Canonical tag used on several pages?
-
Is it a bad idea to use rel=canonical from several pages back to one (if you are planning on no-indexing them)? Does this concentrate the “link juice” from those several pages back to one?
-
Yes
From the Matt Cutts / Eric Enge Interview
Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?
Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.
Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.
For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.
-
Thank you for the quick reply. The noindex, follow, also passes link juice as well though, correct? To the pages it links to?
-
To clarify, canonical tags are designed for identifying the original version of a page. If you have a product page then it could be sorted in ascending or descending order based on price, size, color and numerous other fields. You could also vary the style of a page, offer a "print" version, etc.
All of these pages provide the exact same content but are formatted differently to provide a better user experience. That is the design of the canonical tag. You are telling a search engine "hey, don't get confused, the original version of the page that should be indexed is [canonical]."
The noindex tag tells a search engine "there is no content on this page which would be of value to include in SERPs".
The consequence of not using a canonical tag or noindex tag properly, is that pages can appear in SERPs that should not. You may do a search for "widgets" and instead of your main page appearing your "out of stock" or other page may appear.
For link juice, if you use the canonical tag any link juice will flow to the canonical page minus a tiny amount which is lost any time any form of redirect is used.
-
Regarding "link juice" between canonical and no-index--if all 100 pages are canonicalized to 1 url, that url will received "link juice" from all 100 pages, correct? And, if the noindex, follow tag is used, then the "link juice" will be distributed to all urls on each of the individual pages?
-
You are perfectly welcome to use the canonical tag on multiple pages.
If you use the canonical tag, I do not see any point in also adding noindex to these pages.
I will share that Lindsay made a blog entry on this specific topic. She hasn't been around lately but I would love to have clarification as she seems to recommend using noindex instead of the canonical tag. Please reference the following Q&A for more details: http://www.seomoz.org/q/canonical-noindex-use-together
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
-
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity. We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | smontunnas1 -
Canonical
i have some static webpages in root and wordpress installed in subdirectory , Canonical tag for the whole website was with trailing slash , i stripped the HTML extensions for static webpages but i can't force to add trailing slash to the static webpages so i changed the canonical for html webpages from http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html/ to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles but the Wordpress" http://ghadaalsaman.com/blog/ " still with trailing slash , when i've checked my google webmasters i found that my indexed pages dropped down 100 page ! what should i put in the canonical for the static pages? i tried to strip the slash from wordpress but i failed , so my static webpages canonical with no trailing slash and wordpress with trailing slash .
Technical SEO | | NeatIT0 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
Duplicate title tags and meta description tags
According to GWT, it seems that some of the pages on my website have duplicate title and meta tags. The pages identified by Google are nothing but dynamic pages: http://www.mywebsite.com/page.php
Technical SEO | | sbrault74
http://www.mywebsite.com/page.php?param=1
http://www.mywebsite.com/page.php?param=2 The thing is that I do use the canonical link tag on all pages. Should I also use the "robots noindex" tag when the page is invoked using a GET parameter? Again sorry for my english. Thank you, Stephane1 -
I am trying to correct error report of duplicate page content. However I am unable to find in over 100 blogs the page which contains similar content to the page SEOmoz reported as having similar content is my only option to just dlete the blog page?
I am trying to correct duplicate content. However SEOmoz only reports and shows the page of duplicate content. I have 5 years worth of blogs and cannot find the duplicate page. Is my only option to just delete the page to improve my rankings. Brooke
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Does using tags instead of " " good for SEO purposes?
I'm currently using <pr>tags for paragraphs and came across an article that said it is better for search engines to see the</pr> tag than
Technical SEO | | ibex
tag to separate paragraphs.0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0