Real impact of canonical links?
-
I am responsible for 2 e-commerce websites.
SEO Moz and Google Web Master tools both inform me regularly that on both sites there are many instances of duplicate titles, headings, decriptions and page content. Obviously from an SEO point of view I am more than a little concerned about this!
Out product pages struggle to perform strongly despite the fact that our website is of a decent quality and we are leaders in our field. Our competitors rank above us when they add a product page, whereas we normal flit in between 8-10 or on the 2nd SERP.
I know it is hard without viewing the site, but is duplicate content likely to be a strong, leading factor in this?
I think it is, but want to put together a business case to spend the cash to sort it out....just need someone confirmation that this is worth sorting as a priority.
Here are 2 examples of what I mean:
1) Category pages
www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx
We have filters on our category page (so the customer can sort products based on their price, colour, size etc.). When filters are used a new URL is generared.
- www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=0||10
- www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=10||20
The content, titles, description is the same although the links are different.
Do I need to set up a canonical tag on the page that reads:
2) Product pages
Product pages on the websites have different URLs depending on how to arrive on them.
You get 1 URL if you navigated to the page via the website navigation, but you get another different URL if you used the website search functionality to find the page.
Example:
Search link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1/Product1.aspx
Navigation link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/12345/category1/Product1.aspx
Again, do I need to set up a canonical tag for 1 of these link types so that the link benefit is not shared over 2 pages?
Any feedback would be welcome! At the moment the ability to add canonical tags is locked down by our CMS (I know, rubbish!)...so website development would be needed - hence the need for a business case!
-
Great points Dr Pete.
-
Especially post-Panda, duplicates can create a real mess. At best, it's a matter of dilution. The more pages in you have in Google's index that are "thin", the more thinly your internal link-juice (authority, basically) is spread. So, each page just gets less of it. In extreme cases, though, the entire site can suffer.
Canonicalization is tricky, and it's tough to be 100% sure from sample URLs, but my gut reacionts:
(1) Yes, I think you could safely use rel=canonical here. It's slightly odd, since these search pages are actually showing different lists of products, but your only real choices are rel=canonical or blocking the "prices=" parameter in Google Webmaster Tools. You could NOINDEX anything with "prices=" in it as well. I think canonical will work, though.
(2) This is definitely a case where you should use rel=canonical. There are true duplicates. Actually, the best case here is not to create these URLs, but I realize that's not always an option.
You could use GWT for #1, if development is an issue, but to solve (2) you're going to need some kind of page-level directive (like rel=canonical). There's no good way to get around the coding.
It's hard to gauge the impact, but I've definitely seen cases where the consequences of large scale duplicates were severe, and where large ranking/traffic improvements (as much as 3X, although it's not usually that dramatic) have occurred when the problem was fixed. To be aware that it's not instantaneous. It can take a few weeks to really see the impact.
-
Thanks for your feedback Nakul - glad I'm on the right track. The world of canonical links can certainly strain the old brain cells!
Don't suppose you have any other tips on how I can boost my product pages or any other things I should watch out for when employing canonical links across the entire site?
-
Yes, you are 100% on the right track. You do need the canonical tags in place ASAP. Both on the category and the product level.
And yes, duplicate content is also a very important consideration, so I would definitely suggest creating a business case to get unique copy done for each of your pages.
Both of these points are high priority and I am sure that's why you posted the question...to confirm. You are right.
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
-
Does a non-canonical URL pass link juice?
Our site received a great link from URL A, which was syndicated to URL B. But URL B is canonicalized to URL A. Does the link on URL B pass juice to my site? (See image below for a visual representation of my question) zgbzqBy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice1 -
Linking and non-linking root domains
Hi, Is there any affect on SEO based on the ratio of linking root domains to non-linking root domains and if so what is the affect? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Canonical url question
i just search seomoz tooll it say duplicate content for www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com/index.php should i use canonical url for this ? is yes then is this right ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | constructionhelpline0 -
Link Building Question
Hey Moz'ers, I have created several blogs on different domains for the purpose of writing good content articles that contain 2-3 links per article that go back to my website. It has been up for about 3-4 weeks. I am not seeing my results/links showing up in OSE, is this because it still needs more time or is there something else I could be advised to look into? In theory these blogs will only contain 2-3 links from each domain to the site. I was also going to make sure the anchor text per link is different (keyword, brand name, random anchor like click here). Side note: How does this system sound as part of one small aspect to link building? red flags? Thanks for all the responses and advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
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 -
Removing Canonical Links
We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination. Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment. The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value. Can anyone advise us on the best way forward? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jannkuzel0 -
How to remove bad link to your site?
Hello, Our website www.footballshirtblog.co.uk recently suffered a major Google penalty, wiping out 6 months of hard work. We went from getting 6000-10000 hits a day to absolutely nothing from Google. We have been baffled by the penalty as we couldn't think of anything we've done wrong. After some analysis of Open Site Explorer, it seems I may have found the answer. There is a ton of bad links pointing to us. A few example domains are: ru.gg/ gogopzh.com/ 0575bbs.com/ This is nothing to do with us and so I can only assume some competitor has done this. As we were only about 4-5 months old, I guess Google has punished us. What do we do now? This is not a situation I have experienced before and would really appreciate your expert advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
Rel Canonical Syntax
My IT department is getting ready to setup the rel canonical tag, finally. I took a look at the code on our test server and see that they are using a single quote in the tag syntax (see code block below). Should I be concerned? Will Google read those lines the same? <link rel='canonical' href='[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)' />VS. **versus** <link rel="canonical" href="[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)" />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | costume0