How to Specify Canonical Link Element for Better Performing?
-
I read Google webmaster centeral's blog post and help article about rel="canonical" which was compiled by Matt.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
I am working on eCommerce website and found too many duplicate pages with same product as follow.
1. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_62_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
2. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
3. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_55_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
4. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_57_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
5. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
6. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_56_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
7. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
8. www.lampslightingandmore.com/63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
9. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
10. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_58_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
11. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_59_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.htmlI have consider 1st product as a primary product and set following rel canonical tag on remaining products. Primary product also contain following rel canonical tag.
This was my experience to set canonical tag. But, I am not able to see any improvement on crawling. I was in that assumption due to duplication Google did not crawled my pages. But, Now what is problem with it? How can I fix it and specify proper canonical link element for better crawling?
Note: I am working to compile unique content on each product pages and make it live very soon.
-
I got it.... I am going to implement as previous one. Thanks for your prompt reply.
-
Hi!
My suggestion is to never eliminate the canonical tag, as it could also prevent scrapers' stealing content without attribution.
-
@Gianluca Fiorelli
I have added following Meta in all duplicate products [2 to 11] exclude primary product [1].
I have marked this question as answered but raise one question after observe source code of all product pages. I have implemented following canonical on all duplicate product pages pointing to unique product.
So, now is it require on duplicate pages? Can I remove it from entire website? Because, duplication will not occur due to prevention of indexing for all duplicate products.
Note: I am still surviving from crawling issue. My crawling is still very slow and only 113 pages were indexed by Google.
-
It's manufacturer part number.
-
From what I see, yes.
Just a question: what em89917-x2. in this product URL
http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/officechairs-officestarproducts-em89917-x2.html
corresponds to? product's id?
-
Are you talking like this?
I have fix URL structure for all products and manipulate that product in multiple categories.
There will no change in URL structure.
-
Mmm, that could be an idea, but maybe it not the best one. From what I see, the reason of the duplicated content is because the same product is listed in different categories and sub-categories. What I would do is to strip the category id in the URLs, and - when it comes to products - have this kind of URL: www.domain.com/product This way, no matter the category, there will be always just one product URL and no duplication issue. Done that, I would 301 all the old duplicates urls.
-
You are 100% right. I am not able to see significant changes in crawling after 4 days of implementation. I am thinking to add meta for robots with noindex, nofollow specification on all duplicate product page.
Google will crawl and index only primary product. [That's unique one.] What you think about it? Will it work for me or not?
-
No, I don't want to index duplicate pages. And, not able to define unique attributes on all duplicate pages. Can you suggest me any alternative?
-
Maybe I wrongly understood you, so I beg you pardon if my answers is not useful.
From what I understood you have ton of duplicate product pages. So you decided you use rel="canonical" in order to say to the SE that all the 99 product pages of 100 are dupes of the first one.
That means that you are suggesting (rel="canonical" is not a command, but a strong indication/suggestion to the search engines) to not consider for indexing those 99, but just the 1 canonical page.
Therefore, if your problem is to have SE crawling all your pages, and you consider those product pages as to be crawled, therefore canonical tag is not the right thing to do.
If you want all those duplicates to be indexed... then you should have to differentiate all of them, making them unique, as you write in your note.
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
-
Breadcrumbs and internal links
Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Quick Rel Canonical Link Juice Question
Let's say I have two duplicate pages, A and B. However, A has 5 external links and B has 3 _different _external links. If I add the rel canonical tag to B, so that A is the "master page" do I also lose whatever link juice was going to B from the 3 external links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What's better ...more or less linking C-blocks?
I'm a little confused about c-blocks, I've been reading about them but I still don't get it. Are these similar to sitewide links? do they have to come from websites that I own and hosted in the same ip? and finally, what's better ...more or less linking c-blocks? Cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mbulox0 -
Real impact of canonical links?
I am responsible for 2 e-commerce websites. SEO Moz and Google Web Master tools both inform me regularly that on both sites there are many instances of duplicate titles, headings, decriptions and page content. Obviously from an SEO point of view I am more than a little concerned about this! Out product pages struggle to perform strongly despite the fact that our website is of a decent quality and we are leaders in our field. Our competitors rank above us when they add a product page, whereas we normal flit in between 8-10 or on the 2nd SERP. I know it is hard without viewing the site, but is duplicate content likely to be a strong, leading factor in this? I think it is, but want to put together a business case to spend the cash to sort it out....just need someone confirmation that this is worth sorting as a priority. Here are 2 examples of what I mean: 1) Category pages www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx We have filters on our category page (so the customer can sort products based on their price, colour, size etc.). When filters are used a new URL is generared. www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=0||10 www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=10||20 The content, titles, description is the same although the links are different. Do I need to set up a canonical tag on the page that reads: 2) Product pages Product pages on the websites have different URLs depending on how to arrive on them. You get 1 URL if you navigated to the page via the website navigation, but you get another different URL if you used the website search functionality to find the page. Example: Search link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1/Product1.aspx Navigation link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/12345/category1/Product1.aspx Again, do I need to set up a canonical tag for 1 of these link types so that the link benefit is not shared over 2 pages? Any feedback would be welcome! At the moment the ability to add canonical tags is locked down by our CMS (I know, rubbish!)...so website development would be needed - hence the need for a business case!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Best Link Solicitation Email Structure - Link Building
Hello, What is the best thing to say when soliciting a link for link building. Say you're contacting a site with a resource section where your competitors are listed. What would you say to be the most persuasive. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Big Site Wide Link
Hi Guys, I've noticed that Google is starting to de-value site-wide links... Our previous SEO agency sourced us a site wide link on a big website and at the moment within Google Webmaster Tools its showing 749,726 links from this 1 source. Do you think this is too many? Could this be being flagged by Google? Here is the site: http://tinyurl.com/7bttw3b Cheers, Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Canonical URL Question
Hi Everyone I like to run this question by the community and get a second opinion on best practices for an issue that I ran into. I got two pages, Page A is the original page and Page B is the page with duplicate content. We already added** ="Page A**" />** to the duplicate content (Page B).** **Here is my question, since Page B is duplicate content and there is a link rel="canonical" added to it, would you put in the time to add meta tags and optimize the title of the page? Thanks in advance for all your help.**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRTBA0 -
What is your onsite linking strategy?
So there are a few different routes to take when you're SEOing your site. My quest is to determine which is the best way to approach this. Let's use a real life example of a product. It's project management software, online collaboration software, employee scheduling tool, business process streamlining tool, client management tool and task/to do manager. It works for virtually any industry. I've created my keyword document and it's HUGE. I've created my wireframe with related keyphrases in buckets. Each one of the example keyphrases listed above have slight variations then a whole list of long tails. I have a few options as I see it: Create site sections within the main site that focus on each (This can make the site look slightly sloppy and categories would have to be masked so it doesn't appear spammy) Create a page in the blog relevant to each keyphrase and link all subsequent blog posts within that keyphrase family directly to that blog post (This seems like my best option) and have cta's or conversion mechanisms on this page Link all keyphrases to the home page (Seems like a terrible idea) Not sure if I answered my own question here, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cmdsonline0