Will this internal linking feature cause canonicalization issues?
-
This is a canonicalization type question, so I believe it should be a pretty straightforward answer. I just haven't had much experience with using the canonical tag so I felt I should ask so I don't blow up my site
Ok, let's say I have a product page that is at:
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct
Now on that page I have an option to see all of the specs of the product in a collapsible tab which I want to link to from other pages - So the URL to this tab ends from other pages ends up being:
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct?=productspecs
This will link to the tab and default it to open when someone clicks that link on another page.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand canonicalization correctly I believe creating this link is going to cause a duplicate page that has the opportunity to be indexed and detract from our SEO to the main product page.
My question is... where do I put the "rel=canonical" tag to point the SEO value back to the main page since the page is dynamically generated and doesn't have its own file on the server? - or do even need to be concerned with this?
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of the above. Like I said - this is something I am fairly familiar with how it works, but I haven't had much experience with using.
Thanks!
-
We'll be using IIS, but I suppose it works the same way. It's my hope to get this done with one small change and not have to update an entire database of thousands of pages.
Can that not be done?
-
Hey
So, your product pages are as follows:
productpage.php?productid=1
productpage.php?productid=2
productpage.php?productid=3And you are worried about duplicates that would be in the following format with three versions of product=1
productpage.php?productid=1
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=A
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=B
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=CIf so, then your canonical link for productid=1 which would go on all of the above variations of the productid=1 page would be:
<link <span>rel="canonical" href="productpage.php?productid=1" /></link <span>
Summary
The page name includes the bit that makes it a unique page but you are applying the canonical to all variations of that.
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Makes sense.
Let me make sure I understand.
So, basically on that parameter page in the I need to have my programmers code the rel=canonical to pass in the URL of the page in the form of "www.exampledomain.com/productpage" - and that will take care of pointing all of the duplicate content generated by those query strings back to each individual product page, and will also ensure each product page is still indexed with its full SEO value?
-
It is one tag, but not one instance of the tag. The canonical must be on each param page referring back to the product page. It would he part of your head that you dynamically generate.
-
Yes this is what I want to do. I want Google to ignore the duplicate pages that would be created by the additional parameters and pass SEO value back to the product page.
What I'm confused about is how to code the tag and how to implement it. Each page, which there are thousands of, is generated dynamically - so I only have that one container page that I can update.
How do I take care of all of the product pages with one tag? Is this something that is done in the database?
Unfortunately we don't have a CMS in place, however it's something we're highly considering.
-
Cody -
Is the URL ending in /productname the individual product page? If so, what we are saying will work to canonicalize your product page. You're simply telling Google not to pass pagerank to the /productname?=productspecs page. You're telling them to ignore the specs part of the page as a separate page and to instead pass the link juice to the main page.
Once again, please correct any misunderstandings we may have of what you are trying to do.
Also, you incorporate the canonical tag on a page level. Hopefully you can set this through the CMS (I use Yoast SEO to do this with Wordpress).
-
True, if you want pages to build PR, it needs to to be canonicalized. What you are doing with the canonical is handling anything after the ? and pointing all page value back behind the ? If I'm reading this correctly, why would you want the spec page to gain value? Sorry if I'm not, I'm remote.
-
Hey guys. Thanks for all of the responses. The query string actually comes from part of a search tool, so I don't know if it can be output as a named anchor. If so it would require reprogramming the search tool. It's possible, but I believe at this point it would probably be easier to use the rel=canonical tag.
What I'm not getting is this:
All of our product pages are dynamically generated. So they are loaded into a page at:
www.exampledomain.com/products/productname
If I put the rel=canonical tag on that host page that is populated with data wouldn't I be throwing out any possibility for my individual product pages to rank? Wouldn't it all point back to that one product?
How do I use the rel=canonical tag so that each individual product page gets all of the ranking. Is there a way to do this?
-
Marcus -
I was going to suggest this as well, but did not know if it would be relevant. Good suggestion.
Question though. Will he need to specify somewhere on the page to link to the named anchor (i.e. an index on the actual page?) for the named anchors to work, or is this not an issue? This is why I did not suggest it, because I did not know the answer to my question.
-
Named anchors I great if it meets your needs otherwise rel canonical will work.
-
I agree that this is an excellent use of the canonical tag. The canonical tag goes on the host page nameofproduct and then when any other page is called nameofproduct?=productspecs, SEs will give credit to the nameofproduct page**. **
**I hope that answers your question. **
-
I agree that this is an excellent use of the canonical tag. The canonical tag goes on the host page nameofproduct and then when any other page is called nameofproduct?=productspecs, SEs will give credit to the nameofproduct page**. **
**I hope that answers your question. **
-
Hey, using the rel=canonical tag on the page will prevent this from being a problem but a better way would be to use named anchors instead of query string variables. Named anchors are page level navigation so you are not creating a potential duplicate version of the same page.
If you use querystring variables, you are creating a problem, and then fixing it with rel=canonical. If you use named anchors as page level navigation, you are never creating the problem in the first place.
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct#productspecs
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Nope that is what i was going to say, but you beat me to it.
-
I know that you put the canonical tag in the of your page, so it looks like:
rel="canonical" href="(originalpageURL)" />
Since you are linking a dynamic part of that page, the rel=canonical that you have specified there will hold for the page. It will be a dynamic page, but it is a subset of the page, so you should be fine.
Someone PLEASE correct me if I am wrong.
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
-
SEO Indexing issues
Hi, We have been submitting sitemaps on a weekly basis for couple of months now and only 40% of the submitted pages are indexed each time. Whether on the design , content or technical side, the website doesn't violate google guidelines.Can someone help me find the issue? website: http://goo.gl/QN5CevThanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZeFan0 -
More bad links
Hi, After a recent disastrous dalliance with a rogue SEO company I disavowed quite a few domains (links he had gained) which I was receiving a penalty of about 23 places. I cleaned up the site and added meta descriptions where missing, and deleted duplicate titles and pages. This gained me another 5 places. In the meantime I have been getting a few links from wedding blogs, adobe forums and other relevant sites so was expecting an upward momentum. Since the high point of bottom of page 1 I have slowly slid back down to near the bottom of page two for my main keywords. Just checked my webmaster tools latest links and another 4 domains have appeared (gained by the dodgy SEO) : domain:erwinskee.blog.co.uk domain:grencholerz.blog.co.uk domain:valeriiees.blog.co.uk domain:gb.bizin.eu They all look bad so I am going to disavow. I expect to find an improvement when I disavow these new domains. As I have said, have started using the open site explorer tool to check my competitors backlinks and getting some low level links(I'm a wedding photographer) like forum comments and blog comments and good directories. I know there is much more than this to SEO and plan on raising my game as time progresses. I have also gained more links from the domains I disavowed on the 8th January mostly from www.friendfeed.com. will webmaster tools ignore any new links from previously disavowed domains? Like I have said I know there are better ways to get links, but are these links (forum comments, blog comments and respectable directories) one way of raising my rankings? To be honest that is all my competitors have got other than some of the top boys might have a photograph or two on another site with a link. No-one has a decent article or review anywhere (which is my next stage of getting links). Thanks! David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
350 (Out the 750) Internal Links Listed by Webmaster Tools Dynamically Generated-Best to Remove?
Greetings MOZ Community: When visitors enter real estate search parameters in our commercial real estate web site, the parameters are somehow getting indexed as internal links in Google Webmaster Tools. About half are 700 internal links are derived from these dynamic URLs. It seems to me that these dynamic alphanumeric URL links would dilute the value of the remaining static links. Are the dynamic URLs a major issue? Are they high priority to remove? The dynamic URLs look like this: /listings/search?fsrepw-search-neighborhood%5B%5D=m_0&fsrepw-search-sq-ft%5B%5D=1&fsrepw-search-price-range%5B%5D=4&fsrepw-search-type-of-space%5B%5D=0&fsrepw-search-lease-type=1 These URLs do not show up when a SITE: URL search is done on Google!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Index, Nofollow Issue
We are having on our site a couple of pages that we want the page to be indexed, however, we don't want the links on the page to be followed. For example url: http://www.printez.com/animal-personal-checks.html. We have added in our code: . Bing Webmaster Tools, is telling us the following: The pages uses a meta robots tag. Review the value of the tag to see if you are not unintentionally blocking the page from being indexed (NOINDEX). Question is, is the page using the right code as of now or do we need to do any changes in the code, if so, what should we use for them to index the page, but not to follow the links on the page? Please advise, Morris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintEZ0 -
Why the sudden link drop?
A the end of November I am showing that our total links were 118k. Current links are 22k. We changed sites early November so that was about three weeks before. What would cause the drop of about 100k links? Or where should I start investigating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google changing the meta title for the homepage causing branding issues
A client of mine." Ross X Bute" current meta title is "Luxury designer clothing | Womens designer clothing" for the homepage. If i search for luxury designer clothing it will show the full meta title for the homepage. however if i search for the brand name.... "Ross & Bute" will show instead of the meta title. Whats the problem? Well my client a few month ago has decided to re brand the business to have a "X" to show instead of the "And". The rest of the site is branded with an "X" rather than "And" The URL www.rossandbute.com, so you can understand where google is getting this assumption from. Is there anyway to change this so it reads the the meta title in the SERPs? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_Harris0 -
What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to build URL links too dilute link profile???
One of my sites has a very spamy link profile, top 20 anchors are money keywords. What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to help dilute the link profile by building links with URLs, Click Here, more Info, etc. I have been building URL links already, but due to the site age(over 12 years) the amount of exact match anchor text links is just very large and would take forever to get diluted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 858-SEO0 -
Content linking ?
If you have links on the left hand side of the website on the Navigation and content at the bottom of the page and link to the same page with different anchor text or the same would it help the page (as it is surrounded by similar text) or is the first one counted and this is it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0