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.
I need help with a PHP canonical URL tags
-
I found a little difficult for me to do a canonical tag in my PHP.
On-Page Report Card
We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.
I don't know how to tidy my PHP
Any suggestion.
-
Thanks Shane,
That was very simple and to the point. I am doing SEO on a php site where there's a header and a footer and I didin't know how to add the canoical tag to the header correctly and the On page. Thanks again.
Benny
-
Is this a CMS, or are you trying to make the canonical only impact certain pages or conditions? The canonical tag is just an HTML tag, in the header. It doesn't really need special code, unless the target of the canonical has to be created dynamically. Unfortunately, then the solution depends entirely on your implementation (it's not one-sized-fits-all across all PHP sites).
If you could describe the structure of the site a bit (example URLs and how they're created) without revealing the site, that could help us pin it down.
-
Hi,
In my site, I use a php expression - as such -
header.php -
On page -
$canonical = "http://www.domain.com";
Here is a recent Blog Post if the above code does not help
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers
Shane
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 -
Does Google read dynamic canonical tags?
Does Google recognize rel=canonical tag if loaded dynamically via javascript? Here's what we're using to load: <script> //Inject canonical link into page head if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname1") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/kapiolani", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname2") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/straub", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname3") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/pali-momi", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname4") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/wilcox", ""); } if (canonicalLink != window.location.href) { var link = document.createElement('link'); link.rel = 'canonical'; link.href = canonicalLink; document.head.appendChild(link); } script>
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Should I Parent/Child my Website Pages (need help with terminology too)
Hello I have a website that I am trying to SEO optimise.
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
The current structure of the site is that all pages are linked directly after the domain:
example: www.domain.com**/page01** www.domain.com**/page02** The website is however logically organised in the following form:
www.domain.com**/page01/page02** Sometimes the parenting goes to 3 levels: (please help me with the right term here) Domain
↳ Page001
↳ Page002
↳Page003 My question is: should keep the current structure, or is it worth the effort to re-link the website in a parented way. Are there any benefites to one or the other, and could you point to some video tutorials or documentation to read. BqoDAsx.jpg DMMIC5o.jpg0 -
Isnt it better to have headlines in H1 and H2 tags instead of p tags?
I am working with a simple site http://http://lightsigns.com/Uniko_Manufacturing_Limited.html They seek more SEO traffic. However, the two big headlines that read "Wholesale Supply to the Sign and Display Industries" which is on line 241 and 242 of the source code, its in a p tag, i.e. <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Wholesale Supply to the and <p <span class="webkit-html-tag">style</p <span>="padding-bottom: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style_1">Sign and Display Industries Likewise, the product titles are in p tags, also. For example, on the Slide-in Light Box product page, http://lightsigns.com/Slide_In_light_box.html , I have done keyword research and no one is using the words slide in light box.Plus, it is also a p tag, ie. line 43 reads style="padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; " class="paragraph_style">Slide-in Light Box If I suggest that they make an H2 tag with SEO-optimized keywords such as Display Light Box - Slide-In LIght Box, would this indeed help SEO? In summary, is it correct to say that H1 and H2 tags are stronger signals to the search bots of what the page is about?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons1 -
The Mysterious Case of Pagination, Canonical Tags
Hey guys, My head explodes when I think of this problem. So I will leave it to you guys to find a solution... My root domain (xxx.com) runs on WordPress platform. I use Yoast SEO plugin. The next page of root domain -- page/2/ -- has been canonicalized to the same page -- page/2/ points to page/2/ for example. The page/2/ and remaining pages also have this rel tags: I have also added "noindex,follow" to page/2/ and further -- Yoast does this automatically. Note: Yoast plugin also adds canonical to page/2/...page/3/ automatically. Same is the case with category pages and tag pages. Oh, and the author pages too -- they all have self-canonicalization, rel prev & rel next tags, and have been "noindex, followed." Problem: Am I doing this the way it should be done? I asked a Google Webmaster employee on rel next and prev tags, and this is what she said: "We do not recommend noindexing later pages, nor rel="canonical"izing everything to the first page." (My bad, last year I was canonicalizing pages to first page). One of the popular blog, a competitor, uses none of these tags. Yet they rank higher. Others following this format have been hit with every kind of Google algorithm I could think of. I want to leave it to Google to decide what's better, but then again, Yoast SEO plugin rules my blog -- okay, let's say I am a bad coder. Any help, suggestions, and thoughts are highly appreciated. 🙂 Update 1: Paginated pages -- including category pages and tag pages -- have unique snippets; no full-length posts. Thought I'd make that clear.
Technical SEO | | sidstar0 -
Duplicate title-tags with pagination and canonical
Some time back we implemented the Google recommendation for pagination (the rel="next/prev"). GWMT now reports 17K pages with duplicate title-tags (we have about 1,1m products on our site and about 50m pages indexed in Google) As an example we have properties listed in various states and the category title would be "Properties for Sale in [state-name]". A paginated search page or browsing a category (see also http://searchengineland.com/implementing-pagination-attributes-correctly-for-google-114970) would then include the following: The title for each page is the same - so to avoid the duplicate title-tags issue, I would think one would have the following options: Ignore what Google says Change the canonical to http://www.site.com/property/state.html (which would then only show the first XX results) Append a page number to the title "Properties for Sale in [state-name] | Page XX" Have all paginated pages use noindex,follow - this would then result in no category page being indexed Would you have the canonical point to the individual paginated page or the base page?
Technical SEO | | MagicDude4Eva2 -
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian
Technical SEO | | ChristianMKTG0