Technical question about site structure using a CMS, redirects, and canonical tag
-
I have a couple of sites using a particular CMS that creates all of the pages under a content folder, including the home page. So the url is www.example.com/content/default.asp. There is a default.asp in the root directory that redirects to the default page in the content folder using a response.redirect statement and it’s considered a 302 redirect. So all incoming urls, i.e. www.example.com and example.com and www.example.com/ will go to the default.asp which then redirects to www.example.com/ content/default.asp. How does this affect SEO? Should the redirect be a 301? And whether it’s a 301 or a 302, can we have a rel=canonical tag on the page that that is rel=www.example.com? Or does that create some sort of loop? I’ve inherited several sites that use this CMS and need to figure out the best way to handle it.
-
Thanks. It confirms what I was thinking. I have asked our developers if the page can be moved to the root, but am getting a lot of pushback. So if it can't be done, I will make the canonical page the content/default.asp.
-
I do find things get weird with Google when you're home page isn't at the root, and ASP seems to often do this.
Unfortunately, if you 301-redirect to the deeper level, you shouldn't canonical back up to the root - it's a mixed signal. I'm with Martin - if you can't change it, you should probably 301-redirect to "/content/default.asp" and then use that as the canonical version as well (internal links, inbound links where possible, etc.). It's not ideal, but it may be the least worst solution.
-
That's not a great mechanism for a CMS even before you consider SEO!
Do you understand ASP sufficiently to move the default.asp to the root directory and then apply the rel=canonical?
If the actual homepage is /content/default.asp then there are two things you should probably consider
1. Make the redirect from root to /content/default.asp a 301 as it is permanently at that address, not temporarily
2. Any links you get in need to point to /content/default.asp for max effect.(2) is really tough as it's messy for webmasters and doesn't do your website branding any good. So, to be honest I would be looking at moving that default page to root, if the choice were mine.
Open to other opinions.
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
-
Should I use a canonical URL for images uploaded to a blog post in Wordpress?
Hi, I have a wordpress website that has articles/news posts witch contain imagery. I've noticed that in the Media Library, when you upload an image to a blog post it generates a new permalink ...article-name/article-image-01.jpg I have Yoast SEO plugin and have the option to set a canonical URL for this image. Should I point it back to the actual article? Thanks for any helpers with this.
Technical SEO | | Easigrass0 -
Does Canonical Tag Syntax Matter?
Does anyone know definitively if the format of the canonical tag matters? Silly question I know. vs
Technical SEO | | Healio0 -
Using rel=canonical
I have a set of static pages which were created with the purpose of targeting long tail keywords. That has resulted in Domain Authority dilution to some extent. I am now in the process of creating one page which will serve the same results but only after user selects the fields in the drop-down. I am planning to use rel=cannonical on the multiple pages pointing back to the new page. Will it serve the purpose?
Technical SEO | | glitterbug0 -
Redirecting a questionable domain to a trusted domain
I have a question!
Technical SEO | | FDFPres
We have 2 domains operating within the same retail sector. One of them is for our bricks and mortar business and the other is a new brand we launched as a nationwide e-retailer. We aggressively built links for the new one and achieved some very good search positioning, where we remained for about 4 months until the google updates of the first half of this year started biting. The domain never received a warning from google or anything, but the links have clearly been devalued to a point where the domain is now virtually buried for the most competitive terms. However, the domain does still get around 100-200 visitors per day, and has a DA of 38. We're thinking about a reshuffle that would involve putting the products in to our brick and mortar business website, and redirecting the brand domain to the bricks and mortar domain. Thank you for reading this far! the question is then, is there a danger of the bricks and mortar domain being tarnished by this? as i said the brand domain hasn't had any notices of penalty from google but it has definitely been hit by updates.0 -
Canonical tag in the Michael Torbert SEO plugin
I am confused about a canonical tag that appears in the header section of a site that uses the WordPress All in One SEO plugin by Michael Torbert. That is a very popular one. It says, I thought that telling Google that a page is canonical means "Don't index this one, it is not the primary page." But in fact, this is the primary page because when you go to www.xquisitevents.com it redirects to xquisitevents.com. Is this done properly or not? Ditto for all the other pages, i.e. xquisitevents.com/about-us has a canonical tag in the wordpress plugin, etc. Which is the real primary page? And does the primary page correctly have the canonical tag in the plugin?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons0 -
Google Confusion: Two Sites and a 301 Redirect.
Hi, We have a client who just sprang a new project on us. As always, they went ahead and did some stuff before bringing us into the loop! (oh the joy of providing SEO services!) Anyway, i'm pretty swamped right now and need some extra brains on this. Basically the client had www.examplesiteA.com online for many years (an affiliate site which had built up a strong brand in the industry). They have now decided to turn this affiliate site into a full blown service platform and so with the new site being built they 301'd the whole thing over to www.examplesiteB.com - this is where they want all the old affiliate content to be hosted. So essentially examplesiteA.com is now examplesiteB.com and a new site is being placed on examplesiteA.com - still with me? So this has all happened and a brand new website is on examplesiteA.com and the old examplesiteA is now sitting exactly as it used to, but on the examplesiteB domain. The 301 redirect has been removed and the new examplesiteA seems to have been crawled, but the homepage is not indexed. When you search for examplesiteA, examplesiteB is the top result. Now they are similar domain names and to be fair I have very little data at this point i.e. I don't know when the 301 redirect was removed and it maybe that this all fixes itself with time. How is link equity effected now that examplesiteA.com was 301 redirected to examplesiteB.com and cached in this way, but now the 301 redirect has been removed and does not exist? Would link juice have been diluted throughout the process? Obviously if we had been in on all this before anything was implemented we would have done things differently. Interested to hear what others would do coming in at this point. Thanks and look forward to the advice!
Technical SEO | | MarcLevy0 -
Redirect Flash Site for Google Only - Is this against TOS?
A photographer client has a flash website, purchased as from a (well respected) template company. The main site is at the root domain, and the HTML version is at www.example.com/?load=html If I visit the site on a browser without Flash installed, I am re-directed automatically to the HTML version. I'm concerned as the site has some great links and the HTML version is well optimised, but doesn't appear anywhere in Google for chosen keywords (ranks perfectly for brand related searches). Google is indexing the Flash version of the site, but I would rather it didn't (there's no real content (just Javascript to load the SWF) and all of the pages load under one URL). How can I block the Flash version from Google but still make the incoming links count towards the HTMl version of the site? If I re-direct Google to the HTML version, is this cloaking, and is it frowned upon? Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0 -
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
When using the On page report card I get a critical error on Rel Canonical Im not sure if I have understood this right but I think that my problem is that I own a Norwegian Domain name which is www.danske-båten.no This domain works great in norwegian, but I get problems with english (foreign) browsers. My english domain name is http://www.danske-båten.no. When you buy a domain name with the letter Å you get a non norwegian domain name as well. (dont quite get the tecnical aspect of it) Så when I publish a page (using wordpress if that means anything) I get this message: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.danske-båten.no/ferge-oslo-københavn/"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So What to do to fix this?
Technical SEO | | stlastla
</dd> </dl>0