Is it important to have a Rel-Canonical tag on every webpage?
-
Our website just had its first crawl test and about 90% of the pages have the tag.
-
Sean
It's not really necessary to use canonical url's. If you are sure that every piece of content on your site is available on a unique url you don't need to implement them.
It doesn't hurt having them either. Using canonical url's (if implemented properly) can help to avoid duplicate content issues. Like Patrick mentioned, having canonicals doesn't imply that no duplicate content issues exist (I've seen sites where the canonical url is always equal to the url - which renders them completely useless)
Crawl tools like Screaming Frog are the best option to check if you need canonicals, and if you have them, to check if they are properly implemented.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Sean
Yes, this is important, but make sure the canonical tags are implemented correctly and pointing to the right page. Just because pages have canonical tags, doesn't mean they are correct.
You can use tools like Moz or ScreamingFrog to check.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Yes, important. Any reason you wouldn't? Which pages don't?
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
-
Syntax for canonical tag for a default page in a sub directory (not subdomain) of a web site?
I'm getting two "no canonical tag" errors for the default page of a sub-directory default page (www and root) - again NOT a subdomain. Since the page is not the root of its own site, I tagged it as -- I have tried without the default.asp, but the error remains. Been doing this for 24 years and don't remember running across this before.
Moz Pro | | dcmike0 -
301 and rel=canonical AGAINNNN
Trying to understand rel=canonical if you have proper 301 redirects (redirects to the canonical URl) for example when migrating from a HTTP to HTTPS environment why would you also opt to add a rel=cannonical tag on the same pages. What effect does this have on SERP rankings or is it ok to have 301 redirects and rel=canonicalon the same page? Anyone?
Moz Pro | | InternetRep0 -
Page with "Missing Title Tag" isn't a page
Hello, I am going through the various errors that the Moz Pro Crawl report and some non-existent pages keep coming up in the report. For example, one error category is "Missing Title Tag" with one page identified. But this page http://www.immigroup.com/news/“http%3A/crs.yorku.ca”?page=2 isn't real. It would have been a 404 were there not a redirect for everything that is /news/gobbledygook to /news. So my question is: when moz (or GA for that matter) identifies these pages as "real" and having errors, do I need to take this seriously? And what do I do about it? Thanks! George
Moz Pro | | canadageorge0 -
How to Avoid Duplicate Page Content errors when using Wordpress Categories & Tags?
I get a lot of duplicate page errors on my crawl diagnostics reports from 'categories' and 'tags' on my wordpress sites. The post is 1x link and then the content is 'duplicated' on the 'category' or 'tag' that is added to the page. Should I exclude the tags and categories from my sitemap or are these issues not that important? Thanks for your help Stacey
Moz Pro | | skehoe1 -
Tags on my website cause duplicate content
Hi I just recently started a website and I am new to MOZ pro. What Moz pro detected on my website under high priority is that "duplicate page content" and what I realize about these duplicate page content is regarding the tags i put on my post. Because it is a wordpress blog, we are allow to add tags on the side before we publish our post. And because of these tags, it linked to the same page but different url. for example website.com/tags/whatever website.com/tags/whatever 2 and both these url direct to the same page So how do i solve this? do i just stop tagging whenever i write a post? delete all tags while it is not necessary? i seen method like 301 redirect or rel=canonical but is there anyway to solve this problem so I do not face this issue whenever i make a new post in my blog? I mean it doesnt make sense to redirect 301 to every single tags i have whenever i write a new post right? thanks guys
Moz Pro | | andzon0 -
301 or canonical for multiple homepage versions?
I used 301 redirects to point several versions of the homepage to www.site.com. i was just rereading moz's beginners guide to seo, and it uses that scenario as an example for rel canonical, not 301 redirects. Which is better? My understanding is that 301s remove all doubt of getting links to the wrong version and diluting link equity.
Moz Pro | | kimmiedawn0 -
canonical URL tag
Hello, I was checking my ON page SEO, and one of the things i see Number of Canonical tags 2 Remove all but a single canonical URL tag I didn't fully understand, what is canonical URL tag? my website is http://novitasalonandspa.com Thanks for help
Moz Pro | | vlad_mezoz0 -
Title tag on sitemap.xml
The SEO moz is showing an error on one of the sites within my SE Moz account campaign under Crawl Diagnostics: Title tag missing or empty. No problem here but the file associated with this issue is sitemap.xml and that just dose't look right as as far as I know xml files are title tag free. I've searched around and i've been able only to confirm my initial thought that sitemap.xml dose't use a title tag .. like any other xml. is this an issue ? (the error that is) or i should let it slide. can it be fixed ? if yes, how ? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | eyepaq1