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
-
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
Canonical Rel .uk and .au to .com site?
Hi guys, we have a client whose main site is .com but who has a .co.uk and a com.au site promoting the same company/brand. Each site is verified locally with a local address and phone but when we create content for the sites that is universal, should I rel=canonical those pages on the .co.uk and .com.au sites to the .com site? I saw a post from Dr. Pete that suggests I should as he outlines pretty closely the situation we're in: "The ideal use of cross-domain rel=canonical would be a situation where multiple sites owned by the same entity share content, and that content is useful to the users of each individual site." Thanks in advance for your insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wcbuckner0 -
Dealing with Redirects and iFrames - getting "product login" pages to rank
One of our most popular products has a very authoritative product page, which is great for marketing purposes, but not so much for current users. When current users search for "product x login" or "product x sign in", instead of getting to the login page, they see the product page - it adds a couple of clicks to their experience, which is not what we want. One of the problems is that the actual login page has barely any content, and the content that it does carry is wrapped around <iframes>. Due to political and security reasons, the web team is reluctant to make any changes to the page, and one of their arguments is that the login page actually ranks #1 for a few other products (at our company, the majority of logins originate from the same domain). </iframes> To add to the challenge - queries that do return the login page as #1 result (for some of our other products) actually do not reference the sign-in domain, but our old domain, which is now a 301 redirect to the sign-in domain. To make that clear - **Google is displaying the origin domain in SERPs, instead of displaying the destination domain. ** The question is - how do we get this popular product's login page to rank higher than the product page for "login" / "sign in" queries? I'm not even sure where we should point links to at this point - the actual sign in domain or the origin domain? I have the redirect chains and domain authority for all of the pages involved, including a few of our major competitors (who follow the same login format), and will be happy to share it privately with a Moz expert. I'd prefer not to make any more information publicly available, so please reach out via private message if you think you can help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leosaraceni0 -
Appropriate use of rel canonical
Hey Guys,I'm a bit stuck. My on-page grade indicated the following two issues and I need to find how how to fix both issues.If you have a solution, could you please let me know how to address these issues? It's all a bit intimidating at the moment!!Thank you so much..****************************************************************************************************************************************Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation: 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. No More Than One Canonical URL Tag The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag. Recommendation: Remove all but a single canonical URL tag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StoryScout1 -
SEO & Magento Multistore - I have been asked if "duplicatiing" a magento stor using its "Multistore" functionality will cause both to be picked up as duplicate content, can anybody help?
Hello all. I have been asked what the consequences of using Magento's "multistore" functionality are if we were to duplicate our entire magento store and place it on a secondary domain... The simple answer which comes to my mind is that it will be a flagged as duplicate content. However, is this still the case if the site were placed in a different country? The original being the UK the copy being Ireland (both English speaking) How would Google.co.uk & Google.ie treat these stores? Hope this is clear... our site is http://www.tower-health.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TowerHealth0 -
"site" operator and pages
Hi folks, We are having trouble in indexing, We have certain pages which are not coming in results when I am using the site operator in Google. for e.g. : sitename.com/widgets/red They are not showing any link results in Google webmaster tools too. But the pages which only linked through them are displaying in results when I am using site operator. for e.g: sitename.com/widgets/red/large We are redirecting some of the search which are close or exact match to the respective pages for e.g: sitename.com/search/red --> sitename.com/widgets/red We are fluctuating on rankings too in google serps form top ppositions to no where, for sitename.com/widgets/red and most of the times when google shows sitename.com/search/red instead of itename.com/widgets/red. Can you please put a light on this issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semshah1430 -
Canonical tag question
Suppose a site has two pages ( Page A ) and Page B. Both of them have pagerank, but duplicate content. The page A is ranked for keyword "seo india" and page B is ranked for keyword "seo services". If i implement canonical tag on page B, does 1. The pagerank of page B will be transfered to Page A ? 2. Does the site A now ranks for keyword "seo servicies " ( for which Page B was ranking earlier )
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Rel="prev" and view all question
Okay, I've read the posts by Google about the new prev, next tags and the suggestion for using a view all option. I've also read the posts here on SEOMoz on the topic but none of them quite address what we have. First, Some of our main categories are very large (over 6000 pieces of jewelry) so a view all option would take forever to load be completely useless to a visitor. Second, our category home pages provide (here's an example😞 A description of the category with links to important sections and articles A row of new items A dozen of the popular items from the category. Links to related articles if applicable. So we have a real category home page with content instead of just categories that start immediately with pages of product. Should we set the canonical url for all of the browse pages to the main category page, create a view all page or just use the next and previous rel tags with the category home pages as the first in the series?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0