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.
Do we need to use the canonical tag on non-indexed pages?
-
Hi there
I have been working in / learning SEO for just over a year, coming from a non dev background, so there are still plenty of the finer points on-page points I am working on. Slowly building up confidence and knowledge with the great SEOMoz as a reference!
We are working on this site http://www.preciseuk.co.uk (we are still tweaking the tags and content by the way- not finished yet!)
Because a lot of the information is within accordians, a page is generated for each tab of the accordian expanded, for example:
http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php is the main page
but then you also have:
http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=0 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=1 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=2 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=3 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=4 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=5
All of which are in the same file.
According to the crawl test, these pages are not indexed.
Because it is all in one file, should we add the canonical tag to it, so that this is replicated in all the tab pages that are generated? eg.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Liz
OneResult
liz@oneresult.co.uk -
Ok, this may be a better option in Webmaster tools, since you need to have added robots txt or "nofollow, noindex" to the pages...which we can't do because they are all one file.
Many thanks everyone
Liz
-
Sounds fine. You could also go into webmaster tools as well and tell them to ignore the 'tab' parameter
Site Configuration > Settings > Parameter Handling
Although if you're changing it to # you shouldn't need to
-
Having talked to the guys and developers, while re-coding the whole site is not feasible for this project, we are going to prevent these pseudo pages being an issue by:
- adding a rel canonical tag to the main pages
- add the # symbol after the .php section of the code so that the search engines ignore it
- request that Google remove the few URLs that may have been indexed
-
Yes on second thoughts the URL structure would only need to be changed if the individual tabs were meant to be different pages, it's just that the coding has split them up, as you say.
-
Yeah, definitely speak to the developers, see what they can do. You'll learn that SEO often requires us to box clever around what developers do
Your url structure isn't bad, it's simply that these tabs shouldn't be seperate pages at all.
-
Hi Barry,
Yeah I use yootheme templates for Joomla and Wordpress and they seem to use some sort of javascript to do it really well, i think its called MOOtools
-
Thanks everyone so far, great stuff.
I did not build this site so I cannot speak for the way it was put together! I am not a developer at all but I can tell it is not the best solution.
So the best course of action seems to be, use the tag and then look into the time and costs associated with converting the URLs to a more friendly structure...
-
Eh, yes, you probably should.
However, why are you building your pages that way and not making the tabs javascript (or similar)?
There has to be a better way of doing it than making each it's own php file, because you're just deliberately giving yourself duplicate content issues. I'm not much of a coder though so perhaps somebody who is can wade in with an actual alternative solution.
If you really have to make it that way, then definitely use the canonical to the non-tabbed version.
-
I think it would be safer to add the tag, although search engines are getting more clever this way you would be making sure search engines recognise the link you want to be indexed. Hope that makes sense.
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | Sep 12, 2019, 10:51 AM | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Is it better to keep a glossary or terms on one page or break it up into multiple pages?
We have a very large glossary of over 1000 industry terms on our site with links to reference material, embedded video, etc. Is it better for SEO purposes to keep this on one page or should we break it up into multiple pages, a different page for each letter for example? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | Dec 14, 2016, 2:14 PM | KenW0 -
Does Google avoid indexing pages that include registered trademark signs?
I am suspecting that Google often hesitates to index pages that have registered trademarks on them that are marked with a ®. For example EGOL® used in the title tag or in the tag at the top of the page. Registered trademarks are everywhere and most retail product pages contain at least one of them. However, most people use the registered trademark names as text in their writing without adding the registered trademark sign of ®. Have you experienced a problem getting such pages indexed or have you read any articles about how Google treats registered trademarks?
On-Page Optimization | Oct 18, 2016, 1:58 AM | EGOL0 -
Google Console returning 0 pages as being indexed
HI there, I submitted my site notebuster.net to Search Console over a month ago and it is showing 0 pages as being indexed under the index status report. I know this isn't right as I can see that in google alone by typing in (site:notebusters.net) there are 113 pages indexed. Any idea why this might be? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | May 26, 2016, 10:13 PM | CosiCrawley0 -
Is it convinient to use No-Index, Follow to my Paginated Pages?
I have a website http://www.naukrigulf.com and it has a lot of Paginated pages on its SERP and most of paginated pages are getting indexed in Google SERP. Is it beneficial to use No-Index, Follow to keep the link equity to main (first page), although we have already used rel=next and rel=prev. If Answer is "yes" is their any harm by using no-index, follow with rel=next, rel=prev.
On-Page Optimization | Sep 18, 2014, 3:23 AM | vivekrathore0 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | Mar 20, 2014, 12:39 PM | tprg0 -
Is it ok to use the H1 tag for bullet points?
Our search results page doesn't have a typical H1 tag because adding a true header would take up space unnecessarily. Therefore, we've assigned the h1 tag to be the breadcrumb. As filters are applied, the breadcrumb grows to include these filters. This breadcrumb is coded as bullet points, even though they're not the typical style of bullet points. Here's a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/AjGC9iAYR3 For example, the breadcrumb: Home >> NYC Social Media Classes >> Adult >> Manhattan is currently coded as: | |
On-Page Optimization | Feb 24, 2012, 12:20 AM | mevseo
| | * class="first"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/">Home |
| | * <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/nyc/classes/social-media/age-adults/neighborhood-manhattan" class="Selected">Search results |
| | |
| | |
| | id="cat_social-media" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setCategory('social-media')" /> |
| | # style="font-size: 12px; display: inline;">NYC Social Media Classes |
| | <label <span="">for</label>="cat_social-media"> |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="age_adults" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setAge('adults')" /><label <span="">for</label>="age_adults">Adults</nobr> |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="nbhd_manhattan" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setNeighborhood('manhattan')" /><label <span="">for</label>="nbhd_manhattan">Manhattan</nobr> |
| | |
| | | Right now that H1 tag just relates to 'NYC Social media classes', but we'd like to expand it to include both 'Manhattan' & 'Adults' - would that be ok? And if so, would it be better to put the tag before and after the tag?0 -
How to handle Meta Tags on Pagination... page 2,3,4....
Seems that SEOMoz reports are considering my paginated pages as duplicate Meta Tags. For example, I have a product catalog with 5 paginated pages. Obviously the content on each page is unique and the URL ends in =4, =5 for the page number, but the Title and Description are the same for all the pages. Any suggestions on how to handle this? The pages other than page 1 are not indexed, so it should not be a big deal. But wondering if I should programatically ad the page number to the additional pages to show a difference?
On-Page Optimization | Jul 14, 2011, 5:31 AM | paddlej0