Rel Canonical tag using Wordpress SEO plugin
-
Hi team
I hope this is the right forum for asking this question.
I have a site http://hurunuivillage.com built on Wordpress 3.5.1 using a child theme on Genesis 1.9. We're using Joost's Wordpress SEO plugin and I thought it was configured correctly but the Crawl Diagnostics report has identified an issue with the Rel Canonical tag on the sites pages.
I have not edited the plugin settings so am surprised the SEOMoz Crawl has picked up a problem.
Example:
Page URL is http://hurunuivillage.com/
Tag Value http://hurunuivillage.com/ (exactly the same)
Page Authority 39
Linking Root Domains 23
Source Code
Considering the popularity of the plugin I'm surprised I have not been able to find tutorials to find what I'm doing wrong or should be doing better.
Thanks in advance.
Best
Nic
-
I appreciate all your responses.
Paul, thanks for your detailed reply.
Best
Nic
-
Unfortunately, Nic, the SEOMoz tool does a really bad job of explaining that the Notices section of the on-page reports does NOT mean those areas have problems. The tool is simply informing you that those specific elements appear on your website. It is then up to you to decide whether they're appropriate or not. (The exact wording is "Notices are interesting facts about your pages we found while crawling". Pretty vague)
In the case of the canonical URLs, they're definitely a good thing and as neither you nor Oleg see any problems with them, all is fine.
As an example, that Notices section would also tell you if it found no-follow tags. If those had been added accidentally, they could be disastrous, so having the tool tell you they exist could warn you that someone had made a mistake. Or it could simply be that you put them in place on purpose. See? Judgement call.
Hope that helps;
Paul
-
SEOmoz alerts you because they're not really needed. They will not hurt you.
-
Maybe SEOMoz crawl has encountered a problem with your self-canonical tags. As Oleg told you, you don't have any issue with your canonical tags, it's just a matter of personal opinion to use self canonicals or not.
If you're afraid of possible scraper re-publishing your content and if you use url-based user sessions it may be worthwhile to have. But it doesn't hurt in any way.
-
Thanks for the quick reply.
Because the install is "out-of-the-box" I expected they were right.
What is SEOMoz trying to tell me about the tags? -
Your canonicals looks all good to me, I wouldn't worry about it.
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
-
How do I optimize a website for SEO for a client that is using a subdirectory as a seperate website?
We launched a subdirectory site about two months ago for our client. What's happening is searches for the topic covered by the subdirectory are yielding search results for the old site and not the new site. We'd like to change this. Are there best practices for the subdirectory site Specifically we're looking for things we can do using sitemapping and Webmaster tools. Are there other technical things we can do? Thanks you.
Technical SEO | | IVSeoTeam120 -
Rel="canonical" What if there is no header??
Hi Everyone! Thanks to moz.com, I just found out that we have a duplicate content issue: mywebsite.com and mywebsite.com/index.php have the same content. I would like to make mywebsite.com the main one because it already has a few links and a better page rank. I know how to do a 301 redirect (already have one for www.mywebsite.com) but I am aware that a 301 redirect for my index file would create a loop issue. I have read the article about redirecting without creating a loop (http://moz.com/blog/apache-redirect-an-index-file-to-your-domain-without-looping) but quite frankly I don't even have a clue what he's trying to tell me (e.g. "Create an apache DirectoryIndex directive for your document root." What????!)… So I figured a rel="canonical" tag for my index file would be easier and fix the problem, too (right??) In every "How to" description they always say you have to put the rel="canonical" tag in the header of your duplicate content file. But: My index.php has no header (or nothing that looks like a header to me)! This is what it looks like: foreach($_GET as $key => $value)
Technical SEO | | momof4
{
$$key = $value;
}
foreach($_POST as $key => $value)
{
$$key = $value;
}
$page_title="my title";
$page_description="my description";
$page_keywords="keywords";
//echo $link;
//exit;
if (!isset($link)):
$page_content="homepage.php";
else:
if ($link=="services"):
$page_content="services.php";
$page_title=" my title for services page";
$page_description="description for services.";
endif;
… ect. for the other pages So where do I put the rel=canonical tag? Or is there another solution for the whole problem? Like delete the whole index file (lol) Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
<sub>& <sup>tags, any SEO issues?</sup></sub>
Hi - the content on our corporate website is pretty technical, and we include chemical element codes in the text that users would search on (like S02, C02, etc.) A lot of times our engineers request that we list the codes correctly, with a <sub>on the last number. Question - does adding this code into the keyword affect SEO? The code would look like SO<sub>2</sub>.</sub> Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Jenny10 -
Does all in one seo pack still have a rel canonical issue?
Hi All, I know that the all in one had errors in its rel canonical links on Wordpress but I wondered if this has been fixed. I get mixed info on the web. Anyone know for sure? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | xvpn9020 -
Will using tabs on my page for navigation hurt SEO
Currently we have tabs on some pages that are set so that the page shows all the content for search engines on one page, but the user sees only part of the content until they click a tab. We are unable to use title tags for the tabbed areas. We think this hurts us from an SEO standpoint. We are getting only 3 keyword where we could have 12 if they were individual pages. What is the thought on using tabs and is it okay? Has there been any case studies on this?
Technical SEO | | cayseo0 -
Similar pages: noindex or rel:canonical or disregard parameters?!
Hey all! We have a hotel booking website that has search results pages per destinations (e.g. hotels in NYC is dayguest.com/nyc). Pages are also generated for destinations depending on various parameters, that can be star rating, amenities, style of the properties, etc. (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc/4stars, dayguest.com/nyc/luggagestorage, dayguest.com/nyc/luxury, etc.). In general, all of these pages are very similar, as for example, there might be 10 hotels in NYC and all of them will offer luggage storage. Pages can be nearly identical. Come the problems of duplicate content and loss of juice by dilution. I was wondering what was the best practice in such a situation: should I just put all pages except the most important ones (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc) as noindex? Or set it as canonical page for all variations? Or in google webmaster tool ask google to disregard the URLs for various parameters? Or do something else altogether?! Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | Philoups0 -
Is it ok to just use the end of the url when using a Rel Cononical Link?
Hi, I am working with an account and the previous SEO used a Rel Canonical link that just uses the end of the url. Instead of the full url When I look it up on the web I see most people are using the full url. Is that the proper way to do it or does is suffice to just use the end of the url? Wanted to check before I take the time to change them all. -Kent
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Effect of rel canonical on links
Has anyone done any experimentation on how Google treats links that are on a page that is being "rel canonical'd" to another page? For eg, example.com/b has a canonical pointing to example.com/a How does Google treat the internal links that are on page example.com/b?
Technical SEO | | Burgo0