Canonical URL Tag Usage
-
Hi there,
I have a .co.uk website and a .ie website, which have the exact same content on both, should I put a canonical tag on both websites, on every page?
Kind Regards
-
I will do Hannah, thanks again.
-
Hey,
Re the rel-canonical, Bing say they don't like that implementation, but Google are fine with it. My advice? Yep - do it
Thanks
Hannah
PS If you want to ask a new question it's best to start a new thread - more likely to get seen & answered
-
Hi Hannah,
Just one more question please.
If I had just one website, would you always advice in using a canonical tag for every webpage on that site?
So, http://www.example.com/product-page/ would have canonical tag
rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product-page/" />
-
Thanks Hannah for all your help, I will let you know how it goes.
Kind Regards
-
Yep - you need to place the tags on every page which is duplicated across both sites
-
AH! at the moment I only have one hreflang on each domain
.co.uk website has:
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IE" href="http://www.mywebsite.ie" />
and .ie website has:
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk" />
Was I doing it wrong to start with?
-
Like the rel="alternate" tag you need to put the canonical tag on every page of your .ie site pointing to the relevant page on your .co.uk site. You should also put the canonical tag on the .co.uk site pointing to itself - e.g.:
So on http://yourdomain.co.uk/page-whatever you'd need:
http://yourdomain.ie/page-whatever; />
http://yourdomain.ie/page-whatever - you'd need:
-
Hi Hannah,
Thanks for your feedback.
This is very interesting indeed Hannah, so this means that the .ie version will fall away in SERPs?
Technical question: Do I put the canonical tag on the .ie website pointing to the .co.uk website?
rel="canonical" href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk"/>
Do I put a canonical tag on the .co.uk website?
Appreciate your help.
-
Hi Gary,
I think on this occasion you ought to use both rel="alternate" and the canonical tag.
One of my colleagues had a conversation with a Googler which supports and explains this further:
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Yes, everything is correct in Google webmaster tools. I have a feeling even though this is correct in webmaster tools that Google is counting as duplicate.
-
What are Google Webmaster Tools telling you? Have you used it to tell Google your site is geotargeted?
-
Hi Highland,
Thanks for your reply.
Do you know what is happening with this then? as it has no PR anymore plus it's not in the index
-
In this case, no. Matt Cutts has stated that country TLDs that are duplicate are not generally seen as duplicate by Google.
-
Hi Stefan,
Yes, in Google webmaster tools that countries are set, however one of the keywords I was ranking well for has disappeared from the .co.uk results, when I paste the first paragraph of the .co.uk page in question into .co.uk, its the .ie website that appears, I have also put this on the .co.uk & .ie webpages in question:
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IE" href="mysite.ie" />
<link < span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="mysite.co.uk" /></link <>
I put the above code about 10 days ago, but still not sorted the problem, I feel that I need to tell Google that the .co.uk website is the original, what do you think?
-
Hello Gary,
You can use the
hreflang="'en-IE" href="www.your-ie.site"> element
For more information see: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
You can also in Google webmaster tools set the country a specific domain is targeting.
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
-
Can I remove certain parameters from the canonical URL?
For example, https://www.jamestowndistributors.com/product/epoxy-and-adhesives?page=2&resultsPerPage=16 is the paginated URL of the category https://www.jamestowndistributors.com/product/epoxy-and-adhesives/. Can I remove the &resultsPerPage= variation from the canonical without it causing an issue? Even though the actual page URL has that parameter? I was thinking of using this: instead of: What is the best practice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | laurengdicenso0 -
Fast/Easy Way to Implement Canonical tags in Bulk in Magento CMS?
Hello Amazing SEO Community! Quick Q for a client with a TON of duplicate content. (yikes!) My client is currently undertaking a large SEO project around canonical tagging for their thousands of duplicate pages. Currently, one product sits on multiple URLs and they are being indexed as different pages (with the same content). The issue is found across all products and other pages, and across their international sites as well. One core challenge they face now is lack of time/resources from their developer side. The solution we see to the duplicate content is to manually add a canonical tag to each of our tens of thousands of pages. Their content management system is Magento. Has anyone ever tackled canonicalization for a large site that uses Magento? Any more efficient solutions to manual tagging is ideal. Thanks in advance for your input. -Bonnie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags
Hi, Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is. The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible. Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Meta tag description Usage
Do i wanna put meta tags as separate description that is not in the particular web page ,Normally i put meta description as 155 character from first paragraph of the web page .so do i need put a unique meta description ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Tags, categories or both?
There is so much debate regarding duplicate content, horror stories, losing visitors, being penalized, yada yada... that I am wandering if it's wise to use tags/categories on a WordPress blog. I saw that all major blogs are using these structuring etiquettes and they are all dofollow and meta robots on index, follow. What do you say? It is wise to use tags, categories or both? Should I nofollow them, noindex or follow and index? Or noindex follow? Cheers and thx.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin280 -
E Commerce product page canonical and indexing + URL parameters
Hi, I'm having some issues on the best way to handle site structure. The technical side of SEO isn't my strong point so I thought I'd ask the question before I make the decision. Two examples for you to look at. This is a new site http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital. By selecting another page to see more products you get this url string where/p/2. This page also has the canonical tag relating to this page and not the original page. Now if say for example I exclude this parameter (where) in webmaster tools will I be stopping Google indexing the products on the other pages where/p/2, 3, 4 etc. and the same if I make the canonical point to multimeters/digital/ instead of multimeters/digital/where/p/2 etc.? I have the same question applied to the older site http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html. which no longer has an canonical tags at all. The only real difference is Google is indexing http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html?page=2 but not http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital/where/p/2 Thanks for help in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PASSLtd0 -
Subdirectory URLs
If I have category pages for my site; is it better to use http://example.com/category/category or just http://example.com/category? Also, I'm creating a new section of the site; a resource center. Should the URLs of the pages in the resource center be http://example.com/learn/page or just http://example.com/page What are the reasons for the better choice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
SEO Strategy for URL Change
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together. Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_KS0