Which Canonical URL Tag tag should we remove?
-
Hi guys,
We are in the process of optimizing the pages of our new site.
We have used the 'on page' report card feature in the Seomoz Pro Campaign analyser. On several pages we got the following result
No More Than One Canonical URL Tag
Number of Canonical tags
<dl>
<dd>2</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Remove all but a single canonical URL tag</dd>
</dl>
I have looked into the source code of one of the pages http://www.sabaileela.co.uk/acupuncture-london and can see that there are two "canonical" tags.
Does anyone have any advise on which one I should ask the developer to remove? I am not sure how to determine the relative importance of either link.
-
Brian
As far as which to remove, that's just up to him to decide. Unless I saw how the site was put together with plug-ins etc he should be able to determine which one is best to use. Its whichever is easier for him really. From an SEO standpoint you just need to choose one, it doesn't matter which.
Hope that clarifies!
-Dan
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your reply.
I am still not completely clear as to what to request. There is a language barrier with our developer so I generally try to be as unambiguous as possible.
Any ideas on how the developer can determine 'if one works better than the other'?
regards
Brian
-
Hi
It looks like your have two canonicals on all of your pages. They are being generated by two conflicting sources in your WordPress setup. One looks like its coming from the wooCommerce and the other perhaps from the default WordPress settings.
So the bigger issue is to have your developer decide on which source is best to take the canonical from. This will depend perhaps on if one works better than the other.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
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
-
NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination
Hello, I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow." My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex?? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
On-Page Optimization | | chuck-layton
https://www.site.com/category/
name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/> Name Sorted Page
https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">0 -
Making Shopify URL's Simpler - Losing the words 'collection', 'product' and 'page' in a Shopify store URL. Any advice?
Hi Mozers! I have a Shopify store (of which there are many advantages) however one big SEO disadvantage, is that my URL structures contravene all Moz advice on dynamic URL structure and whats more I am reminded about this every week when I have a Moz site crawl and I have a batch of URL's that are longe than the 75 characters. A Shopify URL will run www.domain name.com/collections/collection-name/product/product-name. According to advice a it should be www.domain name.com/collection-name/product-name - Don't even get started on sub-collections! I sell portfolio books, album etc and keepsake memory boxes (so long keywords) AND, I have a long(ish) business name. So, For user experience and keyword length, do I just ignore trying to achieve a dynamic URL under 75 characters? When I have asked Shopify, the say their URL's are an integral part of the "Ruby on Rails" system, so nothing can be done Or can it ??? I can't be the only Moz member with this issue can I ??
On-Page Optimization | | nick_HandCo0 -
To avoid the duplicate content issue I have created new urls for that specific site I am posting to and redirecting that url to the original on my site. Is this the right way to do it?
I am trying to avoid the duplicate content issue by creating new urls and redirecting them to the original url. Is this the proper way of going about it?
On-Page Optimization | | yagobi210 -
Ecommerce Canonical Question
Hi all, first question (eek) Could I pick the brains of fellow users around an issue we are having with canonical urls on a magento website. At the moment we do not have these enabled as it seems to break our indexing. Cut a long story short, we have thousands of products but haven't rewritten many of the descriptions from the manufacturers yet and so have noindexed all the product pages (freeing them as we go). The goal, for now, is to pull in traffic via the filtering options we have on the site The goal, for now, is to pull in traffic via the filtering options we have on the site. For example, if you go to Dresses, there then are several filtering options which would allow you to choose a colour, shape and material - if you wished to filter that precisely. These filtering options are all crawlable and so we would then have a page that google could index for, for example, Green Lace Maxi Dress. All good there, few people search for specific products and a lot search for types of products so we are covered. To get back to the issue at hand. If we enable the canonical option on our magento plugin it will stop us from being able to target these terms. Whereas the filtering option would create domain.com/dress/green/maxi/lace with the page title of Green Lace Maxi Dress, if we enable the canonical part of the seo plugin the canonical link which would be added to the page would be - instantly removing our ability to rank for longer tail dress related searches (we are not going to compete with the big players on the premium terms, yet!). There are alternative plugins we can buy for magento to add the correct tag, however, if every page's canonical just points back it itself like this, is there really much point spending nearly $1000 on the 4 licences we would need to cover our range of sites. Is it really necessary, in this case, that we have a canonical for the product filtering? Sorry for the long post, hope it made sense. Thanks for any assistance.
On-Page Optimization | | DSCarl0 -
Title-Tag question
The Yoast plugin is installed on the website. It generates the following meta property tag when I enter a new title-tag in the plugin: Next to that I have my standard title-tag. <title>dummy</title> Is this meta property tag able to replace the title-tag? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
URL Keyword Variations?
I'm aware that keywords in the url aren't as effective as they used to be, but I'm still convinced that they do have a significant impact (based on results in one of the niches I'm in). My question is, will variations of keywords and "hidden" keywords have as much value as an exact keyword? For example, let's say that I'm trying to target the keyword "day." Will including variations like "daily" in the url work just as well? What about a brand name that includes the keyword hidden in its name, like "Dayest"? And, as a followup question, does including "stop" words have any effect? For example, if I'm trying to target the keyword "Day of the Month", would including "day" and "month" in the url be just as effective as including "day of the month"?
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
"Canonical URL Tag Usage" recommendation in SEOmoz "On-Page Optimization" Tool
Here comes another one related to SEOmoz "On-Page Optimization" Tool. The tool says the following about one of our pages: Canonical URL Tag Usage Explanation: Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH
use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future
developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe
the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic
today. Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page. Let's say our page is http://www.example.com/brands/abc-brand and on its header we'll place the following tag: Is this correct? I thought the canonical tag was meant for duplicates of the original page, for example: http://www.example.com/brands/print/abc-brand href="http://www.example.com/brands/abc-brand**?SESSID=123** Thanks in advance.0 -
Url question for seo
Would it be beneficial to use url that is a match for my keyword to help with seo, then have my currently url forward to that one so I don't have to change any marketing materials? I was one of the feedback that I got when doing the on page keyword optimization tool on seo moz. Thanks J
On-Page Optimization | | fertilityhealth0