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
-
Yeah, I'd really tackle this error first, as the other one could be a false alarm. It sounds like you've got multiple canonical tags on a single page, which Google can't interpret very well (and that might just ignore it or use the wrong one). This often indicates that your CMS is double-placing tags and could signal broader problems.
-
Since the error message you get is "no more than one canonical URL tag," I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the affected pages have more than one canonical.
You can check this by looking at the source code of the page (which you can do by going into the menu of whatever browser you are using and choosing "page source" or "view source"- it is different in different browsers- look around or use the browser's help feature) and doing a search for rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>"; this should only appear once. If it appears more than once, remove the ones you don't want.
The canonical should be the URL of the page that you want Google to see as the one to index and return in results. For example, if you are using canonicals because you have tracking codes appended to a URL and that creates the appearance of duplicate content, use the URL without the codes as the canonical one.
Just remember that when you put a canonical URL on a page, you are telling Google to ignore the actual URL of that page and consider it to be the canonical URL instead.
-
I will try and find out all of this information... Just give me a bit of time to figure it out. Thanks for being helpful.. I'm loving moz to death! It's a great community
-
First don't worry we are here for you! Second to me "Rel=" is one of the more misunderstood tools and there are a lot of questions surrounding it's implementation. Here are a few reference points to learn from as well.
- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
- http://moz.com/community/q/fixing-appropriate-use-of-rel-canonical
- http://www.webceo.com/blog/how-to-use-relcanonical-properly/
- Is there an Advantage of using Rel=”canonical” over 301 redirect? By Matt Cutts
Ok so first how are you currently using the tag? Could you post a screenshot or code example as well as a link to the site? Basically you want to make sure that you are using the Tag as a way to deal with duplicate or similar pages as a way to tell Search Engines what the master version of the page is. In my opinion I would try very hard to avoid dupes and normalize URLs in the first place, meaning the tag is more of a last resort option after you have exhausted other methods. Also there are so many ways a Rel="canonical" can go wrong so seeing how your implementing it would help. So try to let us see how your using it as that would help me give a more targeted solution.
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
-
Can cross domain canonicals help with international SEO when using ccTLDs?
Hello. My question is:** Can cross domain canonicals help with international SEO when using ccTLDs and a gTLD - and the gTLD is much more authoritative to begin with? ** I appreciate this is a very nuanced subject so below is a detailed explanation of my current approach, problem, and proposed solutions I am considering testing. Thanks for the taking the time to read this far! The Current setup Multiple ccTLD such as mysite.com (US), mysite.fr (FR), mysite.de (DE). Each TLD can have multiple languages - indeed each site has content in English as well as the native language. So mysite.fr (defaults to french) and mysite.fr/en-fr is the same page but in English. Mysite.com is an older and more established domain with existing organic traffic. Each language variant of each domain has a sitemap that is individually submitted to Google Search Console and is linked from the of each page. So: mysite.fr/a-propos (about us) links to mysite.com/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in French. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc) mysite.fr/en-fr/about-us links to mysite.com/en-fr/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in English. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc). There is more English content on the site as a whole so the English version of the sitemap is always bigger at the moment. Every page on every site has two lists of links in the footer. The first list is of links to every other ccTLD available so a user can easily switch between the French site and the German site if they should want to. Where possible this links directly to the corresponding piece of content on the alternative ccTLD, where it isn’t possible it just links to the homepage. The second list of links is essentially just links to the same piece of content in the other languages available on that domain. Mysite.com has its international targeting in Google Search console set to the US. The problems The biggest problem is that we didn’t consider properly how we would need to start from scratch with each new ccTLD so although each domain has a reasonable amount of content they only receive a tiny proportion of the traffic that mysite.com achieves. Presumably this is because of a standing start with regards to domain authority. The second problem is that, despite hreflang, mysite.com still outranks the other ccTLDs for brand name keywords. I guess this is understandable given the mismatch of DA. This is based on looking at search results via the Google AdWords Ad Preview tool and changing language, location, and domain. Solutions So the first solution is probably the most obvious and that is to move all the ccTLDs into a subfolder structure on the mysite.com site structure and 301 all the old ccTLD links. This isn’t really an ideal solution for a number of reasons, so I’m trying to explore some alternative possible routes to explore that might help the situation. The first thing that came to mind was to use cross-domain canonicals: Essentially this would be creating locale specific subfolders on mysite.com and duplicating the ccTLD sites in there, but using a cross-domain canonical to tell Google to index the ccTLD url instead of the locale-subfolder url. For example: mysite.com/fr-fr has a canonical of mysite.fr
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatello
mysite.com/fr-fr/a-propos has a canonical of mysite.fr/a-propos Then I would change the links in the mysite.com footer so that they wouldn’t point at the ccTLD URL but at the sub-folder URL so that Google would crawl the content on the stronger domain before indexing the ccTLD domain version of the URL. Is this worth exploring with a test, or am I mad for even considering it? The alternative that came to my mind was to do essentially the same thing but use a 301 to redirect from mysite.com/fr-fr to mysite.fr. My question is around whether either of these suggestions might be worth testing, or am I completely barking up the wrong tree and liable to do more harm than good?0 -
Absolute vs. Relative Canonical Links
Hi Moz Community, I have a client using relative links for their canonicals (vs. absolute) Google appears to be following this just fine, but bing, etc. are still sending organic traffic to the non-canonical links. It's a drupal setup. Anyone have advice? Should I recommend that all canonical links be absolute? They are strapped for resources, so this would be a PITA if it won't make a difference. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpleSearch1 -
Pagination Tag and Canonical
Once and for all - I would really like to get a few opinions regarding what is the best method working for you. For most of the all timers in here there's no need to introduce the pagination tag. The big question for me is regarding the canonical tag in those case. There are 2 options, as far as I consider: Options 1 will be implementing canonical tag directing to the main category page: For instance: example.com/shoes example.com/shoes?page=2 example.com/shoes?page=3 In this case all the three URL's will direct to the main category which is example.com/shoes Option 2 - using self-referral canonical for every page. In this case - example.com/shoes?page=2 will direct its canonical tag to example.com/shoes?page=2 and so on. What's the logic behind this? To make sure there are no floating pages onsite. If I'll use canonical that directs to the main category (option 1) then these pages won't get indexed and techniclly there won't be any indexed links to these pages. Your opinion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoperad0 -
Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA
Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Rel=canonical
My website is built around a template, the hosting site say I can only add code into the body of the webpage not the header, will this be ok for rel=canonical If it is my next question is redundant but as there is only one place to put it which urls do I need to place in the code http://domain.com, www.domain.com or http://www.domain.com the /default.asp option for my website does not seem to exist, so I guess is not relevant thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | singingtelegramsuk0 -
Canonical Issue need hep
Hi Is my site has any issue with duplicate pages within the site , have i define my canonical tag properly , can any one advise please help. childrensfunkyfurniture.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Using rel=alternate hreflang element on ccTLDs
We have multilingual websites with some content variations but 60% of the content on site remains the same. Is it still advisable to use:rel=alternate hreflang option on ccTLDs when ccTLDs are in itself strong signal for Google to display result in respective countries 1. example.com 2. example.co.uk 3. example.co.jp 4. example.de
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Any known impact for using a JS onload event
Has anyone experienced any negative experiences using a JS onload event to show a particular tab opened to organic visitors vs front door traffic? Any other thoughts on the subject are indeed appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0