Will I still get Duplicate Meta Data Errors with the correct use of the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags?
-
Hi Guys,
One of our sites has an extensive number category page lsitings, so we implemented the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags for these pages (as suggested by Google below), However, we still see duplicate meta data errors in SEOMoz crawl reports and also in Google webmaster tools. Does the SEOMoz crawl tool test for the correct use of rel="next" and "prev" tags and not list meta data errors, if the tags are correctly implemented?
Or, is it necessary to still use unique meta titles and meta descriptions on every page, even though we are using the rel="next" and "prev" tags, as recommended by Google?
Thanks, George
Implementing rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let’s get started! Let’s say you have content paginated into the URLs:
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you’d include in the section:
On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2:
On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3:
And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4:
A few points to mention:
-
The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup.
-
Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup.
-
The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”.
-
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the tag). And, if you include a
<base>
link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL. -
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” only need to be declared within the section, not within the document .
-
We allow rel=”previous” as a syntactic variant of rel=”prev” links.
-
rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain:
-
rel=”prev” and rel=”next” act as hints to Google, not absolute directives.
-
When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.
-
-
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html
3. While it’s fine to set rel=”canonical” from a component URL to a single view-all page, setting the canonical to the first page of a parameter-less sequence is considered improper usage. We make no promises to honor this implementation of rel=”canonical.”
-
Dear Irving,
Im very interested in your concept could you explain in depth or give me any source or link where to learn about.
Because canonical from my point of view is a controversial thing.
I'll appreciate your help
Claudio
-
Google no longer recommends setting up pagination pages with canonical tags. The rel tags are the way to go...
-
Dear George,
In the past I was dealing with the same issue, to solve it I implement these 2 fix :
1. Canonical tag ie.:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp">
This tell the Search engines specially google the page is the referred as canonical
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp?page=1
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp?page=2
from google perspective these pages are http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp (canonical)
2. On each page I add (dynamically) Page # on both title and description meta tags
<title></span><span>Your page title - Page: 1</span><span></title>
name="description" content="Your page Description meta tag etc etc - Page: 1">
This resolve the problem on both, HTML issues in Google WMT and the rank flow because you're joining all pages into the root page.
Hope this hepl
Claudio
-
You will still need unique title and meta tags to avoid duplication. It's in the W3.org spec: Anything unique will work, so you can start the title and meta description tag on page 2 with the words "Page 2: "
<a name="h-12.1.2">12.1.2</a> <a name="idx-link-2">Other link relationships</a>
By far the most common use of a link is to retrieve another Web resource, as illustrated in the previous examples. However, authors may insert links in their documents that express other relationships between resources than simply "activate this link to visit that related resource". Links that express other types of relationships have one or more link types specified in their source anchor.
The roles of a link defined by <samp class="einst">A</samp> or <samp class="einst">LINK</samp> are specified via the <samp class="ainst">rel</samp> and <samp class="ainst">rev</samp> attributes.
For instance, links defined by the <samp class="einst">LINK</samp> element may describe the position of a document within a series of documents. In the following excerpt, links within the document entitled "Chapter 5" point to the previous and next chapters:
_...other head information..._ <title>Chapter 5</title>
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
-
I am trying to generate GEO meta tag for my website where on one page there are multiple locations My question is, Can I add GEO tagging for every address?
Am I restricted to 1 geo tag per page or can i add multiple geo tags ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Yoast and wordpress duplicate meta
I'm using the Yoast plugin with wordpress and have noticed in my HTML I have duplicate meta data. For example my header starts with
Technical SEO | | simonatkinsphoto
<title>(title) </title<span><<br /><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span>Then I have the 'This site is optimised by Yoast" tagline followed by the same meta -<br /> <span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">name</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:title</span><span>" content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span></span></span>Is this likely to cause problems with Google and is there a way to stop both wordpress and Yoast adding meta to the header. </p></title>0 -
Canonical Tags - Do they only apply to internal duplicate content?
Hi Moz, I've had a complaint from a company who we use a feed from to populate a restaurants product list.They are upset that on our products pages we have canonical tags linking back to ourselves. These are in place as we have international versions of the site. They believe because they are the original source of content we need to canonical back to them. Can I please confirm that canonical tags are purely an internal duplicate content strategy. Canonical isn't telling google that from all the content on the web that this is the original source. It's just saying that from the content on our domains, this is the original one that should be ranked. Is that correct? Furthermore, if we implemented a canonical tag linking to Best Restaurants it would de-index all of our restaurants listings and pages and pass the authority of these pages to their site. Is this correct? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | benj20341 -
Who uses WordPress Tags anymore?
Just curious if people are still using WordPress Tags. I wonder if with the direction Google is going the last couple years, having sites that get bloated with extraneous Tag archives just decreases the quality of the site.
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay2 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
I am getting an error message from Google Webmaster Tools and I don't know what to do to correct the problem
The message is:
Technical SEO | | whitegyr
"Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.whitegyr.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team" I have always tried to follow Google's guidelines and don't know what I am doing wrong, I have eight different websites all getting this warning and I don't know what is wrong, is there anyone you know that will look at my sites and advise me what I need to do to correct the problem? Website with this warning:
artistalaska.com
cosmeticshandbook.com
homewindpower.ws
montanalandsale.com
outdoorpizzaoven.net
shoes-place.com
silverstatepost.com
www.whitegyr.com0 -
Duplicate page content errors in SEOmoz
Hi everyone, we just launched this new site and I just ran it through SEOmoz and I got a bunch of duplicate page content errors. Here's one example -- it says these 3 are duplicate content: http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-black-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-camel-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-gray-3inch You'll see from the pages that the titles, images and small pieces of the copy are all unique -- but there is some copy that is the same (after all, these are pretty much the same shoe, just a different color). So, why am I getting this error and is there any best way to address? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | ketanmv
Ketan0 -
Duplicate content and tags
Hi, I have a blog on posterous that I'm trying to rank. SEOMoz tells me that I have duplicate content pretty much everywhere (4 articles written, 6 errors at the last crawl). The problem is that I tag my posts, and apparently SEOMoz thinks that it's duplicate content only because I don't have so many posts, so pages end up being very very similar. What can I do in these situations ?
Technical SEO | | ngw0