Using a canonical tag to eliminate ID variables?
-
My research on seomoz has resulted in conflicting ideas regarding the canonical tag. One article says avoid it, the other says embrace it.
We have fixed a majority of our architecture problems using redirects for duplicate content, however, when we send out newsletters we still have these pesky tracking ids. I figured out how to remove them from analytics, but am unsure of how this affects our SEO. An example of one of our links is: https://www.quicklearn.com/transcript/?utm_source=news101011&utm_medium=e&utm_campaign=newclass&nlid=news101011&UID=2287
The original url being www.quicklearn.com/transcript/ the custom (non-Google) variables being nlid and uid.
Is this a problem? Do I need rel cononical tags on each and every page?
-
Are these links on your web site or are they in a newsletter sent out via email?
anyhow, there is nothing wrong with the canonical tag, if its used for the right reasons, but often a 301 redirect is better.
Not understanding your situation fuilly, my advice is.
first, will a 301 do the job?
if not can i use a canonical
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
-
Canonical Tags for Legacy Duplicate Content
I've got a lot of duplicate pages, especially products, and some are new but most have been like this for a long time; up to several years. Does it makes sense to use a canonical tag pointing to one master page for each product. Each page is slightly different with a different feature and includes maybe a sentence or two that is unique but everything else is the same.
Technical SEO | | AmberHanson0 -
Canonical Tags - Do they only apply to internal duplicate content?
Hi Moz, I've had a complaint from a company who we use a feed from to populate a restaurants product list.They are upset that on our products pages we have canonical tags linking back to ourselves. These are in place as we have international versions of the site. They believe because they are the original source of content we need to canonical back to them. Can I please confirm that canonical tags are purely an internal duplicate content strategy. Canonical isn't telling google that from all the content on the web that this is the original source. It's just saying that from the content on our domains, this is the original one that should be ranked. Is that correct? Furthermore, if we implemented a canonical tag linking to Best Restaurants it would de-index all of our restaurants listings and pages and pass the authority of these pages to their site. Is this correct? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | benj20341 -
Which Web host do you use?
A friend of mine has a successful website which is hosted by the company he used to use for developing his site. As he no longer uses them feels he should use it. Who do you use for hosting a small to medium sized business?
Technical SEO | | Ant710 -
Rel Canonical ? please help
Can some one please answer a question for me, I have a crawl error stating that I have [#### Rel Canonical 326](http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/243472/issues/18) Can you please advise me on how serious these Errors are? I was told by one person not to worry but It seems far to many to me. thanks
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
Effective use of hReview
Hi fellow Mozzers! I am just in the process of adding various reviews to our site (a design agency), but I wanted to use the ratings in different ways depending on the page. So for the home page and the services (branding, POS, direct mail etc) I wanted to aggregate relevant reviews (giving us an average of all reviews for the home page, an average of ratings from all brand projects and so on). Then, I wanted to put specific reviews on our portfolio pages, so the review relates specifically to that project. This is the easiest to do as the hReview generator is geared up for reviews that come from one source, but I can't find a way of aggregating the star ratings to make an average rating rich snippet. Anyone know where I can get the coding for this? Thanks in advance! Nick.
Technical SEO | | themegroup0 -
Am I Doing this Canonical Right?
Hi,I admit to new to the Mod Rewrite.Here is my mod rewrite in my .htaccess# Begin non-www page protection # <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | Force7
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule> # End non-www page protection #If I have my home page set toI really want the canonical to be www.domain.com no trailing slashDid I create a confllict, and if so, how should I change it?0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0
