Rel=canonical on image pages
-
Hi,
Im working on a Wordpress hosted blog site. I recently did a "site:search" in Google for a specific article page to make sure it was getting crawled, and it returned three separate URLs in the search results. One was the article page, and the other two were the URLs that hosted the images that are found in the article. Would you suggest adding the rel=canonical tag to the pages that host the images so they point back to the actual context article page? Or are they fine being left alone? Thank you!
-
This is normal behavior for a Wordpress blog. If you feel there are a lot of these pages being indexed and they don't provide much value, you can noindex using plugins such as Yoast.
-
Sorry Ryan, I replied to the original question. Please see below for my response to your answer. Thanks man!
-
Thanks. Do you recommend doing anything to the URLs? Also, is there a better way to host images? Are these URLs going to hurt the site at all? It is a new site with just a few articles and I want to make sure we have the proper implementation since the beginning. Thanks
-
The images are linked on the page (meaning if you hold your cursor over the image, it is clickable and the image is hosted on its own page but on the same domain).
Id rather not share the domain.
However, an example, the site is www.example.com. The blog post is www.example.com/how-to-breathe. The image URL is www.example.com/how-to-breathe/image-name
Thanks!
-
I wouldn't recommend rel=canonical because these pages aren't the same content. One is just the image while the main page is the entire article. If you rel=canonical all of your image urls you could end up hurting yourself in Google image search to some degree.
-
Hello,
Are you linking to the images in the article?
Can you provide the url to take a look?
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
-
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
In our reports we get alt tag errors for our banner images. We are unable to add alt tags to the banner images as they live inside CSS. We can add a title tag on the div title for the banner. Does that help with SEO and accessibility?
We are unable to add alt tags to the banner images as they live inside CSS. We can add a title tag on the div title for the banner. Does that help with SEO and accessibility?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shirley.Fenlason0 -
Changing Canonical Tags on Indexed Pages that are Ranking Well
Hi Guys, I recently rolled out a domain wide canonical tag change. Previously the website had canonical tags without the www, however the website was setup to redirect to www on page load. I noticed that the site competitors were all using www and as far as I understand www versus non www, it's based on preference. In order to keep things consistent, I changed the canonical tag to include the www. Will the site drop in rankings? Especially if the pages are starting to rank quite well. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickToImpress0 -
Why isn't the rel=canonical tag working?
My client and I have a problem: An ecommerce store with around 20 000 products has nearly 1 000 000 pages indexed (according to Search Console). I frequently get notified by messages saying “High number of URLs found” in search console. It lists a lot of sample urls with filter and parameters that are indexed by google, for example: https://www.gsport.no/barn-junior/tilbehor/hansker-votter/junior?stoerrelse-324=10-11-aar+10-aar+6-aar+12-aar+4-5-aar+8-9-aar&egenskaper-368=vindtett+vanntett&type-365=hansker&bruksomraade-367=fritid+alpint&dir=asc&order=name If you check the source code, there’s a canonical tag telling the crawler to ignore (..or technically commanding it to regard this exact page as another version of the page without all the parameters) everything after the “?” Does this url showing up in the Search Console message mean that this canonical isn’t working properly? If so: what’s wrong with it? Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
Sigurd0 -
After adding a ssl certificate to my site I encountered problems with duplicate pages and page titles
Hey everyone! After adding a ssl certificate to my site it seems that every page on my site has duplicated it's self. I think that is because it has combined the www.domainname.com and domainname.com. I would really hate to add a rel canonical to every page to solve this issue. I am sure there is another way but I am not sure how to do it. Has anyone else ran into this problem and if so how did you solve it? Thanks and any and all ideas are very appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LovingatYourBest0 -
Cross Domain Rel Canonical for Affiliates?
Hi We use the Cross Domain Rel Canonical for duplicate content between our own websites, but what about affiliates sites who want our XML feed, (descriptions of our products). We don´t mind being credited but would this present a danger for us? Who is controlling the use of that cross domain rel canonical, us in our feed or them? Is there another way around it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
Hey mozzers Would be interested to know if anyone has used the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” attributes more info here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html If you have used it, has it worked and what are your thoughts etc:? And for those that have used it, is it a better way of handling pagination other than the obvious of Google saying so. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0 -
How does one know where to insert the right strips of coding on the right pages for Canonical Links?
On my Website, I am the only SEO optimizer wizard person. I have to teach myself everything and I get overwhelmed a lot. I recently started using SEOMOZ and on my report it stated we had duplicate page titles and that it was bad and should be fixed quickly. So I did my research and found that I needed to use canonical links to reference one page to be indexed. However my problem lies in exactly how to add this coding to my site. I greatly appreciate any help or at least looking at this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0