Canonicalization
-
Having been a member of SEOmoz Pro tools for only a couple of months, I'm now at a point where there are certain issues with our recently overhauled site:
On my latest "Open Site Explorer Report" I am seeing a number of external links going to the HTTP://Domainname.com and a number pointing at HTTP://wwwDomainname.com.
This only appears when I pull the report from the Root Domain. If I pull a report from the Sub-domain all URL's are the same.
Does this matter too much?
Would best practice be to put a rel=canonical on the Non www ?
Thanks for any help in advance
Sean
-
Well, thats what this q&a is for, isn't it?
Glad I could help
-
Wow, Thanks Thomas. I wasn't quite expecting such a thorough and precise answer so quickly.
Many Thanks for your expertise, greatly appreciated
Sean
-
The Rel canonical tag is always a good thing to implement. My preferred solution is to do a .htaccess 301 redirect from non-www to www by this code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]By doing the 301, all users are sent to www url. This means all future links to your site will be to the same URL. Hereby, you avoid the small link juice loss which occurs whenever you use the rel cnonical url to direct from non-www to www (or the other way around).
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
-
Cross Domain Canonicalization for Site Folder
Hello colleagues! I have a client who decided to launch a separate domain so they could offer their content translated for other countries. Each country (except the US/English) content lives in its own country folder as follows: client.com/01/02/zh
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch
client.com/01/02/tw etc. The problem is that they post the content in US/English on this domain too. It does NOT have its own folder, but exists righth after the date (as in the above example) Oh, and the content is the same as on their "main" domain so google likes to index that sometimes vs. the original client on the domain where we want the traffic to go. SO, is there a way to say "hey google, please index the US content only on the main domain, but continue to index the translated content in these folders on this totally separate domain?" Thank you so much in advance.0 -
SEO Elements for Canonicalized URLs?
I am helping a client with SEO for their ecommerce store. They have around 65 products, but close to 500 URLs all for those same products. Basically they have a bit of an index bloat problem but long story short restructuring was too much of a lift for them, so I got them set up with a canonical URL strategy to ensure all duplicate pages point to one "main" product page. Getting to the point: They also need an on-page overhaul. I've created keyword optimized titles, metas, H1s, etc. for each product. Do these elements need to be added to every single one of the 450+ product pages OR do I only need to add them to the 65 "main" product pages that everything else is pointing to, since that will ultimately be the page that gets crawled?
Technical SEO | | AJTSEO0 -
Duplicate content and canonicalization confusion
Hello, http://bit.ly/1b48Lmp and http://bit.ly/1BuJkUR pages have same content and their canonical refers to the page itself. Yet, they rank in search engines. Is it because they have been targeted to different geographical locations? If so, still the content is same. Please help me clear this confusion. Regards
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0 -
Product page Canonicalization best practice
I'm getting duplicate content errors in GWT for product list pages that look like this: -www.example.com/category-page/product
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-www.example.com/category-page/product/?p=2 The "p=2" example already has a rel=canonical in place, " Shouldn't the non-canonical pages be using the canonical attribute for the first page rather than the additional product pages? Thanks!0 -
Linking to AND canonicalizing to a page?
I am using cross domain rel=canonical to a page that is very similar to mine. I feel the page adds value to my site so I want users to go to it, but I ultimately want them to go to the page I'm canonicalizing to. So I am linking to that page as well. Anyone foresee any issues with doing this? And/or have other suggestions? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Canonicalization Issue?
Good day! I am not sure if my company has a Canonicalization issue? When typing in www.cushingco.com the site redirects to http://www.cushingco.com/index.shtml A visitor can also type in http://cushingco.com/index.shtml into a web browser and land on our homepage (and the url will be http://www.cushingco.com/index.shtml) A majority of websites that link to our company point to: http://www.cushingco.com/index.shtml We are in the process of cleaning up citations and pulling together a content marketing strategy/editorial calendar. I want to be sure folks interested in linking to us have the right url. Please ask me any questions to help narrow down what we might be doing incorrectly. Thanks in advance!! Jon
Technical SEO | | SEOSponge0 -
SEO-MOZ bar question on root vs subdomain / canonicalization issues
When I look at the SEO-MOZ bar for our site and click next to subdomain (# links from #domains) it shows my main incoming links etc. but when I click on root domain ity shows mydomain/default.asp and 4 incoming links as well as a message that says this url redirects to another url. Does this imply canonicalization issues or is there a 301 redirect to my non /default.asp correcting this issue. Thanks kindly, Howard
Technical SEO | | mrkingsley0 -
Canonicalization - duplicate homepage issues
I'm trying to work out the best way to resolve an issue where Google is seeing duplicate versions of a homepage, i.e. http://www.home.co.uk/Home.aspx and http://www.home.co.uk/ The site runs on Windows servers. I've tried implementing redirects for homepages before (for a different site on a linux server) and ended up with a loop, so although I know I can read lots of info (as I have been doing) and try again, I am really concerned about getting it wrong. Can anyone give me some advice on the best way to make Google take just one version of the page? Obviously link juice is also being diluted so I need to get this sorted asap. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0