How does one know where to insert the right strips of coding on the right pages for Canonical Links?
-
On my Website, I am the only SEO optimizer wizard person. I have to teach myself everything and I get overwhelmed a lot. I recently started using SEOMOZ and on my report it stated we had duplicate page titles and that it was bad and should be fixed quickly. So I did my research and found that I needed to use canonical links to reference one page to be indexed. However my problem lies in exactly how to add this coding to my site. I greatly appreciate any help or at least looking at this question.
-
Hey Justin,
Basically the bots follow the links so it might follow example.com and example.com/index.html once it get to your actual page it then reads the canonical tag which indicates which version is the correct version to use.
Hope that helps
-
Hi Justin,
Yes you have to use the code on all pages that are marked as duplicate. So for example if you have 5 pages shoeing as duplicate content you will have one as main page or the master or whatever you want to call it. You tehn place the code supplied by Aaran and Craig in the head section of the other 4 pages.
D
-
Thanks for the coding, I still have a part left hanging at least maybe in my own mind it is. How does that strip of code reference the correct pages together? Does it just see there are duplicate pages and bundle them for the Search Engine? or do I have to place other codes in my site to target those pages?
-
Hey
Quite easy really just add the following snippet
rel="canonical" href="Your URL Here" />
This should be placed between the tags of the page.
BUT.......
Make sure you are using this correctly, if you have duplicate page titles due to canonicalisation (http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development) then that's fine but if its just because you have duplicate page titles across your pages then they need to be rewritten.
Hope that helps
-
This is the format of the canonical tag
You have to add this within the tags. But to getting the current page URL involves dynamic scripting and it depends on which CMS you are using.
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
-
Internal links to landing pages
Hi, we are in the process of building a new website and we have 12 different locations and for theses 12 locations we have landing pages with unique copy on the following: 1. Marketing...2 SEO....3. PPC....4. Web Design Therefor there are 48 landing pages. The marketing pages are the most important ones to us in terms of traffic and priority. My question is: 1. Should we put a dropdown of the are pages in the main header under locations that link to the area marketing pages? 2. What is the best way to link all the sub pages such as London Web Design? Should these links just be coming off the London marketing page? or should we have a sitemap in the footer that lists every page? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
A word which has link to some other page, is that word also count as keyword stuffing
Dear All, A word which has link to some other page, is that word is also countable, and it also considered as keyword stuffing. For example, if I am giving link to other page for a keyword "Vastu Specialist", here the word "Vastu" is my main keyword for particular page, if so this word Vastu is considered to be keyword stuffing, This info was not available any where. It may be very useful for all of SEO's. https://www.subhavaastu.com/vastu.html , in this link there is a huge content, in which "Vastu" is appeared to be in some places, when going to backend page Ctrl+U then we may find many "Vastu", but many has link to other page. May I know the exact answer for this question please. Thank you so much for every body who shared their knowledge to the society.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sureshworks0 -
I want to Disavow some more links - but I'm only allowed one .txt file?
Hey guys, Wondering if you good people could help me out on this one? A few months back (June 19) I disavowed some links for a client having uploaded a .txt file with the offending domains attached. However, recently I've noticed some more dodgy-looking domains being indexed to my client's site so went about creating a new "Disavow List". When I went to upload this new list I was informed that I would be replacing the existing file. So, my question is, what do I do here? Make a new list with both old and new domains that I plan on disavowing and replace the existing one? Or; Just replace the existing .txt file with the new file because Google has recognised I've already disavowed those older links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Rel=Canonical to Longer Page?
We've got a series of articles on the same topic and we consolidated the content and pasted it altogether on a single page. We linked from each individual article to the consolidated page. We put a noindex on the consolidated page. The problem: Inbound links to individual articles in the series will only count toward the authority of those individual pages, and inbound links to the full article will be worthless. I am considering removing the noindex from the consolidated article and putting rel=canonicals on each individual post pointing to the consolidated article. That should consolidate the PageRank. But I am concerned about pointing****a rel=canonical to an article that is not an exact duplicate (although it does contain the full text of the original--it's just that it contains quite a bit of additional text). An alternative would be not to use rel=canonicals, nor to place a noindex on the consolidated article. But then my concern would be duplicate content and unconsolidated PageRank. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
How Long Does it Take for Rel Canonical to De-Index / Re-Index a Page?
Hi Mozzers, We have 2 e-commerce websites, Website A and Website B, sharing thousands of pages with duplicate product descriptions. Currently only the product pages on Website B are indexing, and we want Website A indexed instead. We added the rel canonical tag on each of Website B's product pages with a link towards the matching product on Page A. How long until Website B gets de-indexed and Website A gets indexed instead? Did we add the rel canonical tag correctly? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Real impact of canonical links?
I am responsible for 2 e-commerce websites. SEO Moz and Google Web Master tools both inform me regularly that on both sites there are many instances of duplicate titles, headings, decriptions and page content. Obviously from an SEO point of view I am more than a little concerned about this! Out product pages struggle to perform strongly despite the fact that our website is of a decent quality and we are leaders in our field. Our competitors rank above us when they add a product page, whereas we normal flit in between 8-10 or on the 2nd SERP. I know it is hard without viewing the site, but is duplicate content likely to be a strong, leading factor in this? I think it is, but want to put together a business case to spend the cash to sort it out....just need someone confirmation that this is worth sorting as a priority. Here are 2 examples of what I mean: 1) Category pages www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx We have filters on our category page (so the customer can sort products based on their price, colour, size etc.). When filters are used a new URL is generared. www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=0||10 www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=10||20 The content, titles, description is the same although the links are different. Do I need to set up a canonical tag on the page that reads: 2) Product pages Product pages on the websites have different URLs depending on how to arrive on them. You get 1 URL if you navigated to the page via the website navigation, but you get another different URL if you used the website search functionality to find the page. Example: Search link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1/Product1.aspx Navigation link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/12345/category1/Product1.aspx Again, do I need to set up a canonical tag for 1 of these link types so that the link benefit is not shared over 2 pages? Any feedback would be welcome! At the moment the ability to add canonical tags is locked down by our CMS (I know, rubbish!)...so website development would be needed - hence the need for a business case!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
My site links have gone from a mega site links to several small links under my SERP results in Google. Any ideas why?
A site I have currently had the mega site links on the SERP results. Recently they have updated the mega links to the smaller 4 inline links under my SERP result. Any idea what happened or how do I correct this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | POSSIBLE0