What is the difference between rel canonical and 301's?
-
Hi Guys
I have been told a few times to add the rel canonical tag to my category pages - however every category page actually is different from the other - besides the listings that I have for my staff on each pages. Some of them specialise in areas that cross over in other areas - but over really if I'm re directing for eg: Psychic Readings over to Love and Relationships because 5 of my staff members are in both categories - the actual delivering of content and in depth of the actual category which skills are provided at different levels don't justify me creating a rel tag from Psychic Readings over to Love and Relationships just because i have 5 staff members listed under both categories.
Tell me have I got this right or completely wrong?
Here is an eg: Psychic Readings category https://www.zenory.com/psychic-readings
And love and relationships category - https://www.zenory.com/love-relationships
Hope this makes sense - I really look forward to your guys feedback!
Cheers
-
Understand what you mean - to be very honest I don't think that this content snippet is generating duplicate content.
However, I don't really understand the mechanism:
https://www.zenory.com/horoscopes/taurus/day -> I would expect to find the daily horoscope for Taurus - when I click on Capricorn I would expect to go to https://www.zenory.com/horoscopes/capricorn/day - however I remain on the same page & the horoscope is shown in a lightbox. I would rather put it on a separate page (if all horoscopes of all signs are present in the HTML of one sign these pages become quite similar when you look at the source code.
Sounds a bit confusing, but I hope you get what I mean.rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk
I wanted to ask you another question with regard to this.
I have horoscope pages that have just been published today.
We offer daily horoscope for each star sign (12) these are unique and different each day for each star sign, however there is a weekend love section at the bottom of each page for each star sign that is the same for the whole week.
https://www.zenory.com/horoscopes/taurus/day
https://www.zenory.com/horoscopes/aries/day
Above will show you an example of a couple of the daily horoscopes, you can see the weekend love is different - however it will be the same for the same star sign tomorrow - you can't see these as we have only published and released these today. So you will be able to tell the difference when tomorrows one is published, but hopefully I have explained myself well here.
So my question will be - half the content on a single page will be duplicate content: Besides the new daily horoscope entry. I'm wondering if I need to add canonical tags or if I should create a separate page for the weekend love horoscope of each star sign.
I hope this makes sense!
Thanks again Dirk!
-
That answers my question Dirk, thank you again!!!
-
For the examples you gave I would certainly not use a 301 or use a canonical tag. The content is unique - and only a relatively small part is common (the list)
To explain the difference:
A canonical tag is used if you have pages that are identical (or almost identical) and which are accessible under different url's. A good example is an e-commerce site with a list of articles like mysite.com/umbrellas - if by sorting the products the url is changing like mysite.com/umbrellas&sort=high it's best to put a canonical so that google will not index all the variations. If you use a canonical on the second url -pointing to the first. A visitor can however still access the pages. Google bot normally respects the canonical - but is not obliged to do so.
A 301 is different - in fact you give the message to the browser: this page is no longer available on this location but has moved to a new location. It's no longer possible to visit the original page (not for humans & not for bots). Google bot has to respect this directive.
A last option you can use is the "noindex/follow". This you normally use for pages that have very little value for search engines, but where you still would like the bots to follow and index the pages which are listed. This you can use for pages of type blog.com/tag/subject - that are generating lists with all the articles marked with subject. In general pages like this are good for cross linking, however have low value for search engines so it's better to not have them indexed.
Hope this clarifies,
Dirk
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
-
Why don't I outrank this site?
Hi Mozzers, I'm mystified. Why doesn't our site www.bosphorusyacht.com (ranked 15) outrank this site www.bosphorustour.com (ranked 5 and 6) for the keyword "bosphorus cruise"? Particularly for US based searches. We have far more links, shares, higher DA and PA and more related unique content on topic. Somehow they are even appearing with double listings in this search. Why is this? Am I missing something? Any ideas or suggestions appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | emerald0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Blog on 2 domains (.org/.com), Canonical to Solve?
I have a client that has moved a large majority of content to their .org domain, including the blog. This is causing some issues for the .com domain. I want to retain the blog on the .org and have it's content also show on the .com. I would place the canonical tag on the .com Is this possible? Is this recommended?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ngst0 -
Are the Majority of SEO Companies 'Spammers, Evildoers, & Opportunists'?
This may not be the most productive Q&A discussion, but I've had some really interesting experiences this last month that have made me even more distrusting of "SEO" companies. I can't help but think of this post (not much has changed since '09). Even though it takes a pretty extreme stance, I agree with the core of it - _"The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web." _ I didn't start doing this type of work wanting to have such a negative opinion of SEO companies, but I just keep having the same experience: I'll get referred to someone who isnt' happy with their SEO company. They send me their web address, I check out the site, and seriously can't believe what I find. MISSING PAGE TITLES, EVERY CANONICAL URL ISSUE IMAGINABLE, AND 10'S OF THOUSANDS OF BOT SPAM EMAT LINKS FROM PAGES LIKE THIS...AND THIS and just recently a company a called one of my clients and conned him into paying for this piece of spam garbage, obviously scraped from the site that I made for him. and what's worse, sometimes for whatever reason these companies will have all the client's FTP and CMS logins and it can be hell trying to get them to hand them over. There's no webmaster tools set up, no analytics, nothing.... These businesses are paying a good chunk of change every month, I just can't believe stuff like this is so common...well acutally, it's what i've come to expect this point. But I used to think most SEO companies actually had their clients best interest at heart. Does every honest consultant out there run into this same type of stuff constantly? How common is this type of stuff really? Now, on to the positive. This community rocks, and I feel like it represents real, ethical, solution-oriented, boundary-less SEO. So thank you Mozzers for all you do. and I love using the tools here to help businesses understand why they need an honest person helping them. If anyone has thoughts on the topic, I'd love to hear 'em...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SVmedia3 -
Google-backed sites' link profiles
Curious what you SEO people think of the link profiles of these (high-ranking) Google-backed UK sites: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.startupdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.lawdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.marketingdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.itdonut.co.uk http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.taxdonut.co.uk Each site has between 40k and 50k inlinks counted in OSE. However, there are relatively few linking root domains in each case: 273 for marketingdonut 216 for startupdonut 90 for lawdonut 53 for itdonut 16 for taxdonut Is there something wrong with the OSE data here? Does this imply that the average root domain linking to the taxdonut site does so with 2857 links? The sites have no significant social media stats. The sites are heavily inter-linked. Also linked from the operating business, BHP Information Solutions (tagline "Gain access to SMEs"). Is this what Google would think of as a "natural" link profile? Interestingly, they've managed to secure links on quite a few UK local authority resources pages - generally being the only commercial website on those pages.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seqal0 -
Possibly a dumb question - 301 from a banned domain to new domain with NEW content
I was wondering if banned domains pass any page rank, link love, etc. My domain got banned and I AM working to get it unbanned, but in the mean time, would buying a new domain, and creating NEW content that DOES adhere to the google quality guidelines, help at all? Would this force an 'auto-evaluation' or 're-evaluation' of the site by google? or would the new domain simply have ZERO effect from the 301 unless that old domain got into google's good graces again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
How many times should one submit the same article to various websites? 1 time? 10 times? What is okay to do with the most recent Panda update?'
For link-building purposes, seemingly it was okay to post the same article to multiple sites for links in the past. However, after the most recent Panda update our thought is that this may not be a good practice. So the question is, how many times is okay to submit an article for link building purposes. Should you always only submit to one site? Is it okay to do more than once? What is the right way to submit for link-building in Google's eyes? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Robertnweil10 -
Why Proved Spammers are on 1st Google SERP's Results
This question is related exclusively to few proved spammers who have gained 1st Google search results for specific terms in the Greek market, targeting Greek audience. Why he looks spammer and very suspicious? For instance, the site epipla-sofa.gr, sofa.gr, fasthosting.gr and greekinternetmarketing.com look suspicious regarding their building link activities: 1. suspicious spiky link growth 2. several links from unrelated content (unrelated blog posts forom other markets, paid links, hidden links) 3. excessive amount of suspicious link placements (forum profiles, blog posts, footer and sidebar links) 4. Greek anchor text with the keyword within articles written in foreign languages (total spam) 5. Unnatural anchor text distribution (too many repetitions) So the main question is: Why Google is unable to recognize/trace some of these (or even all) obvious spamming tactics and still these spammy sites as shwon below reside on the 1st Google.gr SERPs. Examples of spam sites according to their link building history: www.greekinternetmarketing.com www.epipla-sofa.gr www.fasthosting.gr www.sofa.gr All their links look very similar. They use probably software to build links, or even hack authority sites and leave hidden links (really dont know how they could do that). Could you please explain or share similar issues? Have you ever found any similar cases in your industry, and how did you tackle it? We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Regards, George
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Clickwisegr0