Can someone help with Canonical?
-
I have a wordpress site that On-Page Grader is saying I don't have Canonical done correctly. Here is the comment.
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.
I have quite a few sites and have never had an issue with this. Can anyone help? I tried installing a plugin but that seems to have made it worse. This is the front page of the site btw.
-
Thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize that would make much of a difference but I corrected the problem. Also, without me doing anything, the Canonical Error is fixed...
-
I'm not sure what's tripping our warning (although that can occasionally be hyperactive), but I do see one problem. You're using the non-www version (which is fine, in theory), but your "Home" link goes to the "www..." version. You're sending Google a mixed signal with this. It doesn't seem to be causing major problems (no "www..." pages are in Google's index for your site), but I'd change the internal link to conform to the non-www default.
The basic problem is that Google and other crawlers (including ours) will keep visiting that "www..." and then get redirects and/or hit the canonical. It creates an odd loop that could waste crawler bandwidth and sends a mixed signal about your intent.
-
I agree with Chris and I would ignore the error/warning. The canonical does not hurt being there on the homepage but in any case it is set correctly.
-
Are you trying to set up canonical for the htttp version and www. version of your site ?
You don't need to set up canonical for your homepage especially if its poinitng towards the page your on.
You can always ignore that point of the on page grader if you feel its not relevant, its a guide not a guarantee.
-
The link is a front page of a website though.
I understand what Canonical is for, but this isn't a duplicated page, its the front page. Im not sure why I would get the above error in On-Page grading. Basically saying the page is grading a B instead of an A because of the above error.
-
More information can be found here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394
Rel=canonical should be in the it should then point to the "original page"
lets use it in an exsample
two pages about a product (lets say a book)
www.exsample.com/book/thisawesomebook
www.exsample.com/book/author/thisawesomebook
Now we don't want duplicate content so we would put a link in the second page as its a bit further from the main page (though you can do it which ever way you like)
so in the head of www.exsample.com/book/author/thisawesomebook we would have
Give Moz some time to re-crawl the page and pick up any changes. I hope that helps clear it up, you can get plugins but its simple enough to do it by hand. Best of luck.
-
What is the URL and what is the canonical tag in your head section?
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
-
Help for 404 error
Is it ok to use hash(#) in URL as right now it is showing 404 error while checking broken links using check my link chrome extension. E.g. http://instafrsh.com/index.php#aboutUs If not, Please suggest how to resolve this issue
On-Page Optimization | | Obbserv0 -
2 Canonical questions
QUESTION 1
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today
I'm working on a site where a canonical link is implemented as That's not the normal format that I am used to, as I would have written it as Is that a problem? QUESTION 2
Why do so many sites these days have a sitewide canonical tag which refers to itself as the canonical?
For example: http://www.site.co.uk/page has a canonical of0 -
How updating a post can influence seo
I have just read this great post from moz blog: http://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor But I haven't found nothing about updating post date. If I edit an old great post (now ranked 2nd after several months in 1st serp position) does it be better if I also update the date of the post in the wordpress post edit page? Thank you very much and sorry for my poor english. Bye, Dario.
On-Page Optimization | | Italianseolover0 -
Internal Duplicate Content/Canonical Issue/ or nothing to worry about
Unfortunately, my developer cannot give me an answer to this so I really do hope someone can help. The homepage of my website is http://www.laddersfree.co.uk however I also have a page http://www.laddersfree.co.uk/index.php that has a page rank and essentially duplicates the home page. Does someone know what this is? Do I need to get my developer to do a 404? It is worrying that he has not come back to me. Thanks Jason
On-Page Optimization | | gymmad0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Can Cascading DropDown HELP improve site architucture?
Our online stores is selling furnace filters. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com We have 4 different qualities furnace filters and each of them are avaible in almost 50 different sizes. My store is setup with almost 200 different products. ( 4 filtres X 50 sizes) None of them have variable. I'm looking for a solution to help customers to find there furnace filter size fast and easy on our HOME page. I find this cascading dropdown option http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/CascadingDropDown/CascadingDropDown.aspx where I wiil setup 3 options to select: filter width filter lenght filter depth Will it be the best options? Now my store is setup with categories and it is not the best solution. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com This was a lots of work to create 200 different products. The reason I did this is because when searching in search engine, vistors will use such keywords: 16x20x4 filter 20x25x2 furnace filter a/c filter 10x20x1 replacement filter online 20x20x1 16x25x5 filter toronto and so on... Must keywords request in search engine will included the furnace filter size. Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050 -
To many links hurting me even though they are helping users
I have a scrabble based site where I function as a anagram solver, scrabble dictionary look up and tons of different word lists. In each of these word lists I link every word to my scrabble dictionary. This has caused Google to index 10018 pages total for my site and over 300 of them have well over 100 links. Many of them contain over 1000 links. I know Google's and SEOMOZ stance that anything over 100 will hurt me. I have always seen the warnings in my dashboard warning me of this but I have simply ignored it. I have posted on this Q and A that I have this issue, but IMO having these links benefit the users in the aspect that they don't have to worry about coping the text and putting it in the search box, they can simply click the link. Some have said if it helps the users then I am good, others have said opposite. I am thinking about removing these links from all these word lists to reduce the links per page. My questions are these. 1. If I remove the links from my page could this possible help me? No harm in trying it out so this is an easy question 2. If I remove the links then I will have over 9000 pages that are indexed with Google that no longer have a link pointing to them, except for the aspect that they are indexed with Google still. Is it going to hurt me if I remove these links and Google no longer sees them linked from my site or anywhere else?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Can someone please help me identify where all these URLS to my homepage are coming from?
Hi. I installed the SEOmoz toolbar for Firefox, and analyzed my home page, then clicked on 'get a full site analysis at Site Explorer'. This is what came up: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.frs-solutions.com%252Fcontent%252Fhome/a!links?src=mb I hope that link works. If not, the URL is www.frs-solutions.com Anyway, there are about 57 different URLS within my site all pointing to my homepage! I have no idea where they are coming from. Can someone with an experienced eye take a quick look and tell me what I might be up against? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | aprilm-1890400