Rel canonical confusion
-
I have 172 pages on my site coming up as having a rel canoncial tag
This is not something I've added myself so I think it must either be part of wordpress or part of a plug in I'm using . ALL in One SEO?
They have come up as blue warning so not sure if it's a big deal, or what i need to do to fix it.
Thanks
Kate
-
Having rel=canonical is recommended for all pages of your website, even if it's the original version. It's because for example if your url is:
and you have that set as canonical on the page, and someone references to your page as
http://domain.com/url?ref=feed
The canonical URL will still be http://domain.com/url and hence won't count as duplicate pages.
-
Hi Neil
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. And for checking that everything is working fine re rel canonical thingies on my site.
I really appreciate it - award yourself 20 good deed points for today.
Best wishes,
Kate -
Hi Kate - this is nothing to worry about.
Rel Canonicals are generally shown on the SEOmoz PRO dashboard as an alert/heads up, rather than a direct warning. There is, of course, potential for real damage if they're configured incorrectly, but in your case it appears the Wordpress SEO plugin you're using is doing fine.
Your canonical URLs are showing as what you most likely would expect and want them to be, the post permalinks or the category URLs.
I experimented and changed some of the letters in the URLs to uppercase, to check for problems. Whilst the URLs still resolved with uppercase characters and didn't 301 redirect to lowercase (which would generally considered best practice), the Rel canonical URLs set remained the lowercase version even with mixed case in the browser bar - this is, again, exactly how you would want it to behave.
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
-
How long does it take for canonical tags to work
How long on average does it take for a canonical tag to work? Understand that canonicals are just a suggestion, but after adding a canonical tag and submitting the page via Google fetch, assuming Google follows the canonical, would you expect it to work after a day or two or does it take longer? We added canonicals to old PPC landing pages that are ranking organically, though our new landing pages (which we want to rank organically) are not identical and have a bit more content/features. They are similar though. Canonicals were added to the old pages (pointing to new pages) and requested indexing via search console. Old pages are still ranking and new pages not so much. FYI we are unable to 301 old PPC pages due to other non negotiable reasons unfortunately. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
How to deal with canonicals on dup product pages in Magento?
What's the best way to sort canonicals on duplicate product pages generated from products being in more than one category in a Magento web store? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Canonical versus 301 for affilaite links
Affiliate links for the Volusion ecommerce shops are of the form mydomain.com/?Click=XX where XX is the affiliate ID. Volusion uses rel=canonical to redirect the affiliate links to mydomain.com. Is this a good solution? I used iDevAffiliate for another online store, and their solution was to use 301 redirects to trip off the ? string. Comments? Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Are my canonical re directs working?
Buonjourno from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ive been battlling sometime to get this site http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk to rank for term Right To Manage. Amongst other tactics ive set up a canonical http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/about/right-to-manage.aspx * - Canonical version http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage.aspx http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage.aspx http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/ - But has this canonical redirect feature worked? The reason i doubt it is i notice when i enter a page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage.aspx which has the below code in place: rell="canonical" href="http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage.aspx/" /> It does not jump to http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/about/right-to-manage.aspx So my question is... "is the canonical redirect working or not & waht is the best way / tool for diagnosing a canonical error" Grazie tanto,
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
David0 -
Screaming From occurences and canonicals what does it all mean
Bonjourno from Wetherby UK... Ive used a package called screamong frog to diagnose canonical errors but can anyone tell me what this means? http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/understand-occurances-canonical.jpg Thanks in advance. David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Rel=Canonical on a page with 302 redirection existing
Hi SEOMoz! Can I have the rel=canonical tag on a URL page that has a 302 redirection? Does this harm the search engine friendliness of a content page / website? Thanks! Steve
Technical SEO | | sjcbayona-412180 -
Rel - canonical vs 301 redirect
I have multiple product pages on my site - what is better for rankings in your experiance? If I 301 the pages to 1 correct version of the product page - or if I rel caanonical to the one correct page?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610