Rel canonical = can it hurt your SEO
-
I have a site that has been developed to default to the non-www version. However each page has a rel canonical to the non-www version too.
Could having this in place on all pages hurt the site in terms of search engines?
thanks
Steve
-
Thanks Yannick, much appreciated.
-
Ah. Yes. Delete the tag.
It's not giving the right signals if it is saying that the page you are currently on is a copy of the page you are currently on.
It's not meant to be used site wide.
Bing has an interesting article about it.
-
Hey Yannick. Thanks
And just to be clear. There is 1 file for each page serving bot www & non-www version with a 301 redirect pointing all requests to the non-www URL.
The rel canonical is in every file so search engines will see the rel canonical on every request.
I'm thinking this MUST have some effect on the site. What to you think?
-
Search enigines wont even reach the rel canical tag, because they'll be redirected before anything else loads from the www version.
Just make sure you do link building to the non www version.
-
Hi Yannick
Thanks for the reply. I've been working on "on page" stuff for the last month for a site and noticed that I'm getting no improvement at all in ranking.
This is very unusual I think.
The tech guys on the site are 301'ing to the non-www site AND have placed a re canonical to the non-www version too.
My thought are to have the rel canonical removed as there is a 301 (.htaccess) in place.
Thanks again
Steve
-
I would say, Yes.
In my opinion, but I don't think there has been any concise research about this, a canonical is similar to a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect passes a lot of link juice to the page it is redirecting to, but not all. So I would say yes, this is hurting your SEO because you're not keeping all the juice you could keep when not using the rel = canonical. (or a redirect for that matter)
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
-
Does "google selected canonical" pass link juice the same as "user selected canonical"?
We are in a bit of a tricky situation since a key top-level page with lots of external links has been selected as a duplicate by Google. We do not have any canonical tag in place. Now this is fine if Google passes the link juice towards the page they have selected as canonical (an identical top-level page)- does anyone know the answer to this question? Due to various reasons, we can't put a canonical tag ourselves at this moment in time. So my question is, does a Google selected canonical work the same way and pass link juice as a user selected canonical? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Lewald10 -
Is an international redirect hurting my ranking
We're a small international company that redirects users based on their language identifier.
Technical SEO | | _entreprenerd
I've now taken a big interest in and also how it affects ranking. When I look at my MOZ dashboard the fundedbyme.com domain has a higher ranking than fundedbyme.com/en/ for example. Our company wants to target other markets such as Spain and Germany, I am imposing penalties on myself by not having rel="canonical" in place and redirecting to the TLD?0 -
Rel no follow question
Hello, I probably already know the answer to this question. But, When you use a rel no follow tag on an internal link or external link. Will the google bot still navigate to the link, in question? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | PeterRota0 -
While SEOMoz currently can tell us the number of linking c-blocks, can SEOMoz tell us what the specific c-blocks are?
I know it is important to have a diverse set of c-blocks, but I don't know how it is possible to have a diverse set if I can't find out what the c-blocks are in the first place. Also, is there a standard for domain linking c-blocks? For instance, I'm not sure if a certain amount is considered "average" or "above-average."
Technical SEO | | Todd_Kendrick0 -
How long to reverse the benefits/problems of a rel=canonical
If this wasn't so serious an issue it would be funny.... Long store cut short, a client had a penalty on their website so they decided to stop using the .com and use the .co.uk instead. They got the .com removed from Google using webmaster tools (it had to be as it was ranking for a trade mark they didn't own and there are legal arguments about it) They launched a brand new website and placed it on both domains with all seo being done on the .co.uk. The web developer was then meant to put the rel=canonical on the .com pointing to the .co.uk (maybe not needed at all thinking about it, if they had deindexed the site anyway). However he managed to rel=canonical from the good .co.,uk to the ,com domain! Maybe I should have noticed it earlier but you shouldn't have to double check others' work! I noticed it today after a good 6 weeks or so. We are having a nightmare to rank the .co.uk for terms which should be pretty easy to rank for given it's a decent domain. Would people say that the rel=canonical back to the .com has harmed the co.uk and is harming with while the tag remains in place? I'm off the opinion that it's basically telling google that the co.uk domain is a copy of the .com so go rank that instead. If so, how quickly after removing this tag would people expect any issues caused by it's placement to vanish? Thanks for any views on this. I've now the fun job of double checking all the coding done by that web developer on other sites!
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Any Positive Experiences with Rel=Next Rel=Prev for pagination?
Hi Mozzers! Can you share your experience and observations in implementing rel=next rel=prev on sites you've worked on?
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
WordPress Question: Canonical field in Category Section of Yoast SEO Plug In
I've added the Yoast SEO Plug In for my word press blog. When I add a new category, there is a listing called "Edit Category". On this page there is a listing "Yoast WordPress SEO Settings." In this section, there are two fields in which I need guidance on what is supposed to be included. One: There is a field called "Canonical". What info is supposed to be entered in this field and how does it need to be formatted? Is it a URL. If so, what URL is supposed to go there? Two: Breadcrumbs title. What is the purpose of this field? (Isn't it OK to just use the category name as the breadcrumb title?)
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340 -
Local SEO Optimization
hi, Looks for advices,tips, links ressource to improve local seo optimisation in google places for domain "google. fr" as website business is in France ! Tks a lot in advance..
Technical SEO | | mozllo0