Rel Canonical issues for two urls sharing same IP address
-
Our client built a wordpress site on url A, then opted for a better url B. Rather than moving all the wordpress files/website over to the new url B, they just contacted GoDaddy, who hosted BOTH urls under the same IP address.
When I do a term target on url B, I'm flagged for rel canonical use. I can only get a B grade for each keyword. (I've also tried using url A, but I get the same flag and B grade results).
I'm not sure if this set-up will thwart our seo efforts for the site, because only the homepage comes up when you type in url B anyway. Every subsequent page displays the original url A. Somewhere, wordpress is also adding a rel canonical link on the homepage source to url A, too, which we can't seem to edit.
So, question is: is it ok to leave this set up as is with both urls hosted on the same IP address, or should we move the whole site over to the desired url B?
Thanks much!
-
Thanks for your answer, John. So, we should have the client 301 the url A to the desired url B. Confirmed!
-
This doesn't sound ideal. So only the home page is under URL B, and the rest of the pages are hosted under URL A? That would seem really strange to me as a user if I entered through URL B, went to another page, and the domain changed completely.
Ideally, you should 301 redirect everything under URL A to URL B rather than using rel=canonical for them. There's no reason to host two identical sites like this. It's fine for multiple sites to be hosted under the same IP. Here's a really good SEOMoz blog post about using 301 redirects vs.canonical tags.
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
-
Need help understanding search filter URL's and meta tags
Good afternoon Mozzers, One of our clients is a real estate agent and on that site there is a search field that will allow a person to search by filtered categories. Currently, the URL structure makes a new URL for each filter option and in my Moz reports I get the report that there is missing meta data. However, the page is the same the filter options are different so I am at a loss as to how to proper tag our site to optimize those URL's. Can I rel canonical the URL's or alt rel them? I have been looking for a solution for a few days now and like I said I am at a loss of how to properly resolve these warning messages, or if I should even be concerned with the warning messages from Moz (obviously I should be concerned, they are warning messages for a reason). Thank you for your assistance in advance!
Moz Pro | | Highline_Ideas0 -
Crawlers crawl weird long urls
I did a crawl start for the first time and i get many errors, but the weird fact is that the crawler tracks duplicate long, not existing urls. For example (to be clear): there is a page: www.website.com/dogs/dog.html but then it is continuing crawling:
Moz Pro | | r.nijkamp
www.website.com/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html what can I do about this? Screaming Frog gave me the same issue, so I know it's something with my website0 -
Issue with Data Updates on Campaign
I'm reviewing a campaign I am running for a client, the Keywords data has not updated yet even though it's supposed to update every monday. The competitive analysis shows a date of August 14, which is odd becuase I'm on a trial account?
Moz Pro | | amerihope0 -
Site Explorer - No Data Available for this URL
Hi All I have just joined on the trial offer, im not sure if i can afford the monthly payments, but im hoping SEOmoz will show me that i also cannot afford to be without it! In my proses of learning this site and flicking through each section to see what things do. However when i enter my URL into Site Explorer i get the following message "No Data Available for this URL" My site should be crawl-able, so how do i get to see data for my site/s. I wont post my URL here, as the site has a slightly adult theme.
Moz Pro | | jonny512379
If anyone could confirm if i can post "slightly adult" sites. Best Regards
Jon0 -
Two PR 5 websites, but little to no link data in OSE. How??
As the title states - We've recently developed two sites for clients - within the last 4 months or so. With the Google PR update, both sites are sitting as PR 5 sites. I've tried to have a look in the OSE for the backlink profile of both websites, but I see nothing. Even Majestic SEO's fresh index doesn't provide much info. The DA of each site is 11-16. I would really love to see what's generating the link juice to these sites. Any ideas? The two sites are: https://bfore.co.za
Moz Pro | | Mark.RedGiant
http://ictjournalafrica.net0 -
Issue with Opesiteexplorer report
Hi, When I pulled backlinks report for my website from opensite explorer. I see the backlinks listing for my homepage is duplicated with index page. Ex. For a external website my homepage www.website.com as well as www.website.com/index.php shows as backlinks. Note: I had given rel=canonical tag to my homepage and index.php is 301 redirection to the homepage. I find this error only to my homepage and I don't find this issue to my inner pages. I would like to know whether this is an issue with opensiteexplorer or a problem with my homepage url. Your answers are appreciated.
Moz Pro | | massimobrogi0 -
How to remove URLS from from crawl diagnostics blocked by robots.txt
I suddenly have a huge jump in the number of errors in crawl diagnostics and it all seems to be down to a load of URLs that should be blocked by robots.txt. These have never appeared before, how do I remove them or stop them appearing again?
Moz Pro | | SimonBond0 -
Batch lookup domain authority on list of URL's?
I found this site the describes how to use excel to batch lookup url's using seomoz api. The only problem is the seomoz api times out and returns 1 if I try dragging the formula down the cells which leaves me copying, waiting 5 seconds and copying again. This is basically as slow as manually looking up each url. Does anyone know a workaround?
Moz Pro | | SirSud1