale or just arrived in front of the meta title/description. We can do this from code. I personally opt for option 1. But I am little unsure what is the best way to go. Thanks in advance for your advice0 -
Seo on a dk site
hi my client has asked if we can seo their dk site , my question is does all link building and article submission have to be in danish
Technical SEO | | Westernoriental0