What is Canonical URL Tag
-
What is Canonical URL Tag?
-
Not a problem! If you come across any other problems, let me know, I'd love to help!
-
Yes it does thank you. When I run the campaign it says I have two on some pages and I need to remove them. ( I am using WordPress so I assume this was an automatic tag it added - odd) So I will try and remove it and see what happens at next crawl. THANKS
-
Simply put, it's a tag that solves a problem.
Problem: Dynamic web pages get into trouble with duplicate content - Google will see a completely different page if the URL is changed in any way.
For instance, Google sees these as two different sites:
Just the trailing / will make Google index the page twice - which required much more resources to index all of that duplicate content.
So, the rel="canonical" tag exists to tell Google which version of the content to index - thus enabling less duplicate content.
All you need to do is add the rel="canonical" tag before the tag of your website, and you're good to go!
Does this help explain it?
-
here's a great post from SEOmoz about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
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
-
Hreflang and canonical
Hi all, I'm hoping someone can help me solve this once and for all! I keep getting hreflang errors on our site crawls and I cannot understand why. Does anything here look off to you? Thank you! JGdWcqu
Technical SEO | | eGInnovations1 -
H1 tag options
Hi, Working on a website and the developer has asked some questions about the h1 tag placement... So the main page has a bold heading named 'Overview' which then has a left hand navigation to tab through the content which appears next to the nav. The main content then has a heading and content below it. The 'Overview' heading appears on all pages of the left nav so really shouldn't be the H1 tag as it would cause duplication. One option we have thought about is to have the right hand heading above the content be the h1, and it has been suggested to stylize the 'Overview' heading but it won't actually be an h1. My question is would this have any negative impact on SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Wordpress: Tags generate duplicate Content - just delete the tags!?
Asking people, they say tags are bad and spamy and as I can see they generate all my duplicate page content issues. So the big question is, why Google very often prefers to show in SERPS these Tag-URLS... so it can't be too bad! :)))? Then after some research I found the "Term Optimizer" on Yoast.com ... that should help exactly with this problem but it seems not to be available anymore? So may be there another plugin that can help... or just delete all tags from my blog? and install permanent redirects?
Technical SEO | | inlinear
Is this the solution?0 -
I'm redesigning a website which will have a new URL format. What's the best way to redirect all the old URLs to the new ones? Is there an automated, fast way to do this?
For example, the new URL will be: https://oregonoptimalhealth.com/about_us.html while the old one's were like this: http://www.oregonoptimalhealth.com/home/ooh/smartlist_1/services.html I have redirect almost 100 old pages to the correct new page. What's the best and easiest way to do this?
Technical SEO | | PolarisMarketing0 -
Dynamic Parameters in URL
I have received lots of warnings because of long urls. Most of them are because my website has many Attributes to FILTER out products. And each time the user clicks on one, its added to the URL. pls see my site here: www.theprinterdepo.com The warning is here: Although search engines can crawl dynamic URLs, search engine representatives have warned against using over 2 parameters in any given URL. The question to the community is: -What should I do? These attributes really help the user to find easier the products. I could remove some of the attributes, I am not sure if my ecommerce solution (MAGENTO), allows to change the behavior of this so that this does not use querystring parameters.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Canonical tags and relative paths
Hi, I'm seeing a problem with Roger Bot crawling a clients site. In a campaign I am seeing you say that the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL. The tag is as follows:- /~/Standards-and....etc Google say:- relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL Is the issue with this, that there is a /~/, that there is no <base> link or just an issue with Roger? Best regards, Peter
Technical SEO | | peeveezee0 -
Re-write of url
Hi, I would like your input on the following dilemma I am wanting to target the keyword "download xml". at the moment Google indexes us on page 2 and indexes the page www.ourdomain.com/download.aspx I would like to rewrite the url to be /download-xml-editor.aspx The current page is a pr5 and is our most trafficked and externally inked to page. My thoughts are quite mixed on how to do this. approach 1: re-write url of "download.aspx" and setup permanent 301 redirect of download.aspx to download-xml-editor.aspx approach 2: create a new page called download-xml-editor and 301 redirect that to the current stronger page which is download.aspx approach 3: create new page called download-xml-editor with unique content and try and get that page to rank over time, allowing it to build up links and not compromise the current page, then later 301 redirect How would you deal with this and what are your recommendations
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0