Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Adding a Canonical Tag to each page referencing itself?
-
Hey Mozers!
I've noticed that on www.Zappos.com they have a Canonical tag on each page referencing it self. I have heard that this is a popular method but I dont see the point in canon tagging a page to its self.
Any thoughts?
-
Forgive me if this is a silly question, but does this mean you would need to go and identify all the urls with extra parameters, and add canonical tag pointing to the primary url?
Coz if so, that would be an extremly labourious task, no? Some of my duplicate issues, have 50+ urls that are being counted as 'duplicates'.
There must be a better way, hence, I fear this must be a silly question...
-
The self-referencing canonical tags should only be for your actual preferred URLs. So if www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a duplicate because of parameters (for example), then no, it should not have the self-referencing canonical tag - it should have a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL should (www.testwebsite.com/ in this case, which would have the self-ref tag).
Zappos example:
- http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1 (self-ref canonical tag)
- http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1#!/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops/CKvXARDL1wFSAv0eegLgBIIBAukjwAEB4gIFGAECCg8.zso (canonical tag points to unfiltered page)
If www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a static page that you want indexed, but that has the same content as www.testwebsite.com/, then the solution is updating/adding content to be unique (then applying the self-ref canonical tags to both URLs which are now unique).
Make sense?
-
I've not come across any reason ever that would give cause to be concerned about losing Page Authority by having a page canonical to itself.
-
Well it was more so a concern for me applying this method to my own site more so than a concern for Zappos getting flagged lol
Im curious to know would it do anything at all to the page Authority if you have it Canon tagged to itself?
-
No need to be concerned. Aside from all the really well documented best practices on canonicals, in your original question you've spotted at least one big site that does this. They pay the SEO big bucks and rank well.
-
I would assume that by having each page canon tag itself your basically telling google "Hey I am aware that this is a duplicate but treat it as its own page and not as a version of another". My concern is by doing so your losing potential Page Authority
example:
www.testwebsite.com ---Canonionical--- www.testwebsite.com
www.testwebsite.com/duplicate ---Canonical --- www.testwebsite.com/duplicate
-
Yes this is a good idea as it's a catch all for URLs that might include tracking URL parameters, or other parameters that don't affect the page content. When there are no tracking parameters, it's going to be more development and testing work to hide the canonical, when having it there doesn't cause any issues. It's also quite a brutal but effective catch all if your page was accidentally accessible via other URLs - e.g. non-www or https.
George
-
Moz.com does this as well and you may also see an "Insight" in your Moz Analytics account recommending site-wide implementation 'to prevent any unforeseen duplicate content issues.' I have started following this practice since it really can't hurt & sometimes dup content pops up in the weirdest, most 'unforeseen' ways.
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
-
How to add Canonical Tags on Opencart Products
Does anyone know how to add canonical tags to product pages in Opencart? Is this possible to do in htaccess? If so, how specifically should it be written in? Please do not post any links to other pages which reference generic canonical information as I've read them all and none help. I'm looking for an Opencart specific answer, or a way to do it in htaccess.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking). I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content. My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | THandorf0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Is their value in linking to PPC landing pages and using rel="canonical"
I have ppc landing pages that are similar to my seo page. The pages are shorter with less text with a focus on converting visitors further along in the purchase cycle. My questions are: 1. Is there a benefit for having the orphan ppc pages indexed or should I no index them? 2. If indexing does provide benefits, should I create links from my site to the ppc pages or should I just submit them in a sitemap? 3. If indexed, should I use rel="canonical" and point the ppc versions to the appropriate organic page? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandExpSteve0 -
Is it okay to copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag?
I have heard conflicting answers to this. I always figured that it was okay to selectively copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag.....especially if the onpage content is well written. How can it be duplicate content if it's pulling from the exact same page? Does anybody have any feedback from a credible source about this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications1 -
How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?
Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-840380 -
How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt
Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
How does a canonical work and is it necessary to also have a no index, follow tag in place?
Across our site, we have canonical tags in place for URLs that contain duplicate content and for URLs without a trailing slash since we are using URLs WITH a trailing slash for all URLs across our site. We also recently added a no index, follow tag to all non-canonical URLs since we noticed a high number of duplicate content URLs in Google Webmaster Tools. The first part of my question is: How does a canonical work? Does the robot read the canonical and immediately go to the canonical URL or does it continue to read past the canonical tag and get to the no index, follow tag if there is one present? The second part of my question is: Is it necessary to have both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag in place? Or should the canonical tag be sufficient to avoid duplicate content? And lastly, if both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag are in place, should they be in a specific order? Canonical tag first then no index, follow tag second or no index, follow tag first then canonical tag second? I would appreciate any insight you can give. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0