When to use canonical urls
-
I will be the first to admit I am never really 100% sure when to use canonical urls.
I have a quick question and I am not really sure if this is a situation for a canonical or not.
I am looking at a my friends building website and there are issues with what pages are ranking. Basically there homepage is focusing on the building refurbishment location but for some reason in internal page is ranking for that keyword and it is not mentioned at all on that page.
Would this be a time to add the homepage url and a canonical on the ranking page (using yoast plugin) to tell Google that the homepage is the preferred page?
Thanks
Paul
-
Thumbing up both answers - I think they've got you covered. This is definitely a situation where you should try to sort out why the deeper page is ranking. It could be a positive that you should try to encourage (disrupting that could harm your ranking, ultimately) or it could signal something about your home-page that needs work.
Rand had a good post a while back on the subject:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
-
Thanks for the replies, that has really cleared it up, I think I just need to look deeper into the pages layout to see exactly why Google is deciding to rank this particular page.
Thanks
Paul
-
Hello,
That is not the purpose of the canonical tag. You should not attempt to use canonical tag to fix this sort of problem. The general purpose of the canonical tag is to filter dynamic urls to a single root page.
Example
www.myclothingstore.com/mens/t-shirts/smiley-face?size=XL&color=Red
www.myclothingstore.com/mens/t-shirts/smiley-face?size=L&color=Red
www.myclothingstore.com/mens/t-shirts/smiley-face?size=XL&color=BlueCanonical to www.myclothingstore.com/mens/t-shirts/smiley-face
In this example the only difference of these pages is the size & color selected. The page is the same, the parameters are different. So by putting a canonical tag on this page, you help the search engine filter out the dynamic urls and rank the canonical tag.
It sounds like you may have an issue with Keyword Cannibalization, or it could simply be that your inner page is much better for the keyword then the homepage.
I'm sure somebody here would be happy to assist you further if we could take a look at the 2 pages in question and the exact keyword that you're using in Google.
Hope this helps
-
Hey Paul
Hmmm, that might work, but really, that is far from the ideal approach here and it might make sense to try and understand what is causing that page to rank over the homepage.
Have you checked
- keywords targeted on each page
- optimisation of pages for keyword
- internal anchor text (navigation + pages)
- External links
Planning and consistency is just so important that I would recommend trying to get a handle on why one page over another is ranking rather than just trying to put a hack in place to try and redirect folks to the right page.
Canonical is really for clearing up any uncertainty regarding different URLs for a single page. So, if you have.
www.yoursite.co.uk/blog
www.yoursite.co.uk/blog/
www.yoursite.co.uk/blog/index.htmlYou could set the canonical to the one your prefer and then any links or search results would be allocated to the correct varation. It is not really for saying one page is really a copy of another but it can be used like that if there are near duplicates but really noindex may be a better solution for non search based landing pages that are very close in content to another page.
As ever, there are lots of moving parts and without an example it's hard to say but in principle, I would try to figure out what is going on here and adjust the pages + set up canonical as they should be used.
Hope that helps!
MarcusSome useful references
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemapshttp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
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
-
Canonical or hreflang?
I have four English sites for four different countries, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and I want to share some content between the sites. On the pages that share the content, which is essentially exactly the same on all 4 sites, do I use the hreflang tags like: or do I add a canonical tag to the other three pointing to the "origin", which would be the UK site? I believe it is best practice to use one or the other, but I'm not sure which make sense in this situation.
Technical SEO | | andrew-mso0 -
Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word
We had a spam injection a few months ago. We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google. I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them. Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410. I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/0 -
Which Version Url to Use for Canonical Tags and in General for Homepage.
I want to put canonical tags on the homepage of a site. cant figure out the version of URL of the homepage should be with a / at the end or without the / ( www.example.com of www.example.com/ ) if I put into the google the URL with / I get the URL without the / in my browser, and it isn't showing as a redirect in my moz extension or other tools. But when I copy the URL from browser and paste elsewhere it pastes with a / I have two questions 1 - in general how does it work with URLs of homepages - I see this happening with lots of sites? 2 - which URL should I set as the canonical version of my homepage? Thanks so much
Technical SEO | | Ruchy0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Is it a good idea to use the rel canonical tag to refer to the original source?
Sometimes we place our blog post also on a external site. In this case this post is duplicated. Via the post we link to the original source but is it also possible to use the rel canonical tag on the external site? For example: The original blogpost is published on http://www.original.com/post The same blogpost is published on http:///www.duplicate.com/post. In this case is it wise to put a rel canonical on http://www.duplicate.com/post like this: ? What do you think? Thanks for help! Robert
Technical SEO | | Searchresult0 -
Can I redirect a URL that has a # in it? How?
Hi there - My web developer is saying that I can't do a URL redirect with a "#" in it. Currently, the URL is actually an anchored link within a page (which the URL indicates with a #). I want to change the content to a new URL, but our website links internally to the old URL, so we would need to do a URL redirect (assume 301). Can you tell me if this is possible and how? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | sfecommerce0 -
Hyphen in URL
Hi, I would like to know if the following statement holds true today or it doesn't matter whether we use hyphens or underscore If you have a URL like keyword1_keyword2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for keyword1_keyword2 ( highly unlikely ) . But If you have a URL like keyword1-keyword2, that page can be returned for the searches - keyword1,keyword2 and even “keyword1keyword2” Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050