Cononical URL problem
-
Hello,
In the keywords difficulty tool, one of my client's sites has a different number for links to root domain and links to page even though they're both the home page.
How do I tell if I have a cononical URL problem, and what do I do about it if I do?
Thank you.
-
The Keyword Difficulty Tool doesn't tell you if you have a canonical URL problem. The metrics used in that report highlight inbound links and are separated into two categories:
-
Root Domain Linking Root Domain - this is the total number of unique root domains links to your entire website regardless if it's the home page, contact, about, testimonials, etc.
-
Page Linking Root Domains - this is the total number of unique root domains linking to that specific page ONLY and in your case, the home page.
-
-
I see. That makes sense
-
My understanding is that in the Keywords Difficulty tool, "Page Linking Root Domains" is the number of different root domains linking to that exact page that is ranking for the keyword that you entered into the tool, whereas "Root Domain Linking Root Domains" (kind of mouthful) is the number of different root domains linking to anywhere on your root domain (in other words, any page on your site). The latter should always be higher than the former, whether it's the home page or not, unless the only links you have are to your home page.
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
-
Separate URL vs iFrame
Hi Everyone, I'm not a designer/developer and am an not extremely knowledgeable in SEO, but I'll try to be as clear as I can. One of the designers here is creating a recipe section on our website. He created it so that it's a container (or iFrame?) on the page. Basically, no matter what you click (different sections and recipes) the URL stays the same. I was told to find out from an SEO perspective if it's better to do things this way or have a separate URL for each section and recipe. It's been brought up that from a social/sharing standpoint separate URLs would be better so people can send a link directly to the specific recipe they want to share. Any thoughts/comments are appreciated! Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | AliMac260 -
Problem with internal links.
Hello,I am trying to do an audit of the internal links of my site at zenplugs.com. I am having great difficulty simply trying to establish how many internal links there are on the home page. Off the top of my head I think there are probably 20-25 but Screaming Frog tells me there are 574, the MozBar is listing zero and Open Site Explorer is telling me my site hasn't been indexed yet. I have tried several web based services but most of them don't work. Can anyone recommend a tool which has given them a number they trust? My second query is that one of the tools told me that there are 4 links on the home page with no anchor text, linking to http://zenplugs.com/#. Is this a problem? Many thanks, in advance. Toby
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Google is indexing urls with parameters despite canonical
Hello Moz, Google is indexing lots of urls despite the canonical in my site. Those urls are linked all over the site with parameters like ?, and looks like Google is indexing them despite de canonical. Is Google deciding to index those urls because they are linked all over the site? The canonical tag is well implemented.
On-Page Optimization | | Red_educativa0 -
Changing to Friendly SEO Urls
This is my site, example of a product : [Link removed] Would I lose rank in Google for changing all to friendly SEO urls? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | 7liberty0 -
301 redirects, efficiency and dynamic URLs
Hi, I have 2 301 redirect questions. Question 1: I have am working with a designer on the redesign of a website that currently has over 5,000 indexed pages. The majority of these are dynamic URLs from the Stone Locator database. (see below) http://www.domain.com/storelocator.php?zipcode=91784&page=12 How can I efficiently deal with these pages from an SEO perspective when developing the new site? Is there a way to do a bulk 301 redirect to a store locator page, for instance? Question 2: If a rel=canonical tag has been established on a page (www....), is it necessary to add 301 redirects to all of the other versions on: the home page (domain.com , domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.html, etc.) all other pages with those same extensions ? Thank you for your help! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Can Sitemap Be Used to Manage Canonical URLs?
We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
Moving our current homepage to a new URL
Our homepage currently speaks to a specific product and we're re-doing our homepage to be more about the brand which links to the product. The current home page has PA of 62 with thousands of links to the page. Question is are there any best practices around this or any risks? So current page is: www.xyz.com which we will be refreshing then moving the existing content to www.xyz.com/product so all the subdirectories gets shifted over 1 Thank in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | JoeLin0 -
Lots of links on homepage to internal pages with keyword rich anchor text - problem?
Hi, All! We have a new potential client, that when looking at his site with a tool, we noticed that the previous SEO company they worked with filled the homepage copy with lots of keyword-rich anchor text links pointing to different pages on the site - many links going to the same page, just with different keywords. These links are not indistinguishable in format from the other text, which is why we only noticed it with a tool. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that to start with, but once all these links are there, would you recommend taking them down? Is there any conceivable chance it could help the site? Is there a significant reason to think it will harm the site? Or will it just be pretty neutral? In all that's been written (much by SEOMoz) about only the first link's anchor text counting, do subsequent links work like a no-follow in the sense that they are a waste of the link-juice of the page, or is it as if they aren't there at all? (And is "only the first link counts" still the most widely held theory, or have there been new developments since?) Thanks, All!
On-Page Optimization | | debi_zyx0