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.**
-
Yes it is. I try to speak it as I don't know it perfectly either but it is a nice language.
-
I'm afraid I don't - though I certainly would like to - it's a very nice sounding language.
-
Just curious but with your name Sebastian, do you speak French? The reason I ask is because it's a very popular name here in Quebec.
-
Thanks DRTBA - glad you've found it useful.
-
Hi Sebastian. Thank you for replying to my question and the link to the Google Web Master Central Blog with more information and resources which was very helpful.
-
Since you're using canonical link, which indicates that the source of the page content is actually from the different page I would simply use the same meta tags as the original page. The canonical option is telling search engines that the page which you're actually viewing is the same as the canonical so it gives the credit to the one specified in the canonical url.
Here's an interesting point found at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
"Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us."This would indicate that it won't make much of a difference if you have different meta tags, but it is usually a better idea to have it as identical as possible.
I hope this helps.
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
-
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Sitemap and content question
This is our primary sitemap https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml We have a about 750 location based URL's that aren't currently linked anywhere on the site. https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/locations.xml Google is indexing most of the URL because we submitted the locations sitemap directly for indexing. Thoughts on that? Should we just create a page that contains all of the location links and make it live on the site? Should we remove the locations sitemap from separate indexing...because of duplicate content? #
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvestSitemap Type Processed Issues Items Submitted Indexed --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 /sitemaps/locations.xml Sitemap May 10, 2016 - Web 771 648 2 /sitemaps/sitemap.xml Sitemap index May 8, 2016 - Web 862 730
0 -
To redirect or not to redirect, that is the question
I work for a software company that is redeveloping the website (same domain.) We have tons of content in the form of articles and documents for support, how to use the product better, case studies, and blog posts. I've downloaded a landing page report and many of these have low impressions and little or no clicks (some ranked high other very low.) Should I redirect all this content to the new site where some of it won't exist or forget about it because of the lack of juice? Is there a rule-of-thumb threshold for redirecting for content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15969167212220 -
Canonicals question ref canonicals pointing to redundant urls
Hi, SCENARIO: A site has say 3 examples of the same product page but with different urls because that product fits into 3 different categories e.g. /tools/hammer /handtools/hammer /specialoffers/hammer and lets say the first 2 of those have the canonical pointing to /specialoffers/hammer YET that page is now redundant e.g. the webmaster decided to do away with the /specialoffers/ folder. ASSUMPTIONS: That is going to seriously hamper the chances of the 2 remaining versions of the hammer page being able to rank as they have canonicals pointing to a url that no longer exists. The canonical tags should be changed to point to 1 of the remaining url versions. As an added complication - lets say /specialoffers/hammer still exists, the url works, but just isn't navigable from the site. Thoughts/feedback welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Canonical and On-Page Report Card
Hello, One quick question about rel canonical. If i use SeoMoz amazing on-page optimization tool i get a grade B if i use www.mydomain.com and my keyword. I get a grade A if i use https://www.mydomain.com and same keyword. I get the grade B coz i don't get the check mark to "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" box. Should i use this rel canonical stuff if i am 301 redirecting www. version to https://www. version already. Regards, OÜInigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InigoOU0 -
Alternative to rel canonical?
Hello there, we have a problem. Let's say we have a website www.mainwebsite.com Then you have 40 websites like this: www.retailer1.mainwebsite.com www.retailer2.mainwebsite.com www.retailer3.mainwebsite.com www.retailer4.mainwebsite.com www.retailer5.mainwebsite.com www.retailer6.mainwebsite.com … an so on In order to avoid the duplicate content penalty from Google we've added a rel="canonical" in each 40 sub-websites mapping each page of them to www.mainwebsite.com Our issue is that now, all our retailers (each owner of www.retailer-X.mainwebsite.com) are complaining about the fact that they are disappeared from Google. How can we avoid to use rel="canonical" in the sub-website and not being penalised by Google for duplicate content in www.mainwebsite.com? Many thanks, all your advices are much appreciated. YESdesign team
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YESdesign0 -
Changing my url name? Should I do it?
Hi, I am targeting a brand called Creative Recreation, who are a trainers brand. We currently rank ok-ish for certain terms for Creative Recreation Trainers, Footwear and Creative Recreation [INSERT STYLE NAME HERE]. Our main search term I think we would like to improve on is "creative recreation trainers" as we are 6th for this. Our domain name points to the brands page as designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/creative-recreation/ Now what I want to know is, would it be worthwhile or would it affect my current rank/index if I changed the end of that url to read /creative-recreation-trainers/ thus getting the keyword phrase in the url? Creative-Recreation is a hard one to crack as you have a lot of competition from the brands site etc.. Any ideas on this? Cheers Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
To "Rel canon" or not to "Rel canon" that is the question
Looking for some input on a SEO situation that I'm struggling with. I guess you could say it's a usability vs Google situation. The situation is as follows: On a specific shop (lets say it's selling t-shirts). The products are sorted as follows each t-shit have a master and x number of variants (a color). we have a product listing in this listing all the different colors (variants) are shown. When you click one of the t-shirts (eg: blue) you get redirected to the product master, where some code on the page tells the master that it should change the color selectors to the blue color. This information the page gets from a query string in the URL. Now I could let Google index each URL for each color, and sort it out that way. except for the fact that the text doesn't change at all. Only thing that changes is the product image and that is changed with ajax in such a way that Google, most likely, won't notice that fact. ergo producing "duplicate content" problems. Ok! So I could sort this problem with a "rel canon" but then we are in a situation where the only thing that tells Google that we are talking about a blue t-shirt is the link to the master from the product listing. We end up in a situation where the master is the only one getting indexed, not a problem except for when people come from google directly to the product, I have no way of telling what color the costumer is looking for and hence won't know what image to serve her. Now I could tell my client that they have to write a unique text for each varient but with 100 of thousands of variant combinations this is not realistic ir a real good solution. I kinda need a new idea, any input idea or brain wave would be very welcome. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReneReinholdt0