Rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" both necessary?
-
We are fighting some duplicate content issues across multiple domains. We have a few magento stores that have different country codes. For example: domain.com and domain.ca, domain.com is the "main" domain.
We have set up different rel="alternative codes like:
The question is, do we need to add custom rel="canonical" tags to domain.ca that points to domain.com?
For example for domain.ca/product.html to point to:
Also how far does rel="canonical" follow? For example if we have:
domain.ca/sub/product.html canonical to domain.com/sub/product.html
then,
domain.com/sub/product.html canonical to domain.com/product.html -
I'm honestly not completely clear on what the different URLs are for - I'd just add a note to keep the core difference between canonical and 301s in mind. A canonical tag only impacts Google, and eventually, search results. A 301 impacts all visitors (and moves them to the other page). A lot of people get hung up on the SEO side, but the two methods are very different for end-users.
As Tom said, if these variations have no user value, you could consolidate them altogether with 301s. I always hesitate to suggest it without in-depth knowledge of the site, though, because I've seen people run off and do something dangerous.
-
What's the purpose of the URL if there's not even any sorting or anything unique going on? If's a sorted URL (say by "size" smallest-largest for /little leage/ URL) it might be actually useful to develop some unique category content to let the page rank separately.
If the content is totally unique, I don't think you could really go wrong redirecting. To be safe, I'd probably rely on analytics to answer the question "what impact will redirection have?" For instance, is there a difference in conversion rate between the URLs. If you see a conversion bump from a more specific URL, you might want to sleuth out what's causing it.
-
Would you worry about it if the categories are somewhat useful for users to drill down the content?
For example:
/product.html
/aluminum-baseball-bats/product.html
/little-league-baseball-bats/product.htmlThey don't sell bats but it is the easiest way to describe it I guess. In this cause would you still 301 redirect the two longer urls to /product.html
-
Yes, providing that the /category1/ and /category2/ heirarchy doesn't help the user experience (e.g. product segmentation based on say, color and brand, which would be useful for users to drill down to).
I like 301s better because they are permanent, non-ambiguous, respected by all engines, and chiefly because they eliminate the possibilty of inlink dillution because the redirected URLs are never seeen.
-
Yeah, don't use rel=canonical for the same purpose as rel=alternate - the canonical tag will override the alternate/lang tag and may cause your alternate versions to rank incorrectly or not at all. It can be a bit unpredictable. If you only wanted one version to show up in search results, then rel=canonical would be ok, but rel=alternate is a softer signal to help Google rank the right page in the right situation. It's not perfect, but that's the intent.
As for multiple canonicals like what you described, that's essential like chaining 301-redirects. As much as possible, avoid it - you'll lose link equity, and Google may just not honor them in some cases. There's no hard/fast limit, and two levels may be ok in some cases, but I think it's just a recipe for trouble long-term. Fix the canonicals to be single-hop wherever possible.
-
Thanks that is what I was thinking, I just need to know more about if the bots will follow the canonical's past one level when pointing to a different domain and if so how many levels on the different sites.
-
Interesting idea, I might have to do that. Right now I have canonical elements on the .com
It is a magento store so it creates dirty duplicate content when the products are in different categories out of the box, for example magento creates the following product pages:
domain.com/store/productcategory1/product.html
domain.com/store/productcategory2/product.html
domain.com/store/product.htmlIn this case I have canonical elements pointing the categories to the main root domain.com/store/product.html
So you think it would be better to do a 301 redirect for the different product urls that are in subcategories?
-
Miles,
On your last question, I'm wondering if those two canonical tags are necessary? Are the /sub/ versions of those pages necessary for user experience? If not, I'd add a canonical element to the .com version, then redirect the /sub/product.html to /product.html. That would help you avoid splitting link authority.
-
Hey Miles,
The both are for different uses and may or may not be used in the same page depending on your situation.
If the content in the CA and COM versions is the same, then you should add a rel canonical + rel alternate, the rel alternate pointing to itself and the other version of it, and the canonical pointing to the one you consider definitive.
If the content isn't the same, then the rel canonical isn't needed (but suggested, pointing to itself in each lang/alternate), only the alternate should be in place.
You can read more on Dr. Pete's post here: http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
Hope that helps!
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
-
Rel=dofollow and rel=nofollow
Hi, I found a link pointing to my client's site that looks like this: <a <span="" class="html-tag">href</a><a <span="" class="html-tag">="</a>http://www.clientsite.com" rel="dofollow" target="_blank" rel='nofollow'>Anchor text Could someone tell me if this links acts as a dofollow or as a nofollow? It's the first time I see such a link and I don't know how to handle it. Best regards, Edimar
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Noriel0 -
Rel=next/prev for paginated pages then no need for "no index, follow"?
I have a real estate website and use rel=next/prev for paginated real estate result pages. I understand "no index, follow" is not needed for the paginated pages. However, my case is a bit unique: this is real estate site where the listings also show on competitors sites. So, I thought, if I "no index, follow" the paginated pages that would reduce the amount of duplicate content on my site and ultimately support my site ranking well. Again, I understand "no index, follow" is not needed for paginated pages when using rel=next/prev, but since my content will probably be considered fairly duplicate, I question if I should do anyway.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
"Authorship is not working for this webpage" Can a company G+ page be both Publisher AND Author?
When using the Google Structured Data testing tool I get a message saying....... **Authorship Testing Result - **Authorship is not working for this webpage. Here are the results of the data for the page http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/ Authorship Email Verification Please enter a Google+ profile to see if the author has successfully verified an email address on the domain www.webjobz.com to establish authorship for this webpage. Learn more <form id="email-verification-form" action="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets" method="GET" data-ved="0CBMQrh8">Verify Authorship</form> Email verification has not established authorship for this webpage.Email address on the webjobz.com domain has been verified on this profile: YesPublic contributor-to link from Google+ profile to webjobz.com: YesAutomatically detected author name on webpage: Not Found.Publisher | Publisher markup is verified for this page. |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webjobz
| Linked Google+ page: | https://plus.google.com/106894524985345373271 | Question - Can this company Google plus account "Webjobz" be both the publisher AND the author? Can I use https://plus.google.com/106894524985345373271 as the author of this and all other pages on our site? 98emVv70 -
Should we Use rel=canonical in ccTLDs websites
We have multilingual eCommerce websites with some content variations but majority of the content remains the same We have used rel=alternate hreflang on corresponding ccTLDs respective countries. for example on example.com -which is the oldest of these sites- we have used Now should we also use link rel="canonical" href="example.com" on all ccTLDs? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Rel Alternate tag and canonical tag implementation question
Hello, I have a question about the correct way to implement the canoncial and alternate tags for a site supporting multiple languages and markets. Here's our setup. We have 3 sites, each serving a specific region, and each available in 3 languages. www.example.com : serves the US, default language is English www.example.ca : serves Canada, default language is English www.example.com.mx : serves Mexico, default language is Spanish In addition, each sites can be viewed in English, French or Spanish, by adding a language specific sub-directory prefix ( /fr , /en, /es). The implementation of the alternate tag is fairly straightforward. For the homepage, on www.example.com, it would be: -MX” href=“http://www.example.com.mx/index.html” /> -MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/fr/index.html“ />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amiee
-MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/en/index.html“ />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/fr/index.html” />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/es/index.html“ />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/fr/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/es/index.html” /> My question is about the implementation of the canonical tag. Currently, each domain has its own canonical tag, as follows: rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/index.html"> <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.ca="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>
<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com.mx="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> I am now wondering is I should set the canonical tag for all my domains to: <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> This is what seems to be suggested on this example from the Google help center. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 What do you think?0 -
How permanent is a rel="canonical"?
We are rolling out our canonicals now, and we were wondering: what happens if we decide we did this wrong and need to change where canonicals point? In other words, how bad of a thing is it to have a canonical tag point to page a for a while, then change it to point to page b? I'm just curious to see how permanent of a decision we are making, and how bad it will be if we screwed up and need to change later. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoreyTisdale0 -
Should I be using rel canonical here?
I am reorganizing the data on my informational site in a drilldown menu. So, here's an example. One the home page are several different items. Let's say you clicked on "Back Problems". Then, you would get a menu that says: Disc problems, Pain relief, paralysis issues, see all back articles. Each of those pages will have a list of articles that suit. Some articles will appear on more than one page. Should I be worried about these pages being partially duplicates of each other? Should I use rel-canonical to make the root page for each section the one that is indexed. I'm thinking no, because I think it would be good to have all of these pages indexed. But then, that's why I'm asking!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Use rel=canonical to save otherwise squandered link juice?
Oftentimes my site has content which I'm not really interested in having included in search engine results. Examples might be a "view cart" or "checkout" page, or old products in the catalog that are no longer available in our system. In the past, I'd blocked those pages from being indexed by using robots.txt or nofollowed links. However, it seems like there is potential link juice that's being lost by removing these from search engine indexes. What if, instead of keeping these pages out of the index completely, I use to reference the home page (http://www.mydomain.com) of the business? That way, even if the pages I don't care about accumulate a few links around the Internet, I'll be capturing the link juice behind the scenes without impacting the customer experience as they browse our site. Is there any downside of doing this, or am I missing any potential reasons why this wouldn't work as expected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cadenzajon1