Rel="canonical" again
-
Hello everyone,
I should rel="canonical" my 2 languages website /en urls to the original version without /en. Can I do this from the header.php? Should I rel="canonical" each /en page (eg. en/contatti, en/pagina) separately or can I do all from the general before the website title?
Thanks if someone can help.
-
So, if I understood, my code to have in the header.php of the website should be:
hope im right :)
-
NetLogiQ Thank you.
This answer solves a lot of tricks i had in my head
Thank you very much, I will better study the link you sent, and try to implement on my website. Footers etc. are not translated, so they remain in the original language.. But while reading, I think the solution can fit to my problem.
Thanks again!
Eugenio
-
Hi,
As I see it, you don't need to use a rel="Canonical" because your pages are not duplicates. You have content in italian and translated content in English.
The only thing you need to do is add a rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
This is what Google recommends in case your website is fully translated.
Some example scenarios where
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
is recommended: For example, you have both German and English versions of each page. Here is how you implement it: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en1. Add a HTML link in the header - section for example:
2. HTTP header. If you publish non-HTML files (like PDFs), you can use an HTTP header to indicate a different language version of a URL: Link: <http: www.yourwebsite.eg="" en="">; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en".</http:>
-
hello james
Thanks for reply. I have original webpages in Italian. Translated webpages are in English. I use a plugin for wordpress, that allows me to translate the whole page (title, etc.) except the url, which will only be different because of the /en before the original page name (in italian, eg /en/contatti)
Widgets, footers etc. are still in Italian, even with translated pages.
I also thought about changing permalinks to be %postname%, so that url may adapt to title (? I think). But Im afraid this website wide urls change will affect my current rankings.
Any suggestion?
-
This is a response to both questions. Rel = canonical will give in this case the English page the authority, that should be the page that ranks well.
The main issue here is if the whole page is translated don't use a canonical tag, if the content stays in English and the Navigation/footer is changed use canonical tag to the English page as this would verge on duplicate content.
-
in fact, now that im thinking:
will not canonical confuse google if trying to rank also for the other language?
What will appear? this is duplicate in a sense, but is complete different content in the other sense.
Please correct me if im wrong..
-
this is what google replied to the same question, not very explicit at all!
"Canonical was not created to say that a language is another language, but that a duplicate page is just a variation and not the original page"
Im lost again
but i also now think that rel canonical is the solution..
-
Just to add in here and simplify the process, Wordpress has a built in function to return the current post/page URL. Make use of 'get_permalink()', with some simply string manipulation you would be able to output the correct canonical tag to your page.
Edit: My PHP is a little rusty at times, but the following should sort you out:
//Check if the page you're on is a single post. If so run below.
if ( is_single() ) {
$url = get_permalink();
$canonical = str_replace('/en', '', $url);echo '';
};
?>As mentioned above, put this into your header.php file (in the template directory), where you would like the canonical tag to appear.
-
He isn't trying to redirect he does want both pages.
Also canonical sitewide is problematic unless you add a customized conditional at the PHP level. He has a wordpress site and can't edit the raw HTML of every page so he needs to have a PHP string at the global level which changes based on page variables.
-
Hello,
1. Do not add a canonical sitewide tag - here is a case study on why http://moz.com/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization Long story short - he deindexed 57% of his website.
2. You could 301 redirect all the pages, instead of adding a rel canonical. If your /en version is a duplicate of the original version, then you could simply add a code that redirects each page to the relevant version, like this: RedirectMatch 301 ^/en/(.*)$ http://www.yourwebsite.en/$1
You can use that solution in the case where you have a website called www.mywebsite.com that has a www.mywebsite.com/en version for a lot of links if not all, and those are the ones indexed in Google. You just add that code into htaccess. So just replace mywebsite with your website.
-
I don't want to post the same answer as I did to your previous question but perhaps there was further clarification that you needed, that I missed!
Put a conditional in the header. Since you are using a wordpress platform you can't go in and manually edit each pages canonical anyway. Using the page if function and a variable you would be able to assign each one it's own rel= from a central head file anyway.
In an ideal situation you'd do each page manually but because of your CMS you need to do a work around
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
-
Page with "random" content
Hi, I'm creating a page of 300+ in the near future, on which the content basicly will be unique as it can be. However, upon every refresh, also coming from a search engine refferer, i want the actual content such as listing 12 business to be displayed random upon every hit. So basicly we got 300+ nearby pages with unique content, and the overview of those "listings" as i might say, are being displayed randomly. Ive build an extensive script and i disabled any caching for PHP files in specific these pages, it works. But what about google? The content of the pages will still be as it is, it is more of the listings that are shuffled randomly to give every business listing a fair shot at a click and so on. Anyone experience with this? Ive tried a few things in the past, like a "Last update PHP Month" in the title which sometimes is'nt picked up very well.
Technical SEO | | Vanderlindemedia0 -
Rel=canonical or 301 to pass on page authority/juice
I have a large body of product support documentation and there are similar pages for each of versions of the product, with minor changes as the product changes. The two oldest versions of this documentation get the best ranking and are powering Google snippets--however, this content is out of date. The team responsible for the support documentation wants current pages to rank higher. I suggested 301 redirects but they want to maintain the old page content for clients still using the older version of the product. Is there a way to move a page's power to a more updated version of the page, but without wiping out the old content? Considering recommending canonical tags, but I'm not sure this will get me all the way there either as there are some differences between pages, especially as the product has changed over time. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | rachelholdgrafer0 -
"Url blocked by robots.txt." on my Video Sitemap
I'm getting a warning about "Url blocked by robots.txt." on my video sitemap - but just for youtube videos? Has anyone else encountered this issue, and how did you fix it if so?! Thanks, J
Technical SEO | | Critical_Mass0 -
Is the " meta content tag" important?
I am currently trying to optimize my companies website and I noticed that meta content is exactly the same for all of the pages on our website. Isn't this problematic? The actual content on the webpage is not the same and a lot of the pages don't have these keywords in the content.
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Webmaster Tools "Links to your site" history over time?
Is there a way to see a history of the "links to your site"? I've seen a lot of posts here from people say "I just saw a big drop in my numbers." I don't look at this number enough to be that familiar with it. Is there a way to see if Google has suddenly chopped our numbers? I've poked around a little, but not found a method yet. Thanks, Reeves
Technical SEO | | wreevesc0 -
Adding Rel Canonical to multiple pages
Hi, Our CMS generates a lot of duplicate content, (Different versions of every page for 3 different font sizes). There are many other reasons why we should drop this current CMS and go with something else, and we are in the process of doing that. But for now, does anyone know how would I do the following: I've created a spreadsheet that contains the following: Column 1: rel="canonical" tag for URL Column 2: Duplicate Content URL # 1 Column 3: Duplicate Content URL # 2 Column 4: Duplicate Content URL # 3 I want to add the tag from column 1 into the head of every page from column 2,3, and 4. What would be a fast way to do this considering that I have around 1800 rows. Check the screenshot of the builtwith.com result to see more information about the website if that helps. Farris bxySL
Technical SEO | | jdossetti0 -
Does google "see through" php/asp redirects?
A lot of the time I see companies employing a technique like this: <a target="_blank" href="/external/wcpages/referral.aspx?URL=http%253a%252f%252fwww.xxxx.ca&ReferralType=W&ProfileID=22&ListingID=96&CategoryID=219">xxxxxa> Or similarly with php. In an attempt to log all the clicks that exit their site from certain locations. When google bot comes along and crawls this page, does it still understand that this page links to www.xxxx.ca?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0 -
301 or Rel=canonical
Should I use a 301 redirect for redirect mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com or use a rel=canonical?? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeslieVS0