Canonical URL tags help I am not sure what this is
-
I am trying to get an A grade on my webpage and this is one of the critical steps canonical URL tags I cant find much information as to what this even is never mind fixing it. Thanks I am a total newbe at this any advice is appreciated
-
Unfortunately, I don't know Etsy well, but I think Thomas is right on track - you don't necessarily want to pre-emptively add them, especially if you're not clear on how they work. Typically, it's more for preventing duplicate content issues. We're re-evaluating how we grade the canonical tag, since this is a bit confusing. It's a good practice on some pages (like your home-page) that naturally tend to have more than one version, but adding it sitewide can be tricky.
-
Thanks so much everyone huge help
-
The canonical isn't really for feeding google URLs in the a preferred format, it's more for cleaning up duplicate content issues.
Let's say I could track traffic and conversions on my website by adding a source code to a link. So I create a link on SEOmoz. You can reach my page www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php with the url string http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php?src=seomoz and that link is now indexed by Google. Well now I have duplicate content and google must decide which page get's placed into their index. Adding a canonical to the main page
<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php" />
, tells google which page they should place in their index and it helps me avoid splitting my links.
This also applies heavily to shopping carts where the parameters in a URL determine the content, and products that overlap in categories can cause duplicate content issues. Creating canonicals will help avoid indexing issues.
So the point to canonicals is to determine what URL gets indexed and gets the juice for links when there are duplicate content issues created by varying URL stings that lead to the same content.
If you are simply trying to fill in a canonical for a URL to get a "A grade" on a SEO checklist then you will just create the canonical for each page using the exact URL for that page.
-
I think Etsy does all that stuff for you automatically. If you check source code of your store at Etsy it already has rel canonical, so no need to worry.
Make sure your URL for on page report looks like this www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname
It's how canonical is build.
-
Hi Jen
There are some useful blog posts on here which help with understanding the use of a canonical link listed below.
You would place the link on the duplicate content pages, and link these through to the page that you want the link juice to go to. The pages still appear from a user perspective but google does not see them.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
You can use the seo moz crawl to see which pages are duplicates.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks very much for your reply
I am still a little confused how do I know what to change it too ? is there a tool that allows me to see what google url prefers I am selling on etsy does that make a difference ?
Thanks,
Jen
-
It's tag that tells Google which url for given post is most preffered. This helps avoid problems with duplicate content. Use if you have www and non-www url or post with same content within different categories.
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
-
Help for 404 error
Is it ok to use hash(#) in URL as right now it is showing 404 error while checking broken links using check my link chrome extension. E.g. http://instafrsh.com/index.php#aboutUs If not, Please suggest how to resolve this issue
On-Page Optimization | | Obbserv0 -
Keyword and SERP Help Please
So I am curious about keyword placements etc. My main question is: So is whatever you search for in say Google must be the same in a website - to be found? So say you search for plumbers in Colorado Then you must have that exact, same phrase, in your website to be found? or does Google know based on title tags and such that a page is about plumbers and they service Colorado? I just want to make sure I am understanding how keywords work to be found. I mean you can have Colorado plumbers and plumbers in Colorado. So its hard to figure out how to use keywords. So a brief suggestion is greatly appreciated Chris
On-Page Optimization | | Berner0 -
Can someone help with Canonical?
I have a wordpress site that On-Page Grader is saying I don't have Canonical done correctly. Here is the comment. Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. I have quite a few sites and have never had an issue with this. Can anyone help? I tried installing a plugin but that seems to have made it worse. This is the front page of the site btw.
On-Page Optimization | | jonnyholt1 -
Mixing hyphens and underscores in a url
Hello. I am working on a site that was built with underscores in the urls, but only in the page names, not in the subdirectories. All the subdirectories have one-word names. So a typical url is "example.com/sub1/sub2/page_name." We would like to change the name of one of the subdirectories to a name that would be very useful for SEO, but this new name is a hyphenated word, let's call it "new-sub." If we changed "sub2" to "new-sub" then our url would have a mix of underscores and hyphens: example.com/sub1/new-sub/page_name. But if I used "new_sub" instead, google would read the words as connected with an underscore, instead of reading the subdirectory as a hyphenated word, which would be less useful for SEO. It seems like it might be a problem to have a hyphen in a subdirectory and underscores in the page names. But I want the SEO value of the hyphenated word. Any recommendations? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Need help ranking my site
Hi, Can anyone help me out? I am trying to get this site ranked for "Villa General Belgrano". It was on the first page of Google and then it disappeared. Did I over optimize the anchor text? http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.lawebdelvalle.com.ar
On-Page Optimization | | Carla_Dawson0 -
To enter keyword meta tags or to not enter keyword meta tags?
I've been doing SEO for awhile, but new to SEOMoz. I'm surprised that SEOMoz does not recommend keyword meta tags. I didn't enter them for the longest time because I know Google doesn't care about them. However, I did read that other search engines DO use them. And therefore that is why you should have them. I teach my customers about SEO, and I know it would be much easier for them not to enter or worry about the keyword meta tags. However, I would love to hear opinions here. And to Bing/Yahoo put any weight into them or is it only really small search engines? Thanks! Hilary
On-Page Optimization | | endlessrange0 -
URL extensions naming
I have always wrote URL extensions as www.mysite.com/two_words.html .... when I need to separate two words, I use _ as the separator ... I am a first time SEO Moz user ... I While looking around the tools on SEO Moz, I happened to stumble across the on-page analysis. A great tool indeed, rather worryingly though, one issue it flagged to me was my URL extension "Characters which are less commonly used in URLs may cause problems with accessibility, interpretation and ranking in search engines. It is considered a best practice to stick to standard URL structures to avoid potential problems." Can someone advice me if this really is a problem, its just not this project, its tons of sites I have already developed that I am also worried about ... I always write file extensions with more than one word using _ to separate the words. How should I write the extension, I am almost embarrassed to ask this question ... Surely, even Google's algorithms are not smart enough to decipher two words without some some sort of spacing .... Regards J
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
New Url Structure
Hey Guys We are working on a new site and in order to implement some of the new functions we need to restructure our url's , Will redirect everything correctly but I was looking for advice on the structure we need the word product / category subfolder for speed but would there be any benefit making them shorter ? what would you guys advise ? Category Current http://www.freestylextreme.com/uk/Home/Brands/DC-Shoe-Co-/default.aspx **New ** freestylextreme.com/uk/category/dc-shoe-co Product Current http://www.freestylextreme.com/uk/Home/Brands/DC-Shoe-Co-/Mens-DC-Shoe-Co-T-shirts/DC-Black-Unwind-T-Shirt---.aspx New freestylextreme.com/uk/product/dc-black-unwind-t-shirt
On-Page Optimization | | elbeno0