Canonical Meta Tag
-
Can someone explain how this works and how necessary is it? For example, I have a new client, who is ranking WITHOUT the www in their domain, but they have a good deal of backlinks already that have www in it. When I set up google webmaster tools I made 2, one for WWW and one for WITHOUT and there are diffenet numbers of backlinks for each. I have no idea what do about this or if I should even do anything.
Thanks
-
Yes, how do you do this? I am ok with HTML but when it comes to server-side and whatnot, I am lost.
-
What's the easiest way to do a 301 redirect, do you add code to the htaccess file?
What code is needed?
Many thanks
-
Correct, if you 301 the non www to the www that takes care of the split PR issue, you can also declare which version non www or www to select in google WMT so do that as well.
As far as the canonical goes, that helps to make sure that Google ranks the page you want instead of a similar inferior page and helps make sure your Google index stays clean, so it's a good idea to canonical every page to help avoid Google getting confused.
-
301 redirect the non www version to WWW version to consolidate links.
Also check if there are pages like www.example.com/index.html and www.example.com. These pages also need to be taken care of in the same way.
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
-
Advice needed on canonical paginated pages
Hi there. I use Genesis and StudioPress themes. I recently noticed that the canonical link for blog pages points to the first page on all paginated pages, which I understand is an SEO no-no. I found some code here that adds a unique canonical link to each paginated page but for categories only. It works fine. I only have one category for my site. My question is: is there a downside (or even upside) to not having a blog page and placing a link to my category page in the navigation bar instead, using the category page as the blog page? It looks good and works. What do you think? I find it odd that this seems to be an issue across the Internet and the only solution that comes up relies on the Yoast plugin, which I don't want to use (don't want to use a plugin for SEO). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Should I disable the indexing of tags in Wordpress?
Hi, I have a client that is publishing 7 or 8 news articles and posts each month. I am optimising selected posts and I have found that they have been adding a lot of tags (almost like using hashtags) . There are currently 29 posts but already 55 tags, each of which has its own archive page, and all of which are added to the site map to be indexed (https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/sitemap_index.xml). I came across an article (https://crunchify.com/better-dont-use-wordpress-tags/) that suggested that tags add no value to SEO ranking, and as a consequence Wordpress tags should not be indexed or included in the sitemap. I haven't been able to find much more reliable information on this topic, so my question is - should I get rid of the tags from this website and make the focus pages, posts and categories (redirecting existing tag pages back to the site home page)? It is a relatively new websites and I am conscious of the fact that category and tag archive pages already substantially outnumber actual content pages (posts and news) - I guess this isn't optimal. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks wMfojBf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD0 -
New meta description limit?
Hi guys is the new meta description limit something temporary - Google just testing or can we assume it will remain moving forward? Just wondering if i should increase my meta description limit to 300 characters for all my sites. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Alt Tags
Hi We have lots of alt tags missing, I know they'e recommended by Google, so moving forward we will ensure we add them to product images, but should we go back and update the ones we have missing? How important is it for SEO? Has anyone tested this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Parallax and Title Tags
I've noticed an issue with our site, which uses parallax on multiple pages. Here is an example: If you search for About SQL Sentry, you get the correct title tag and description If you search for SQL Sentry Careers (which is on the about us page) it appears that Google has made up a title tag and description for it. Is there any way to force a separate title tag for a part of a parallax page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
Correct Syntax for Meta No Index
Hi, Is this syntax ok for the bots, especially Google to pick up? Still waiting for Google to drop lots of duplicate pages caused by parameters out of the index - if there are parameters in the querystring it inserts the code above into the head. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20101 -
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 -
Canonical Not Fixing Duplicate Content
I added a canonical tag to the home page last month, but I am still showing duplicate content for the home page. Here is the tag I added: What am I missing? Duplicate-Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InnoInsulation0