Canonical Tag on All Pages
-
This is a new one for me. I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site. Even on pages that don't need it.
For example on http://www.client.com/examplex
they had code:
Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this? Does this hurt the ranking of the page?
-
It looks like it was a typo on my end. Thanks ... great catch.
-
I noticed you have:
For example on http://www.client.com/examplex
they had code:
The URL in the canonical code has a trailing slash at the end. Is that a mistype, or Is the site using canonicals as a way of addressing duplicate content by pointing the trailing slash version to the non trailing slash version?
If the CMS automatically creates two versions of each page with and without the slash, that might be one reason to have canonicals on every page.
-
There isn't a major negative effect when using canonicals even when they are not needed. Some CMS use sitewide canonicals to easier tackle duplicate URLs. So if a base URL is using parameters, the CMS might have been setup to follow back to the canonical URL.
A quick example would be: view-source:http://www.expedia.com/
-
Oh ok, I see what you mean. What it is actually saying is "this page you are looking at is the one true source". It basically makes a correlation with the search engines between the content on the page and what page that content should be on, in a lesser sense if it is found on another page.
-
Even when it references the page that it is on? That is where I am a little baffled. It is like saying this page you are looking at is the same as the page you are looking at... right? (page x is referencing page x)
Again, might be out of the loop here, so want to verify.
-
Why would you think a page would not need one? It is hard to tell from the example you gave what you meant, but I take the stance that every page needs one.
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
-
Does Google considers the cached content of a page if it's redirected to new page?
Hi all, If we redirect an old page to some new page, we know that content relevancy between source page and this new page matters at Google. I just wonder if Google is looking at the content relevancy of old page (from cache) and new page too. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What happens when most of the website visitors end up at an "noindex" log-in page?
Hi all, As most of the users are visiting our website for log-in, we are planning to deindex login page. As they cannpt find it on SERP, they gonna visit our website and login; I just wonder what happens when most of the visitors just end up at homepage by browsing into an "noindex" page. Obviously it increases bounce rate and exit rate as they just gonna disappear. Is this going to push down us in rankings? What are the other concerns to check about? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sitemaps for landing pages
Good morning MOZ Community, We've been doing some re-vamping recently on our primary sitemap, and it's currently being reindexed by the search engines. We have also been developing landing pages, both for SEO and SEM. Specifically for SEO, the pages are focused on specific, long-tail search terms for a number of our niche areas of focus. Should I, or do I need to be considering a separate sitemap for these? Everything I have read about sitemaps simply indicates that if a site has over 50 thousand pages or so, then you need to split a sitemap. Do I need to worry about a sitemap for landing pages? Or simply add them to our primary sitemap? Thanks in advance for your insights and advice.
Algorithm Updates | | bwaller0 -
Can hreflang tags still work when the Alternate URL is 301 redirecting to a translated URL in Japanese Characters?
My organization has several international sites 4 of them of which have translated URLs in either Japanese, Traditional Chinese, German & Canadian French. The hreflang tags we have set up on our United States look something like this: But when you actually go to http://www.domain.co.jp/it-security/ you are 301 redirected to the translated URL version: www.domain.co.jp/it-セキュリティ/
Algorithm Updates | | brantmk
My question is, will Google still understand that the translated URL is the Alternate URL, or will this present errors? The hreflang tags are automated for each of our pages and would technically be hard to populate the hreflang with the translated URL version. However we could potentially make the hreflang something customized on a page level basis.0 -
Does the page title keyword count in anchor text when link is web address?
If someone links to my plumbing site with this link as the anchor text: http://www.plumbers.com/austin-plumbers.html does the key phrase "austin plumbers" get counted in the anchor text by google or is this a sample of anchor text that google ignores? Thanks mozzers! Ron
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Canonicalization on more than one page?
is it proper to "canocalize" more than one page in a site? Or should it only be on the home page? eg: http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com">
Algorithm Updates | | sakeith0 -
Do scraped or borrowed articles with my links still pass page rank?
I wrote some articles for Ezine Articles a few years back and i still see links in the ose to my site that are from these articles that were borrowed from the Ezine Articles bank. Do the links in these articles still count toward my site including link juice and anchor text or does google discount them as duplicate content? I was told that Google counts these links for about 3 weeks and then discounts them as duplicate content so it's like they don't exist. Any truth to this or should i make the articles on my site available for people to copy and paste into their blogs as long as they keep my links intact? Thanks, Ron
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Google said that low-quality pages on your site may affect rankings on other parts
One of my sites got hit pretty hard during the latest Google update. It lost about 30-40% of its US traffic and the future does not look bright considering that Google plans a worldwide roll-out. Problem is, my site is a six year old heavy linked, popular Wordpress blog. I do not know why the article believes that it is low quality. The only reason I came up with is the statement that low-quality pages on a site may affect other pages (think it was in the Wired article). If that is so, would you recommend blocking and de-indexing of Wordpress tag, archive and category pages from the Google index? Or would you suggest to wait a bit more before doing something that drastically. Or do you have another idea what I could to do? I invite you to take a look at the site www.ghacks.net
Algorithm Updates | | badabing0