Help with canonical tag
-
hello-
i got this recommendation
<dl>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page</dd>
<dd>from my "report card" and i see also that i have a lot of issues with duplicate content but i really dont have any duplicate content on my site.</dd>
<dd>the crawl has apparently marked every post in my blog as duplicate page content.</dd>
<dd>and the "use canonical tag" suggestion keeps appearing as a fix to my problems.</dd>
<dd>could you please help me with ------How do i create a canonical tag?</dd>
<dd>is it just rel=canonical?</dd>
<dd>and where do i put it?</dd>
<dd>i should put it on every page right?</dd>
<dd>or with CSS my webmaster could probably do it very quickly right?</dd>
<dd>i get the basic concept behind rel=canonical but i cant say i fully understand it -</dd>
<dd>i need some help with regard to how and where this tag should be placed.</dd>
<dd>thanks,</dd>
<dd>erik
</dd><dd>.</dd>
</dl>
-
Yes as long as the "www" is included in the URL of the canonical tag.
-
i hadnt realized this question was answered - i actually forgot i ever asked it - but thank you for the reply - when i use rel=canonical am i telling the SE's that i prefer www. ?
if the answer is yes - then i am all set - and the confusion is over
-
Hey Erik,
This is probably due to URLs of the form http://domain.com not being 301ed to http://www.domain.com.
Depending on how your site was created (e.g. dynamic, static, CMS), it maye be easier to place 301 redirects in your configuration (Assuming you are using Apache, but should be possible in any Web Server). If that is not possible, and you are using a dynamic language for your site, like PHP, you can place 301 redirect code there. Short of these things, you can do as the tool suggested, and create Canonical tags.
-
Hi Erik.
For an example of the canonical tag, right click on this thread's page, choose View Page Source, and look at the top of the document. About the sixth line down you will see a line of code which reads as: . You will also notice the URL of this page matches exactly with that portion of the URL. The code which adds the http://www.seomoz.org prefix is located elsewhere in the code.
I would recommend every page of your site have a canonical tag added. It goes in between the tags of your page's HTML code.
The idea is that there are multiple ways to get to the same page. For example, you can reach this page by typing in "http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-canonical-tag" or "http://seomoz.org/q/help-with-canonical-tag" into your browser. Which page is the correct URL? The www version? or the version without the www?
By adding a canonical to your page, you are telling search engines which version you prefer for your site.
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
-
Too many Tags and Categories what should I do to clean this up?
Hello, Everyone! I am trying to do a clean up for one of my client sites. I'm noticing that the Categories and tags are way out of hand. It looks like random tags and categories were just added because they could be added. Are all of these tags and categories contributing to duplicate content? And if so What method should I go about to cleaning this up? The only thing that seems logical to me is rel=canonical. Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Striventa1 -
Help... To Optimize Category Page or Not?
My question is about whether to optimize a category page or not, but it’s a rather odd situation. Here’s a bit of background to start. When we relaunched our site, about six months ago, we had primary, secondary, and tertiary categories created. A user could reach all three levels by clicking through the site. Then we decided instead of linking to the tertiary categories, that we’d turn them into filters which can be applied at the secondary level. Thus, there is not actually a direct link to the 3rd level categories on the site. An important side note, I did check and confirm they are still included in the sitemap file. My initial thoughts were to forget any further optimization of those 3rd level categories, but as it turns out we still have rankings for some of them. Now the question… Because some of these pages are ranking and are found in the sitemap, should I include them in my SEO plan to build up and optimize, or because they are no longer linked to directly on the site will they eventually fizzle out (and I shouldn’t do anything further). This is such a unique situation that I am really looking for some insight from the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Canonical Issue with urls
I saw some urls of my site showing duplicate page content, duplicate page title issues on crawl reports. So I have set canonical url for every urls , that has dupicate content / page title. But still SeoMoz crawl test is showing issue. I am giving here one url with issue. The below given urls shown duplicate content and duplicate page title with some other urls all are given below. Checked URL http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7635 dup page content http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trixmediainc
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 dup page Title http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636&category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 But I have set canonical url for all these urls already , that is :- http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 This should actually solve the problem right ? Search engine should identify the canonical url as original url and only should consider that. Thanks0 -
Simple Pagination and Rel Canonical
Hello, I am trying to find a solid solution to this. I think it is simple, but trying to think of a good setup for SEO. If you have a paginated result set, page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4. What i am wondering is, should I point my REL CANONICAL page to Page 1 always, so i'm not loosing power from the first page? Domain structure: www.domain.com/search/[term]/page1/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aactive
www.domain.com/search/[term]/page2/ Should I point all pages to page 1, so I don't get watered down as we go farther into the site? Thoughts?0 -
Are tags an issue in SEO
SEOMoz saw that my tags were duplicate pages. Are tags a serious issue in SEO? Should I remove it entirely to prevent the duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | visualartistics0 -
301 redirect help
Hey guys, I normally work in WordPress and just use a 301 redirect plugin. I bought a site and rather than maintain two similar ones have decided to redirect one to the other. I am having trouble with the .htaccess file. Here is an example. These are two redirects: redirect 301 /category/models/next/2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster
redirect 301 /category/models I want both of these URLs to redirect to the same URL of the new site. However, the /category/models is the only one working. It redirects to the new page just fine. The /category/models/next/2 is redirecting to nearly the same URL on the new site, only it is adding /next/2 to the end and that is bringing up a 404. Why is it adding /next/2 to the new URL? How can I fix this? There are several doing this. Help appreciated!0 -
Canonical Problems
Hi Guys, There is so much info out there about canonical issues and 301 redirects I'm not sure what to do about my problem. Google webmaster says I have over 2000 duplicate page titles. Google is showing most of my pages in duplicate or triplicate url format. Example: /store/LOVE_OIL_CARIBBEAN_ROSE//store/LOVE_OIL_CARIBBEAN_ROSE/store/love_oil_caribbean_rose/Im using x-cart pro as my cart.When I look at the source code I see each one having a rel=canonical tag with the exact urls you see above. Can someone give me an example of a redirect that I can put in my .htaccess file that would work site wide?I obviously cant go through and 301 this on a page by page basis. It would take a year.Thank You Tim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fasctimseo0 -
I need help with htaccess redirect
Hi guys, we have the domain cheats.co.uk, it has always displayed as cheats.co.uk without the www. However it is now showing 2 version of the site, both the www. and the non www. version. I know how to add to the htaccess folder to get the non www. version going to the www. version but i am worried about doing this because the non www. version has always been the one indexed in Google and has a page rank of 3. Should i in fact be redirecting the www.version to the non www. version to keep page rank etc? or will page rank be passed over etc if i redirect to the www. version I hope thats clear Thanks guys Jon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imrubbish0