Some questions on Canonical tag AND 301 redirect
-
Hi everyone, I'm new here - always loved SEOMoz and glad to be part of the Pro community now.
I have 2 questions regarding the Canonical URL tag.
Some background info:
We used to run an OsCommerce store, and recently migrated to Magento. In doing so, we right away created 301 redirects of the old category pages (OsCommerce) to the new category pages (Magento) via the Magento admin. Example:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
301 redicrected to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.htmlIn Magento admin, we have enabled the Canonical tag for all product and category pages. Here's how Magento sets up the Canonical tag:
The URL of interest which we want to rank is:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.htmlHowever Magento sets up the canonical tag on this page to point to:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.htmlWhen using the SEOMoz On Page Report Card, it pick this up as an error because the Canonical tag is pointing to a different URL.
However, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the URL being pointed to
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
has a 301 redirect to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html
which is the URL we wan to rank.So because we set up a 301 redirect of the old-page to the new-page, on the new-page the canonical tag points to the old-page.
Question 1)
What are you opinions on this? Do you think this method of setting up the Canonical tag is acceptable?Second question...
We use pagination for category pages, so if we have 50 products in one category, we would have 5 pages of 10 products. The URL's would be:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html (which is the SAME as ?p=1)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5Now ALL the URLs above have the canonical tag set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" />However, the content of each page (page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is different because different products are displayed. So far most what I read regarding the Canonical tag is that it is used for pages that have the same content but different URLs.
I would hope that Google would combine the content of all 5 pages and view the result as a single URL www.example.com/new-widget-category
Question 2) Is using the canonical tag appropriate in the case described above?
Thanks !
-
Most likely. Unless the parameters are greatly changing the content on the page, rather than simply sorting, you will want to block them or just use a canonical tag.
-
Will do.
the 301s will stay because they redirect the old (indexed and ranking) URL's to the new ones.
The Canonical Tags will all be removed.
Then 1 more question:
How do you suggest I deal with URL parameters that cause duplicate content. Some examples:?color=
?manufacturer=
?width=etc. We have hundreds of these - they are used to allow customers to filter or sort the product listings.
Should we set them to be ignored via Webmaster tools?
-
Drop the canonical, leave the 301.
Use rel=next and rel=prev for pagination: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
-
Yeah the 301 looks like it is correctly used, but I personally would not use canonical as well, in respect only to the redirect of "old pages" to "new pages"
In the instance of the products it does appear this is a good example of canonical needed.
All "staplers" pagination would canonical to the "Main" stapler page and so on and so forth.
This gets your users to the page to see the same product in a different color, but tells search engines that this is all the same "product". So for this "product" only the main page will result in search (page in which the canonicals for given product points to)
Hope this helps
once again #STOPSOPA
-
Shane is correct in his advice,
Q1
you dont need the canonical, if you did not have a 301 redirect, then the canonical should be on the old page pointing to the new. but as Shane said you dont need it when you have a 301 in place.
Q2
I would canonical to http://www.example.com/new-widget-category for all p1 to p5
As i wonder if the change of the products in the grid is enouth to make the pages unique. If you have sorting it just gets more messy
Your product pages will have this info for each product anyhow.
i would try to make the category page relevant for the catgory.
Rather then use rel=canonical I would use rel=next and rel=previous
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744
-
Thanks for the info Shane.
Regarding pagination:
let's say we sell staplers.?p=1 will be the first 10 stapler models
?p=2 will be stapler models 11-20
?p=3 will be stapler models 21-30
...and so on. Each page presents a different set of stapler models.
Keep in mind that each URL has the same Title and Meta Info.We could choose to show all staplers on a single page and eliminate pagination, but this would affect loading time.
Yes we incidentally use Canonical tags and 301 redirects, which were implemented for different reasons.
The 301 redirect was implemented to redirect from old category URLs on old website (no longer live) which were indexed and had good ranking to the new category URLs on the new website.
The canonical URL on the other hand was implemented in hope of avoiding duplicate content of the new URLs.
For example if you were to navigate to the URLwww.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
You would see the stapler models 1 to 10 of 50 (so 5 pages).
Now you can either go to the next pages, or you can 'filter'.Let's say you choose to filter by color, because you really want a red stapler, the resulting URL would be
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?color=red
You could now choose to filter by other characteristics or go to the next page (still with red filter on), so the URL would be
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?color=red?p=2
Again, since all that's happening here is either changing page or filtering the products, the Title and Meta Info is the same, but the URLs are different, and the selection of products being presented is also different.
-
Question 1
If i read it right it appears you are using 301 redirect and Canonical, Correct? If this is so, the use of Canonical is redundant (possibly ignored by Gbot) but could cause issues.
Question 2
From the way it is described.. It would appear the only true canonical is www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1 and should have <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" />
The others depending on differences should not UNLESS
It is the same product, just different colors or something that does not change the product and what it does. But only changes the physical appearance. This would be an "acceptable" difference and "OK" to use canonical
EXAMPLE;
If...
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1 (Product in blue)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2 (Product in Red)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3 (ect...)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4 (ect...)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5 (Ect...)Then canonical is probably a good fit,
but if....
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1 (Widget to tell time)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2 (Widget that cooks you breakfast)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3 So on and so forth..
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5Then I would suggest not using the canonical and make the content on each page different
Hopefully i read your questions right and this helps
w00t!
#STOPSOPA please
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
-
Question about inbound links
Hi, When i run a scan for inbound links for the domain denverhongkongcafe.com/. One of the inbound links does not have the website denverhongkongcafe.com on its page. I viewed the source code and couldnt't find anything. But denverhongkongcafe.com links to that "inbound" link. Just to summarize everything. This link https://www.beyondmenu.com/40371/denver/hong-kong-cafe-denver-80014.aspx?r=40371 is an inbound link but does not have denverhongkongcafe.com anywhere in the site. But when i go to denverhongkongcafe.com it goes to https://www.beyondmenu.com/40371/denver/hong-kong-cafe-denver-80014.aspx?r=40371 . I am not sure how https://www.beyondmenu.com/40371/denver/hong-kong-cafe-denver-80014.aspx?r=40371 is an inbound link?
Moz Pro | | eldan880 -
What is the best way to add a noindex./nofollow meta tags to tags in a blog?
Could anyone tell me the best way to add noindex./nofollow meta tags as I have around 12 duplicate tags in a blog. I have the Yoast SEO plugin - unpaid version.
Moz Pro | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
Page with "Missing Title Tag" isn't a page
Hello, I am going through the various errors that the Moz Pro Crawl report and some non-existent pages keep coming up in the report. For example, one error category is "Missing Title Tag" with one page identified. But this page http://www.immigroup.com/news/“http%3A/crs.yorku.ca”?page=2 isn't real. It would have been a 404 were there not a redirect for everything that is /news/gobbledygook to /news. So my question is: when moz (or GA for that matter) identifies these pages as "real" and having errors, do I need to take this seriously? And what do I do about it? Thanks! George
Moz Pro | | canadageorge0 -
How to Check 301 Done Properly on Homepage
Hi All, I posted previously about this, and had some good advice (thanks!)... but not quite sure my problem has been fixed. About a month ago we changed our hosting over, and our dev didn't coordinate to have both versions of our homepage redirected to the same URL. Our crawl showed up with every single page as duplicate content, and our organic traffic has since dropped by over 60%. They have told me that it is fixed as of last Monday, and a redundant error that was appearing in my Google Analytics now says that it has been fixed, but Moz crawled my site 2 days ago and still says everything is duplicate content, and my organic traffic is stressing me out! Any advice on how I can check this is done for myself, rather than trusting these guys haven't messed it up any further? Or is it possible the Moz crawl is a bit slower? Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | b4cab0 -
Redirected pages still sending response code 200
SEO Moz tool reports missing title tags on all the links that have been redirected. E.g. this page: http://www.imoney.my/ms/personal-loan When I check the response code on the page with redirect checker it shows code 200 (page exists). Has it happened to anyone else? How can a redirected page send a 200 code?
Moz Pro | | imoney0 -
Importing Keywords... WITH tags?
Is this possible? I've found how to export to a CSV and copy/paste these into the usual keyword management page. Ideally, I would like to export/import the full information, along with the tags...... I have several brands that have a brand.com and a brandstore.com Any other cross-domain features I should be aware of? Thanks in advance......
Moz Pro | | EliteErikSEO0 -
Meta description tag in rss xml file?
The SEOmoz crawl diagnostic tool is complaining that I'm missing a meta description tag from a file that is an RSS xml file. In my <channel>section I do have a <description>tag. Is this a bug in the SEOmoz tool or do I need to add another tag to satisify the warning?</description></channel>
Moz Pro | | scanlin0 -
Rel=canonical
Hi, there is something puzzling us about the rel=canonical reports... On the general report that is generated after the system crawls our site, we have blue flags on the rel=canonical tag, but the flags don't actually specify exactly what is wrong, they just say: "Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical." so we presumed that we should take the rel=canonical tag out of our pages, and after we did so, we noticed that the on-page-report-card (the one that shows up when you run the keyword page optimization tool from the research tools) says (close to the bottom of the report) that we should have 1 canonical tag on each page. So right now we're confused, the general website crawl report flags the rel canonical as being bad and then the on page report flags not having them, we don't really know what to do, should we keep the rel=canonical or not? We are using wordpress to power our site, wordpress has a built-in system for generating the rel canonical for each page, I've checked that and the tags are being generated properly, but we have no idea why the general website report flags them in blue, the error message is not too comprehensive. Any help or information you could provide would be much appreciated. Our website is taxproblem.org thanks.
Moz Pro | | joemas990