Help I don't understand Rel Canonical

[zapprabbit]

I'm really stuck on how to fix up Rel Canonical errors on a Wordpress site. I went in and changed all the URLs to remove the www and added / to the end.

I get this message on page analysis details:

<dt>Canonical URL</dt>

<dd>"http://www.some-url.com.au/",</dd>

<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/", and</dd>

<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/"</dd>

<dd>Well the first one with the www doesn't exists and the second two urls are the same! (Note that I have removed the actual URL for this post)</dd>

<dd>I'm not sure how to read and fix the errors from the reports ether. The only issues I can see is that the 'Tag Value' has the www and the 'Page Title - URL' doesn't have the www. 
</dd>

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, unfortunately, on a CMS or template-driven site, it's really easy to put a canonical tag in place that impacts the wrong pages. Hopefully, you caught it in time.

The 270 notices in are system are just telling you that 270 URLs we crawled had a canonical tag pointing to a different page. In this particular case, it was a problem, but it isn't always an issue.

Unfortunately, with the bad canonical tag in place, it's tough to tell why they were there before. This is usually just a notice, and non-critical, but once the bad canonicals clear out, let us know if you're still getting the notice (it may take a couple of weeks to go away).

[zapprabbit]

I think I know what I have done wrong. I placed this code line in the header instead of the index:

I only did this last week, so hopefully the damage won't last long. I still don't understand the 270 Rel Cononical errors, because they were already there. Is this a Wordpress problem?

[Dr-Pete]

I just checked, and it actually looks like you've got a potentially serious problem. All of your canonical tags that I've seen are pointing to the home-page, even archives and blog posts. This will essentially de-index those pages. Something is set up badly - that canonical tag should only appear on the actual home-page.

Since this is public, I won't reveal details, but look at the, for example, the canonical tag on your "About" and "Services" pages - they're pointing to the home-page.

[zapprabbit]

So whats the best way to fix the 270 Rel Cononical errors? How do I actually tell Google what URL is the same pages as another URL?

[Dr-Pete]

The basic problem, and it's actually confusing to a lot of people, is that what you think of as a "page" is the physical file on your server (like your home-page). What Google thinks of as a page is a URL. So, if multiple URLs go to the same place, they look like duplicate copies to Google (who sees them as all different pages).

It's especially common with home-pages, where you can have www vs. non-www, root ("www.example.com") vs. the filename ("www.example.com/index.php"), etc. If those variations get crawled and indexed by Google, the duplicates can dilute your index and weaken your ranking ability. So, rel-canonical helps tell Google that those variations are all the same page.

[Keszi]

Zapprabbit,

I would like to underline the main reason of canonical tag usage.

We use canonical to eliminate duplicate content which is cause by different paths to the same content.

In order to eliminate this, you point out to search engines which of the paths is the one that you are optimizing for (which path you want to be indexed).

So let's take your example:

<dd>"http://www.some-url.com.au/",</dd>

<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/", and</dd>

<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/"</dd>

All of the above are different versions of the index.php (wordpress), right?Ok so you have the following:Index.php is shown as:

• http://www.some-url.com.au
• http://www.some-url.com.au/
• http://www.some-url.com.au/index.php
• http://some-url.com.au
• http://some-url.com.au/
• http://some-url.com.au/index.php

all the links above are different paths for Search Engines.

Now you put a canonical tag into the header of index.php which point out for "www.some-url.com.au". What happens?

Search Engines now crawl all versions of your index.php, but they know that they only need to index one version: www.some-url.com.au

What happens from link juice point of view?

If people will start linking to http://some-url.com.au/ or http://www.some-url.com.au/index.php or any other version of your index.php file the link juice will be targeted to the canonical version in some portion (aprox. 85% because you will loose some "juice").

I hope that is clearer now

Gr.,

Istvan

[zapprabbit]

The bit I'm stuck on is what am I looking for when I click on the Cannonical URL Tag?

Duplicated URLs? Too many URLs pointing to the same place?

I know I must sound stupid but I just can't get my head around the problem.... Any pointers?

[mediabase]

Hi Zapprabbit, For you to understand the Rel Cannonical errors you must visit the Cannonical URL Tag.

In wordpress these cannonical url errors are fixed up with all in one seo wordpress plugin.

I hope that your query had been solved.

[Keszi]

Hi Zapprabbit,

You have the following issue:

1. You didn't proper place the canonical

2. you miss the non www. -> www. 301 redirect

So let's take it step by step:

1. Canonicals: In order to have the chance to set the canonicals right, I would advice you to use the Yoast WP plugin. On the same page you will have how-to articles and usage tips for the plug-in.

2. 301 redirect: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

This should solve your issue.

Gr,

Istvan