Canonicals for product pages - confused, anyone help?
-
I have an ecommerce website (built using Magento), and have just had the functionality extended to allow me to define my own canonical URLs. Currently the URLs are www. domainname.com/product-name.html but I can now change this to www.domainname. com/product-category/product-name.html. I was led to believe that this would be good for SEO.
However, I have since had conflicting advice - it's been suggested that any links across the website that link to domain/category/sub-category/product will pass weight and authority through to the specified canonical anyway. Plus longer URLs are generally worse...
I'm confused. Is it worth changing them? If so, would it be a bad thing to change all 700 canonical URLs at once?
-
I agree with Lynn, but I'm a little confused about the intent. If you create the new URLs with product categories in them, you'll need to move the old URLs somehow, such as with 301-redirects. The new canonical tags won't help those old URLs, so you're potentially creating even more duplicate content by creating a new canonical version.
Generally, I don't think adding categories to the URLs is a great idea. You can squeeze in a few more keywords, but the impact of that in 2013 is very small. As you said, you're also making the URLs longer and you're pushing back the unique keywords. So, Google is going to see more repetition toward the beginning of the URL and less unique information (as are users, although most people don't read URLs closely, IMO).
-
Hi,
If the only reason for changing the canonicals now is to try to help your SEO then I would not jump in and change all 700 right away. Canonicals are used to indicate the preferred version of a page for google to index, they do not actually remove duplicate content pages (see Dr Pete's detailed explanation here). Magento's default canonical structure is usually set to have product urls with no category in them to avoid the dup content issue which you get when the product is in multiple cats/sub cats at the same time. If this is not an issue for you and all products are only in one category, or you are happy for them to be indexed in a specific category then you could change the canonicals, but I would not think it would make a huge difference in rankings so would look at it more from a user's point of view. Does having the category in the url for any specific product make sense or help to define the product more? If yes then consider changing the canonical, but I would try it on a small subset of products first and monitor things for a while before changing them all.
Hope it helps!
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
-
Webshop landing pages and product pages
Hi, I am doing extensive keyword research for the SEO of a big webshop. Since this shop sells technical books and software (legal books, tax software and so on), I come across a lot of very specific keywords for separate products. Isn't it better to try and rank in the SERP's with all the separate product pages, instead of with the landing (category) pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Url structure on product pages - Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders
We have products in the that go into mulitiple categories on our e-commerce site. But of course, each product is only canonicalized to one category. My question is: what should the breadcrumbs look like when users access a product from a non-canonicalized/primary category ?Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders? For example: Let´s say we have product called "glacier hiking in the alps". It is in two categories; 1) glacier hiking 2) mountain tours. And is canonicalized to the glacier hiking category. If a user accesses it from the mountain tours category, should the url/breadcrumbs look like this: www.example.com/glacier-hiking/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is the canonicalized version) Or should it look like like this: www.example.com/mountain-tours/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is where the user came from) Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
Will more comprehensive content on product pages help improve ranking?
We're working to improve the ranking of one of our product landing pages. The page that currently ranks #1 has a very simple, short layout with the main keyword many times on the page with otherwise very little text. One thought we had was to make a more comprehensive page including more info on the features and benefits of the product. The thought being that a longer form page would be more valuable and potentially look better to Google if the other SEO pieces are on par. Does that make sense to do? Or would it be better to keep the product page simple and make some more related content on our blog linking back to that landing page? Thanks in advance to any help you can provide!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_Kastner0 -
One page ranking for all key words, when other targeted pages not ranking
Hi everyone I am fairly new to SEO but have a basic understanding. I have a page that has a lot of content on it (including brand names and product types and relevant info) ranking for a quite a few key words. This is cool, except that I have pages dedicated to each specific key word that are not ranking. The more specific page still has a lot of relevant text on it too. eg. TYRES page - Ranks first for "Tyres". Ranks okay for many tyre key words, including "truck tyres"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDadd
TRUCK TYRES page - not ranking for "truck tyres" Further on, I then have pages not ranking all that well for more specific key words when they should. eg HONDA TRUCK TYRES - Then has a page full of product listings - no actual text. Not Ranking for "honda truck tyres". ABC HONDA TRUCK TYRE - not ranking for "abc honda truck tyre" key word
These pages don't have a lot of content on them, as essentially every single tyre is the same except for the name. But they do have text. So sometimes, these terms don't rank at all. And sometimes, the first TYRES page ranks for it. I have done the basic on page seo for all these pages (hopefully properly) including meta desc, meta titles, H1, H2, using key words in text, alt texting images where possible etc. According to MOZ they are optimised in the 90%. Link building is difficult as they are product listings, so other sites don't really link to these pages. Has anyone got ideas on why the top TYRES page might be so successful and out ranking more specific pages? Any ideas on how I can get the other pages ranking higher as they are more relevant to the search term? We are looking in to a website redesign/overhaul so any advice on how I can prevent this from happening on essentially a new site would be great too. Thanks!0 -
With the New Panda update supposedly only weeks away, is it wise to No Index my products I have not had time to rewrite the product descriptions for ?
Hi Mozzers, I read on SEJ yesterday than apparently the Panda update was due in the 2 - 4 weeks. I still have a large of my products which I have not got around to rewriting unique product descriptions for. I know these product descriptions are duplicated on other affiliate sites so do it think it in light of the panda update coming , would it wise to put a NO INDEX Meta tag on these product pages until I get around to rewriting the descriptions. That way, I may not hit my Panda and it will buy me a bit more time. Just an idea , but thought I'd run it by. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Investigating Google's treatment of different pages on our site - canonicals, addresses, and more.
Hey all - I hesitate to ask this question, but have spent weeks trying to figure it out to no avail. We are a real estate company and many of our building pages do not show up for a given address. I first thought maybe google did not like us, but we show up well for certain keywords 3rd for Houston office space and dallas office space, etc. We have decent DA and inbound links, but for some reason we do not show up for addresses. An example, 44 Wall St or 44 Wall St office space, we are no where to be found. Our title and description should allow us to easily picked up, but after scrolling through 15 pages (with a ton of non relevant results), we do not show up. This happens quite a bit. I have checked we are being crawled by looking at 44 Wall St TheSquareFoot and checking the cause. We have individual listing pages (with the same titles and descriptions) inside the buildings, but use canonical tags to let google know that these are related and want the building pages to be dominant. I have worked though quite a few tests and can not come up with a reason. If we were just page 7 and never moved it would be one thing, but since we do not show up at all, it almost seems like google is punishing us. My hope is there is one thing that we are doing wrong that is easily fixed. I realize in an ideal world we would have shorter URLs and other nits and nats, but this feels like something that would help us go from page 3 to page 1, not prevent us from ranking at all. Any thoughts or helpful comments would be greatly appreciated. http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10005/lower-manhattan/44-wall-st/44-wall-street We do show up one page 1 for this building - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10036/midtown/1501-broadway, but is the exception. I have tried investigating any differences, but am quite baffled.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AtticusBerg10 -
Should we include a canonical or noindex on our m. (mobile) pages?
According to https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details, we should include a canonicalicalize back to our desktop version of the URL, but what if that desktop URL is noindexed? Should the m. version be noindexed as well? Or is it fine to leave it as a canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
How can you indexed pages or content on pages that are behind a pay wall or subscription login.
I have a client that has a boat of awesome content they provide to their client that's behind a pay wall ( ie: paid subscribers can only access ) Any suggestions mozzers? How do I get those pages index? Without completely giving away the contents in the front end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BizDetox0