Canonical URL tags help I am not sure what this is
-
I am trying to get an A grade on my webpage and this is one of the critical steps canonical URL tags I cant find much information as to what this even is never mind fixing it. Thanks I am a total newbe at this any advice is appreciated
-
Unfortunately, I don't know Etsy well, but I think Thomas is right on track - you don't necessarily want to pre-emptively add them, especially if you're not clear on how they work. Typically, it's more for preventing duplicate content issues. We're re-evaluating how we grade the canonical tag, since this is a bit confusing. It's a good practice on some pages (like your home-page) that naturally tend to have more than one version, but adding it sitewide can be tricky.
-
Thanks so much everyone huge help
-
The canonical isn't really for feeding google URLs in the a preferred format, it's more for cleaning up duplicate content issues.
Let's say I could track traffic and conversions on my website by adding a source code to a link. So I create a link on SEOmoz. You can reach my page www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php with the url string http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php?src=seomoz and that link is now indexed by Google. Well now I have duplicate content and google must decide which page get's placed into their index. Adding a canonical to the main page
<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php" />
, tells google which page they should place in their index and it helps me avoid splitting my links.
This also applies heavily to shopping carts where the parameters in a URL determine the content, and products that overlap in categories can cause duplicate content issues. Creating canonicals will help avoid indexing issues.
So the point to canonicals is to determine what URL gets indexed and gets the juice for links when there are duplicate content issues created by varying URL stings that lead to the same content.
If you are simply trying to fill in a canonical for a URL to get a "A grade" on a SEO checklist then you will just create the canonical for each page using the exact URL for that page.
-
I think Etsy does all that stuff for you automatically. If you check source code of your store at Etsy it already has rel canonical, so no need to worry.
Make sure your URL for on page report looks like this www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname
It's how canonical is build.
-
Hi Jen
There are some useful blog posts on here which help with understanding the use of a canonical link listed below.
You would place the link on the duplicate content pages, and link these through to the page that you want the link juice to go to. The pages still appear from a user perspective but google does not see them.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
You can use the seo moz crawl to see which pages are duplicates.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks very much for your reply
I am still a little confused how do I know what to change it too ? is there a tool that allows me to see what google url prefers I am selling on etsy does that make a difference ?
Thanks,
Jen
-
It's tag that tells Google which url for given post is most preffered. This helps avoid problems with duplicate content. Use if you have www and non-www url or post with same content within different categories.
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
-
Product Tags
So Opencart allows the use of product tags (please note, this are NOT meta tags) which I believe are used for when customers want to search for a product using the search function. So one of my tags could be ''star wars socks'', and when a customer types this into the search it brings up every product containing the tag for socks. This is all good and well, however, these tags appear on the product page itself, right below the Manufacturer/Brand, and above the price. Will Google look kindly on this or could it be considered as keyword stuffing? Or will Google know they're for search and ignore them? I just need to know whether or not removing them entirely will be a good or bad idea.
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
How do you handle URLs with slashes?
I asked this question before, but with a different scenario. I upgraded my plan to a more advanced cart and all of my URLs changed about 1.5 years ago. I knew nothing about redirects and such, so none of that was done. Basically, let's say my site was: http://www.abc.com, but when people actually visit my site, they are directed to https://www.abc.com/. I have asked my host about redirecting and she that it is not possible. In the past, the link shared has been just www.abc.com . Will this hurt my ranking? My second question is ...let's say I have a link http://www.abc.com/blog , but now, the link is http://www.abc.com/blog/ . Will I be affected, since all my old links omit the slash?
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
Changing a page url
I have a page that ranks well (#4) for a good keyword. However, the url has the keyword in it but is misspelled. I would like to change the url to have the correct spelling but do not want to lose the ranking that I have. What is the best and safest way to proceed?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
Will canonical tag on non-copy content harm my site?
Days ago I added rel=canonical tags on my site. For the post pages, I add canonical tag on both post page (www.exmample.com/post.html) and comment page (www.exmample.com/post-sms.html), all the canonical tags are pointing to post page, but in fact there are only comments on the comment page. For product pages, I add the canonical tags on both product info page, download page, and order page, all of them are pointing to the info page, while in fact they are displaying different content. I no-indexed the comment page, download page, and order page for a long time. After I added the canonical tags, the traffics dropped (not hugely but slowly and steadily). Are my actions harming my site? Is this a normal flux after adding codes to the entire site, or it's the bad outcome for wrong SEO actions? PS: I can't change the site structure, so it's not possible to combine post and comment pages into one, so do the product pages. Thank you guys
On-Page Optimization | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Cnnonical Issue! Plz Help
Hi, I'm having this problem for one of my website, say www.abc.com. Certain information in the site is long and thus required to be put into several pages. For example, let say there is a section for the "List of Business Schools in Canada", this is a huge list and thus divided into several pages. The main URL is like this www.abc.com/business-schools/list-of-business-schools-in-canada.html & after on its goes on like www.abc.com/business-schools/list-of-business-schools-in-canada1.html www.abc.com/business-schools/list-of-business-schools-in-canada2.html www.abc.com/business-schools/list-of-business-schools-in-canada3.html Etc. Now as Google is considering these pages as canonical what should I do suppose do what with it? I've examine that rel="canonical" tag is used on every pages (canada1.html, canada2.html etc.) and the canonical URL is set to the main list-of-business-schools-in-canada.html page. So, why is that Google is picking this up as canonical? Have I made a mistake in placing the rel= canonical tag ? Please suggest. Thanks in advance,
On-Page Optimization | | ITRIX0 -
Title tag questions
General title tag questions how important is it not to change your title tag, I own a prom dress site and I'm always changing them between prom and homecoming' Is it bad to have title tags that are only different by one word across thousands of pages on your site. I have thousands of dresses so each title tag only varies by the style # I have always had title tags that are for example black prom dresses, well i recently discovered that just black dresses is googled 10 times the amount so im debating changing them to black dresses so that the word dresses is closer to the front of the title tag, am I over reacting or is that a good idea or would it be bad to put black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses I also put the year in almost every title tag 2012, is that bad, I ranked great for 2012 stuff but could it hurt my homepage domain rankings on major broader keywords
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
Page URL Hiearchy
So I have read on here that page URL Hiearchy is important. My question is from a search engine standpoint which of the following methods would be the best to use (or another if not listed) COMPACT and naturally hierarchical MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/adventures ( a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in whistler (for each page) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in utah OR VERBOSE but reptetive MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking adventures ( intro + a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mounting Biking adventures in whistler MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mountain Biking Adventures in Utah It seemed like the blog I read suggested the compact form, but it seems to me that the verbose (though admittedly a bit clunky) seems better so far as exact keyword match etc. Experience and or advice on this?
On-Page Optimization | | bThere0 -
Tags to index or to no index that is the Question
Sorry for the silly Shakespearean introduction but what are peoples opinions on leaving tag clouds to be indexed or no indexable by the search engines. I tend to leave them non indexable at the moment. I use wordpress for blogging as do most others.
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0