Canonical tags
-
How hard is it to put in Canonical tags on a webpage? My web guy didn't do it because he put in redirects in place for all old URLs and all content
(except error pages and advanced searches) should have a unique URL.By not having canonical tags does it lose link juice? Not sure if that question makes sense.
Poo
-
Just another one of Googles nice little perks proving that they might just like us SEO's
Cheers!
-
Corey,
Got to give you props on the info and the post. I had not seen it before and now am glad I came to Q&A tonight. Excellent info.
Good CMS advice (if you gotta fix, don't recreate it). Super advice on the canonical.
Boodreaux, given your experience level, if you are not using a CMS like WP or Joomla, make sure your developer understands the custom coding and the various permutations.
Best to both.
-
Jake
Nice hit with the Tag Manager. I did not know about it... Learn something everyday and that is what I love about this gig.
Best.
-
Any Redirect will lose value. A 301 loses a portion of your juice and a 302 gives you nothing. What the canonical tag does is redirect the authority of the page with the tag to the target page you want to hold the authority (usually the parent page, be it Root Domain, primary landing page or a subcategory page)
Google has a new fantastic tool I think everyone should know about called Google Tag Manager. It creates a container under the that you can fill with any tag, Google or non-Google tags. It is fantastic because you don't need your programer to go in and change anything and no need to access code. It gives the power to you to add and remove tags and define the parameters of each one you put in place. in addition it builds the tag for you if you aren't a code wizard. this makes the world of SEO and OSO shake due to the rainbows and sunshine of not having t bother your programer with little fixes like tag adding and removal.
I hope this helped!
Cheers!
-
- It's not hard to implement. It's just one line of code to each page. If you're using software like WordPress or Joomla, there is probably an existing extension that will place it on all pages. If it's a custom site, I wrote your developer some code and explained it here.
- Redirecting old URL's was a good idea (ideally a 301 redirect done by at the web server level).
- Not having canonical tags doesn't necessarily mean that you'll lose 'link juice' (if that's the phrase we're going with), but it can cause canonical issues (lost 'link juice', as well as negative issues that come from duplicate content in the index). Often times, they're little things that you don't even think about (ie. a variable that's automatically ended on URL's by a certain service, like ?utm_source=twitter, an affiliate link, or just an issue of a missing "/" at the end of a web address). With so many possible variables, my philosophy is just to use rel="canonical" everywhere so that you can not worry about it.
Cheers.
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
-
Hi! I first wrote an article on my medium blog but am now launching my site. a) how can I get a canonical tag on medium without importing and b) any issue with claiming blog is original when medium was posted first?
Hi! As above, I wrote this article on my medium blog but am now launching my site, UnderstandingJiuJitsu.com. I have the post saved as a draft because I don't want to get pinged by google. a) how can I get a canonical tag on medium without importing and b) any issue with claiming the UJJ.com post is original when medium was posted first? Thanks and health, Elliott
Technical SEO | | OpenMat0 -
Quick Fix to "Duplicate page without canonical tag"?
When we pull up Google Search Console, in the Index Coverage section, under the category of Excluded, there is a sub-category called ‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’. The majority of the 665 pages in that section are from a test environment. If we were to include in the robots.txt file, a wildcard to cover every URL that started with the particular root URL ("www.domain.com/host/"), could we eliminate the majority of these errors? That solution is not one of the 5 or 6 recommended solutions that the Google Search Console Help section text suggests. It seems like a simple effective solution. Are we missing something?
Technical SEO | | CREW-MARKETING1 -
Canonical tag or 301
Hi, Our crawl report is showing duplicate content. some of the report I am clear about what to do but on others I am not. Some of the duplicate content arises with a 'theme=default' on the end of the URL. Is this version of a page necessary for people to see when they visit the site (like a theme=print page is) in which case I think we should use a canonical tag, or is it not necessary in which case we should use a 301? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Canonical Tag on Blog - Roger says it's incorrect?
Hi I have just released a post on my blog and I wanted to check my primary keyword for the post to make sure the page scores well. However when I did the page report it showed the Canonical Rel tag was incorrect. example of link the blog is http://www.example.com/Blog/post-comment/ The Canonical tag is below What am I doing wrong, as it looks correct to me?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Geotargeting duplicate content to different regions - href and canonical tag confusion
If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us). Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ? The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want). Im presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this. Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/' many thanks in advance to any commentators 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Rel=Canonical being ignored?
Hi all, We have a toys website that has several categories. It's setup such that each product has a primary category amongst the categories within it can be found. For example... Addendum's primary url is http://www.brightminds.co.uk/childrens-toys/board-games/addendum.htm but it can also be found here http://www.brightminds.co.uk/learning-toys/maths-learning/addendum.htm. Hence, in the for that url it has a rel=canonical that points to the first url. For some reason though seomoz ignores this and reports duplicate page content. It doesn't seem to record the canonical tag either. Any ideas what's going on? Thanks, Josh.
Technical SEO | | joshgeake_gmail.com0