Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Rel=canonical tag on original page?
-
Afternoon All,
We are using Concrete5 as our CMS system, we are due to change but for the moment we have to play with what we have got. Part of the C5 system allows us to attribute our main page into other categories, via a page alaiser add-on. But what it also does is create several url paths and duplicate pages depending on how many times we take the original page and reference it in other categories. We have tried C5 canonical/SEO add-on's but they all seem to fall short.We have tried to address this issue in the most efficient way possible by using the rel=canonical tag. The only issue is the limitations of our cms system. We add the canonical tag to the original page header and this will automatically place this tag on all the duplicate pages and in turn fix the problem of duplicate content. The only problem is the canonical tag is on the original page as well, but it is referencing itself, effectively creating a tagging circle. Does anyone foresee a problem with the canonical tag being on the original page but in turn referencing itself?
What we have done is try to simplify our duplicate content issues. We have over 2500 duplicate page issues because of this aliasing add-on and want to automate the canonical tag addition, rather than go to each individual page and manually add this tag, so the original reference page can remain the original.
We have implemented this tag on one page at the moment with 9 duplicate pages/url's and are monitoring, but was curious if people had experienced this before or had any thoughts?
-
My experience matches Nakul's. Technically, Bing claims you shouldn't have canonicals on the canonical page itself, but I've never seen evidence that they actually do anything about that or don't honor the tags. I think they just don't like processing the extra tags. Google originally suggested the same thing, but then softened their stance. I've NEVER seen a practical issue with it on Google.
So, by the book, Bing would rather you only put it on non-canonical URLs. Practically, though, it seems to work absolutely fine. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. So many big sites are doing this now that I don't think the engines can devalue the tactic. It's not spammy - it's just mildly inconvenient for them (some extra processing).
-
I implemented the canonical tag last year in a similar situation and yes, it's on the original page as well. No issues. Look at eBay.com, they also have canonical tags on all pages including the original page.
I have not seen/encountered any issues. Now when I go check the cache for http://www.example.com/duplicate-url-3.html which has a canonical tag referring to the original-url, Google shows me the canonical URL. The duplicate pages literally disappear from the SERPS, because essentially its like a 301 redirect.
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
-
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
Different Header on Home Page vs Sub pages
Hello, I am an SEO/PPC manager for a company that does a medical detox. You can see the site in question here: http://opiates.com. My question is, I've never heard of it specifically being a problem to have a different header on the home page of the site than on the subpages, but I rarely see it either. Most sites, if i'm not mistaken, use a consistent header across most of the site. However, a person i'm working for now said that she has had other SEO's look at the site (above) and they always say that it is a big SEO problem to have a different header on the homepage than on the subpages. Any thoughts on this subject? I've never heard of this before. Thanks, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Waismann0 -
Canonical tag + HREFLANG vs NOINDEX: Redundant?
Hi, We launched our new site back in Sept 2013 and to control indexation and traffic, etc we only allowed the search engines to index single dimension pages such as just category, brand or collection but never both like category + brand, brand + collection or collection + catergory We are now opening indexing to double faceted page like category + brand and the new tag structure would be: For any other facet we're including a "noindex, follow" meta tag. 1. My question is if we're including a "noindex, follow" tag to select pages do we need to include a canonical or hreflang tag afterall? Should we include it either way for when we want to remove the "noindex"? 2. Is the x-default redundant? Thanks for any input. Cheers WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Best way to implement canonical tags on an ecommerce site with many filter options?
What would be the best way to add canonical tags to an ecommerce site with many filter options, for example, http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com? Should I include a canonical tag for all filter options under a category even though the pages don't have the same content? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netrepid0 -
Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?
A customer of ours has a website in Belgium. There two main languages in Belgium: Dutch and French.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox
At first there was only a Dutch version with a .be extension. Right now they are implementing the French Belgium version on the URL website.be/fr. All of the content and comments will be translated. Also the URL’s will change from Dutch to French, so you've got two URL’s with the same content but in another language. Question: Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country? I think Google will understand this is just for the usability for a Multilanguage country. What do you guys think???0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Should the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0