YOAST SEO: How to set rel=cannonical tags to the original article post
-
Hi Mozers,
Can anyone tell me how to set the rel="canonical tags via SEO YOAST?
I have an article posted on my blog that was published first on another blog and i need to reference this entry somehow, I have been told to use rel="canonical - if so I would appreciate some insight on how to do this exactly!
Thanks very much in advance
-
Hi there,
I'll try to break it down so bare with me!
A canonical link is not seen by the user by all accounts they would never know about the original origins of the content. This is fine if you've made a straight up copy or want to keep all link juice to the original source.
A follow link would be at the bottom along the links of "this article originates here link " or how ever you wish to create that point. The user would see this and the pro of this is you keep some more of the link juice whilst also passing some onto the source, this only really works assuming you've made some slight changes to the article e.g. commented on it or followed it up etc. etc.
The choice is of course up to you but there are two options.
Best of luck!
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for your detailed response, this puts another spin on it for me.
Could you tell me more about your suggestion? I can put the follow link, but I would assume this would give more reference then the canonical would it?
So if I didn't add the canonical and only the follow link how does one know where the article is pointing to without putting the canonical url in? Would I need to credit the article using an anchor text? and adding the follow?
Thanks for your advice
-
Have you referenced the article or published the whole article? If you've referenced it I'd recommend a follow link more than a canonical link as the canonical would mean all seo benefit goes to the other website (which is fine and well deserved if you've just copied the article) but if you've just referenced it ore even expanded on it I'd reference the blog and all credit to it but not have a canonical link to ensure you maintain some level or link juice on your website.
You can find info on yoast canonical in their knowledge base - http://kb.yoast.com/article/148-canonical-urls-in-wordpress-seo
-
Hi there
Thank you for your response, I think I have found the settings you are referring to, would you advise no follow or follow? Any other settings you would recommend?
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
-
New Website SEO Implications
Hi Moz Community, A client of mine has launched a new website. The new website is well designed, mobile friendly, fast loading and offers a far better UX than the old site. It has similar content but 'less wordy'. The old website was tired, slow, not mobile responsive etc but still ranked well. The domain has marketing leading authority and link metrics. Since the launch, the rankings for virtually every word has plummeted. Even previously ranked #1 words have disappeared to page 3 or 4. New pages have different URLs (301s from the old urls are working fine) and still score the same 98% (using the Moz page optimiser tool). Is it usual to experience some short term pain, or are these rankings drop an indication that something else is missing? My theory is that the new URLs are being treated like new pages, and that those new pages don't have the engagement data which is used for ranking. Thus, despite having the same authority of the old pages, as far as user data is concerned, they are new pages and therefor, not ranking well - yet. That theory would make logical sense but I'm hoping some experts here can help. Any suggestions welcome. Here's a quick checklist of things I have already done: complete 301 redirect list
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
New sitemap
Submitted to console
Created internal links from within their large blog
Optimised all the new pages (img alts, H1s etc) Extra info: Platform changed from Wordpress to Expression engine
Target pages now on level 3 not level 2 (extra subfolder used)
Less words used (average word count per page from 400+ to 250) Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
SEO suggestions for a directory
Hi all, I am new to SEO. I work for a ratings and review website, like TripAdvisor and LinkedIn. How would one go about setting up SEO strategy for national directories that have local suggested pages? What can be a good practice. For example, Tripadvisor has many different restaurants across the UK. What would they do to improve their SEO? How do they target correct links? How do they go about building their Moz Score? Would really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Help article / Knowledge base SEO consideration
Hi everyone, I am in the process of building the knowledge base for our SaaS product and I am afraid it could impact us negatively on the SEO side because of: Thin content on pages containing short answers to specific questions Keyword cannibalisation between some of our blog articles and the knowledge base articles I didn't find much on the impact of knowledge bases on SEO when I searched on Google. So I'm hoping we can use this thread to share a few thoughts and best practices on this topic. Below is a bit more details on the issues I face, any tips on how to address them would be most welcome. 1. Thin content: Some articles will have thin content by design: the H1 will be a specific question and there will be only 2 or 3 lines of text answering it in the article. I think creating a dedicated article per question is better than grouping 20 questions on one article from a UX point of view, because this will enable us to direct users more quickly to the answer when they use the live search function inside the software (help widget) or on the knowledge base (saves them the need to scrolling a long article to find the answer). Now the issue is that this will result in lots of pages with thin content. A workaround could be to have both a detailed FAQ style page with all the questions and answers, and individual articles for each question on top of that. The FAQ style page could be indexed in Google while the individual articles would have either a noIndex directive or a rel canonical to the FAQ style page. Have any of you faced similar issues when setting-up your knowledge base? Which approach would you recommend? 2.Keyword cannibalisation: There will be, to some extend, a level of keyword cannibalisation between our blog articles (which rank well) and some of the knowledge base articles. While we want both types of articles to appear in search, we don't want the "How to do XYZ" blog article containing practical tips to compete with the "How to do XYZ in the software" knowledge base article. Do you have any advice on how to achieve that? Having a specific Schema.org (or equivalent) type of markup to differentiate between the 2 types of articles would have been ideal but I couldn't find anything relating to help articles specifically when I searched.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tbps0 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
H2 Tags- Can you have more than 1 H2 tag
Hi All, Screaming frog has identified that we have a few H2 tags on our pages , although we only have 1 H1 tag. We have numerous H3,H4's etc. I am wondering, is it good SEO to have only 1 H2 tag like with H1 tag or can you have more ? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
SEO - I just do not seem to get it
Hello All, I came to the forum two weeks ago and prior to that studied SEO until my brain almost melted two weeks before. Now, I've read some great articles here on SEOMoz which have been fantastic. Mainly being this one: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo. So anyway, I genuinely throught I got it about a week ago. Here's what I did: First I decided on my keyword: "PC Repair Sheffield". Then, I made a website and on-page optimizaed as best as I possibly could (Graded A on the SEOMoz on-page exam tool). So I decided firstly to add myself to the Independant newspaper Business Directory, because it's free and has a great domain authority. I then went to Yahoo answers, found a Question i knew the answer too and made a whole article on the question, I provided a really useful answer and put a link to my full answer in the 'Source' section. This was a NoFollow Link. Every week, I write a new article and put it in my 'Blog' page. In the articles, I like to cover some problem that I've encountered throughout the week, if, for example, I write about a Hard Drive I replaced in Sheffield, I write about that and link it to my 'PC Repair Sheffield' page. Every article contains a video from Youtube, which is another 'NoFollow' link. Past that, I just find forums which are preffereably not 'No Follow' links and try to help people by answering their questions, but putting more details on my site for them toi see, with a link. That is pretty much the extent of what I 'Get' so far. But I do read a lot of the posts on here and I'm always seeing the Experts on SEO criticise these things and say it's bad without actually explaining why, or how to improve this, or what to do instead in some kind of simple way? I mean, this blog i'm writing, is there really any point? It's unlikely anybody is going to see it, sharing it is just a rediculous assumption. Nobody shares a page on how to fix a hard drive from a local sheffield site. I don't think that NoFollow links are a waste of time, but that's my personal assumption. I think that makes it more natural in a way.. 'Write Fresh Content' and get natural links is a crazy suggestion, nobody is ever going to share it. It's just not the way the world works for small businesses. No task is easy, but none are impossible either, i know that I could do SEO, i'm just not entirely sure 'what to do'.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Should i use Categories or Tags ?
Hi 🙂 My blog is http://www.dota2club.com/ and i am not sure should i use Categories as tags or normally tags like most ? And how much are important tags generally ? Right now you can see that i am using Categories as tags , is this ok ? Thank you !!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wolfinjo1 -
Should I be using rel canonical here?
I am reorganizing the data on my informational site in a drilldown menu. So, here's an example. One the home page are several different items. Let's say you clicked on "Back Problems". Then, you would get a menu that says: Disc problems, Pain relief, paralysis issues, see all back articles. Each of those pages will have a list of articles that suit. Some articles will appear on more than one page. Should I be worried about these pages being partially duplicates of each other? Should I use rel-canonical to make the root page for each section the one that is indexed. I'm thinking no, because I think it would be good to have all of these pages indexed. But then, that's why I'm asking!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0