Is link juice passed through a 301 and a canonical tag?
-
Hi all,
I am led to believe that link juice does not pass through more than one 301 redirect, however what about a 301 and then a canonical meta tag? Here is an example:
subdomain.site.com/uk/page/ -> 301 -> **www.**site.com/uk/page/
www.site.com**/uk/**page/ -> canonical -> www.site.com/page/
Thanks,
Chris -
Since this message is from 2012 ... and the initial question is similar to mine, I hope it is ok to pick it up again in combination with subfolder searchresults on mobile.
We are moving a website from Shoptrader to Magento, which has 45.000 indexations … yes shoptrader made a bit of a mess. Trying to clean it up now.
- there is a 301 redirect list of all old URL's pointing to the new
- one product can exist in multiple categories - want to solve this with canonical url’s
but mostly redirecting from category/productname to category/category/productname
Her comes the problem:
New developer insists on using /productname as canonical instead of /category/category/productname … since Magento says so.The idea is now to redirect to /category/category/productname and there will be a canonical URL on these pages pointing to /productname, loosing some link juice twice. So in the end indexation will take place on /productname … if Google picks it up the 301 + canonical.
My preference would be to point to one URL with categories attached ... since Mobile searchresults nowadays shows subfolders as well ... making it possible to show more than one result of your site. right?
What would you say?
-
Hi guys, the country subfolders will serve the correct country content by ip and also be geo-targeted in WMT and on-page metas. All of the English speaking duplicate content will then be canoncialised into one root page, consolidating authority.
Cheers
-
I agree - if you have setup your country specific subfolder properly with geo-targeting setup in webmaster tools then the duplicate content won't be an issue.
As long as Google can clearly assign a folder to a specific country when it crawls your site then you won't need to worry about adding another redirect or canonical link in my experience.
BUT it was clear from Chris' links that he was aiming for something like this, hence why I asked the question.
Chris if you are unsure what the best options for your international SEO are then I think this whiteboard friday is a good read for you - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
-
I'm not sure geo-targeting (with webmasters tools or the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags) will work through 301s or canonicals.
You can set www.site.com/uk/page/ to geo-target the UK, but just because you redirect that page to www.site.com/page/ doesn't mean that www.site.com/page/ will now target the UK.
Maybe I'm just being thick and don't get what you are trying to do
-
"I guess Chris is doing this as a way to target specific countries?" - Correct
Thanks for the answers guys, thats perfect
-
We must have been writing our responses at the same time - great minds eh Carlos. I agree with you about the fact that you could just redirect subdomain.site.com/uk/page/ -> to www.site.com/page/.
I guess Chris is doing this as a way to target specific countries?
-
Daisy chaining 301 redirects will pass link juice but each time a 301 redirect happens you will loose a proportion of your link juice which is not ideal as you want to keep as much of your original link value as possible. I would go down the route of using a 301 redirect and then a canonical as the second part of your redirect is essentially showing your preferred page with duplicate content so would make most sense in my opinion.
-
Link juice does pass through more than one 301 redirect, what happens is that every time it jumps through a redirect it loses a little bit of juice.
I'm sure you have a reason for it, but why can't you redirect subdomain.site.com/uk/page/ -> www.site.com/page/
Cheers
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
-
Mobile Canonical Tag Issue
Hey so, For our site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul562
we have the desktop version: www.site.com/product-name/product-code/ The mobile version www.site.com/mobile/product-name/product-code So...on the desktop version we'd have the following.. | | Now my question is, what do we do as far as canonicals on the actual mobile URL? Would it be this? | |
| | OR are we NOT supposed to have mobile canonical tags whatsoever since we've already added "rel alternate" ? Would like some clarificaiton. | | |0 -
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 -
Same page Anchor Links vs Internal Link (Cannibalisation)
Hey Mozzers, I have a very long article page that supports several of my sub-category pages. It has sub-headings that link out to the relevant pages. However the article is very long and to make it easier to find the relevant section I was debating adding inpage anchor links in a bullet list at the top of the page for quick navigation. PAGE TITLE Keyword 1 Keyword 2 etc <a name="'Keyword1"></a> Keyword 1 Content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
<a name="'Keyword2"></a> Keyword 2 Content Because of the way my predecessor wrote this article, its section headings are the same as the sub-categories they link out to and boost (not ideal but an issue I will address later). What I wondered is if having the inpage achor would confuse the SERPS because they would be linking with the same keyword. My worry is that by increasing userbility of the article by doing this I also confuse them SERPS First I tell them that this section on my page talk about keyword 1. Then from in that article i tell them that a different page entirely is about the same keyword. Would linking like this confuse SERPS or are inpage anchor links looked upon and dealt with differently?0 -
Site wide links - should they be nofollow or followed links
Hi We have a retail site and a blog that goes along with the site. The blog is very popular and the MD wanted a link from the blog back to the main retail site. However as this is a site wide link on the blog, am I right in thinking this really should be no follow link. The link is at the top of every page. Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Large scale change of incoming anchor text/alt tag image links
I provide SEO services in-house and for clients for a ecommerce and web design company. For every client site we create or host we provide a image link on the bottom linking back to our company website. I started researching competitors that offer same services for our industry that have top Google rankings for all the terms we are targeting and i just realized they rank that well because their image/anchor text link they place on client sites is alt tagged for that specific keyword. We have not been optimizing or utilizing this easy keyword backlink method. I am now wanting to go to all of our clients sites and change our backlinks to target the keyword we are optimizing for but my concern is will that number of incoming anchor text/image alt tag links cause us to get penalized from google for either over optimization or them seeing 100's of backlinks keyword specific just change overnight. What is the best way to go about this change in a safe way to avoid or risk penalty from Google? 99% of all of our client backlinks are in the footer so they show up on every single page and they are all images. Would it have a different affect if i add a alt tag to those images so that we get the oncoming link juice of that specific keyword? One of my concerns is over optimization, since some of our clients have 1000's of pages on their website. so that is 1000's of incoming exact match keyword links. I feel like the danger is low for being penalized but i would rather be safe then sorry and get additional feedback. Thanks, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
Is it possible to "undo" canonical tags as unique content is created?
We will soon be launching an education site that teaches people how to drive (not really the topic, but it will do). We plan on being content rich and have plans to expand into several "schools" of driving. Currently, content falls into a number of categories, for example rules of the road, shifting gears, safety, etc. We are going to group content into general categories that apply broadly, and then into "schools" where the content is meant to be consumed in a specific order. So, for example, some URLs in general categories may be: drivingschool.com/safety drivingschool.com/rules-of-the-road drivingschool.com/shifting-gears etc. Then, schools will be available for specific types of vehicles. For example, drivingschool.com/cars drivingschool.com/motorbikes etc. We will provide lessons at the school level, and in the general categories. This is where it gets tricky. If people are looking for general content, then we want them to find pages in the general categories (for example, drivingschool.com/rules-of-the-road/traffic-signs). However, we have very similar content within each of the schools (for example, drivingschool.com/motorbikes/rules-of-the-road/traffic-signs). As you could imagine, sometimes the content is very unique between the various schools and the general category (such as in shifting), but often it is very similar or even nearly duplicate (as in the example above). The problem is that in the schools we want to say at the end of the lesson, "after this lesson, take the next lesson about speed limits for motorcycles" so there is a very logical click-path through the school. Unfortunately this creates potential duplicate content issues. The best solution I've come up with is to include a canonical tag (pointing to the general version of the page) whenever there is content that is virtually identical. There will be cases though where we adjust the content "down the road" 🙂 to be more unique and more specific for the school. At that time we'd want to remove the canonical tag. So two questions: Does anyone have any better ideas of how to handle this duplicate content? If we implement canonical tags now, and in 6 months update content to be more school-specific, will "undoing" the canonical tag (and even adding a self-referential tag) work for SEO? I really hope someone has some insight into this! Many thanks (in advance).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessicaB0 -
Links from tumblr
I have two links from hosted tumblr blogs which are not on tumblr.com. So, website1 has a tumblr blog: tumblr.website1.com And another site website2.com also uses the a record/custom domains option from tumblr but not on a subdomain, which is decribed below: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains Does this mean that all links from such sites count as coming from the same IP in google's eyes? Or is there value in getting links from multiple sites because the a-record doesn't affect SEO in a negative way? Many thanks, Mike.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | team740