Ecommerce Link Juice and Canonical URLs
-
Hello all. I am optimising an E-Commerce site and I have a questions about Products in several categories & Canonical URL's. Using Magento Platform.
site.com/category1/product1/ ( link from category is site.com/product1/ )
site.com/category2/product1/ ( link from category is site.com/product1/ )
site.com/category2/subcategory1/product1 ( link from category is the same , as is the canonical URL )
site.com/product1/ ( this is where other categories link to )Canonical links for all the above is site.com/category2/subcategory1/product1 which takes care of duplicate content correctly.
I just wonder if we would get more link juice if ALL the links from all categories went to site.com/category2/subcategory1/product1 ( instead of some going to site.com/product1/ )
Thanks in advance
-
Thank you for confirming my thoughts. In the meantime, that's exactly what we've implemented anyway
It didn't seem logical to me either - nice to have a sounding board over here.
-
Why would you canonically link Product pages to the category page? Of course that is going to disappear the product pages. Why not just link from the product pages to category pages with a normal link <a>to increase page authority on the category page?</a>
-
Hey Guys
I'm sure I stumbled across a Q&A about canonically linking product pages to appropriate category pages, the theory being that 25 product pages canonically linking to the relevant category page should increase the authority of the category page. By extension, that means that product pages never show up in SERPS, which I'm not quite so keen on.
I'll be damned if I can find the thread, even with a search engine
Any advice or tales of woe gratefully received.
-
I completely agree. 1 URL is by far the better choice.
-
I still think the better option is to have 1 URL. I was using the root URL for products ( effectively 1 URL ) and not having the category in the URL and my SEO was doing well - BUT I wanted the Categories to be displayed in Google as clickable - so I changed to the canonical method having different URLs with 1 Canonical. Over a couple of months my SEO suffered terribly - some categories in the top 10 down to 20-30 . I have just implemented having 1 URL ( with category in it ) - we will see how we go..
-
Hello Yusuf,
If you have a link to Jon Mueller saying that, instead of someone else saying he did, I would love to go check it out because the statement is in direct opposition to the one on Google's website here, which says:
"Consolidating link signals for the duplicate or similar content. It helps search engines to be able to consolidate the information they have for the individual URLs (such as links to them) on a single, preferred URL. This means that links from other sites to
http://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD
get consolidated with links tohttp://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html
."Notice is says "helps" though. As always, the directive is a "hint" to Google, which has the right to ignore the hint if they want to.
-
Thanks - yes I am actually seeing this first hand.
I used the canonical method - and it is rapidly degrading my SEO . not hugely , but some things that were almost on page 1 are now at the end of page 1 / beginning of page 2. I am currently changing everything to have 1 URL ( with the category this time )
-
Hi Everett,
Thanks for your response.
I also believed that the rel=canonical merge the link profiles but so far all the evidence I've seen suggests that it doesn't.
Firstly - Jon Mueller from Google stated that the rel=canonical tag doesn't merge the link profile. That's talked about here.
http://moz.com/community/q/quick-rel-canonical-link-juice-question
Secondly, if I look at some examples, you'd expect pages with rel=canonical tags to have zero authority etc. reported for page alternatives in Open Site Explorer.
e.g. on the ASOS website there is a link to the men's section which uses a query string parameter.
http://www.asos.com/men/?via=top
The canonical url is
Both report different levels of authority. If the link profiles were merged, would you not expect either the same levels of authority reported or the non-canonical version to report no authority?
I understand that Moz tools don't work like Google so I'd like to hear from someone who can explain this.
Thanks,
Yusuf
-
Yusuf,
I do believe rel canonical tags merge the link profile of all non-canonical URLs to the one canonical URL.
Also, relying on redirects in this case could be problematic for breadcrumbs.
-
Hello Marty,
If you have the opportunity to use only ONE URL, to which you will link from all categories - and which will be the one and only canonical for that product - I would use site.com/product/product1. Note the use of a /product/ directory instead of being off the root. I find that having products in a product directory makes diagnoses of issues (i.e. index count, site:domain.com inurl:product searches, Analytics segmentation...) a lot easier. However, if you want to keep it site.com/product1 then that would be fine as well. It would be preferable to using multiple URLs and relying on 301 redirects or rel canonicals, which are effective band-aids, but band-aids nevertheless. It is better to actually fix the problem, which is products living on multiple URLs.
Of course you're going to still want to either 301 redirect or rel canonical the old ones to your canonical version since the URLs are likely already in Google's system and possibly have external links.
And you should think about what happens to breadcrumbs as well. If a user gets to /product1 from one category vs another, will their breadcrumb change and how will that be done? Is it ok for usability for the breadcrumb on that product page to always reference the canonical category (i.e. Home ---> category 2 ---> category2 ---> product1)? I tend to think so, and this also may help your internal linking be more consistent when Googlebot visits the page.
-
Thanks for your replys - I'm not really asking the question whether it should be a 301 or Canonical - I have the opportunity to make all the links go directly to the correct URL - or to go to the category and use Canonical. ( then there would ony be one actual URL ) - just wondering if that is more beneficial as you would have 4-5 links going to the same product page instead of 1 going to the product page and the rest with Canonical URL's .
So if you have any more ideas...???
-
The canonical is the right way of setting the website up. When we take on an E-commerce client that has products accessible via multiple URL's is to Google which one has the authority, so if you are looking at product X then google it and see which URL Google is giving the authority to, look at the path then canonical all other variations to that path.
-
Hi
I've often wondered about this - whether to use a 301 or leave pages as they are and use the rel=canonical tag.
I would think that a 301 from the duplicate to preferred page would be best. This would mean that any inbound links will pass juice to the preferred page (i.e. site.com/category2/subcategory1/product1). The rel=canonical tag, as far as I know, does not merge the link profile of the duplicate pages.
However, depending on the skill of your developers, other rewrite/redirect rules on your site and your CMS - the rel=canonical might be the only feasible method.
This page explains it very nicely.
http://moz.com/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use
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
-
Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's
An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
What is better? No canonical or two canonicals to different pages?
I have a blogger site that is adding parameters and causing duplicate content. For example: www.mysite.com/?spref=bl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TMI.com
www.mysite.com/?commentPage=1 www.mysite.com/?m=1 www.mysite.com/?m=0 I decided to implement a canonical tag on these pages pointing to the correct version of the page. However, for the parameter ?m=0, the canonical keeps pointing to itself. Ex: www.mysite.com/?m=0 The canonical = www.mysite.com/?m=0 So now I have two canonicals for the same page. My question is if I should leave it, and let Google decide, or completely remove the canonicals from all pages?0 -
Structure: Should an eCommerce blog have main menu links to each of the store category pages?
Hi, Should my eCommerce site's blog have menu links to the store's category pages? (like in the store itself) The meaning is that every blog post page will have links to category pages that are not related and probably weakens the in-text relevant links. The other option is to have menu links only to the blog category pages and in-article links to the relevant store category pages (maybe add menu button "Go to Store"). Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Rewriting URL
I'm doing a major URL rewriting on our site to make the URL more SEO friendly as well as more comfortable and intuitive for our users. Our site has a lot of indexed pages, over 250k. So it will take Google a while to reindex everything. I was thinking that when Google Bot encounters the new URLs, it will probably figure out it's duplicate content with the old URL. At least until it recrawls the old URL and get a 301 directing them to the new URL. This will probably lower the ranking of every page being crawled. Am I right to assume this is what will happen? Or is it fine as long as the old URLs get 301 redirect? If it is indeed a problem, what's the best solution? rel="canonical" on every single page maybe? Another approach? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin0 -
Real impact of canonical links?
I am responsible for 2 e-commerce websites. SEO Moz and Google Web Master tools both inform me regularly that on both sites there are many instances of duplicate titles, headings, decriptions and page content. Obviously from an SEO point of view I am more than a little concerned about this! Out product pages struggle to perform strongly despite the fact that our website is of a decent quality and we are leaders in our field. Our competitors rank above us when they add a product page, whereas we normal flit in between 8-10 or on the 2nd SERP. I know it is hard without viewing the site, but is duplicate content likely to be a strong, leading factor in this? I think it is, but want to put together a business case to spend the cash to sort it out....just need someone confirmation that this is worth sorting as a priority. Here are 2 examples of what I mean: 1) Category pages www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx We have filters on our category page (so the customer can sort products based on their price, colour, size etc.). When filters are used a new URL is generared. www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=0||10 www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=10||20 The content, titles, description is the same although the links are different. Do I need to set up a canonical tag on the page that reads: 2) Product pages Product pages on the websites have different URLs depending on how to arrive on them. You get 1 URL if you navigated to the page via the website navigation, but you get another different URL if you used the website search functionality to find the page. Example: Search link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1/Product1.aspx Navigation link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/12345/category1/Product1.aspx Again, do I need to set up a canonical tag for 1 of these link types so that the link benefit is not shared over 2 pages? Any feedback would be welcome! At the moment the ability to add canonical tags is locked down by our CMS (I know, rubbish!)...so website development would be needed - hence the need for a business case!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
To "Rel canon" or not to "Rel canon" that is the question
Looking for some input on a SEO situation that I'm struggling with. I guess you could say it's a usability vs Google situation. The situation is as follows: On a specific shop (lets say it's selling t-shirts). The products are sorted as follows each t-shit have a master and x number of variants (a color). we have a product listing in this listing all the different colors (variants) are shown. When you click one of the t-shirts (eg: blue) you get redirected to the product master, where some code on the page tells the master that it should change the color selectors to the blue color. This information the page gets from a query string in the URL. Now I could let Google index each URL for each color, and sort it out that way. except for the fact that the text doesn't change at all. Only thing that changes is the product image and that is changed with ajax in such a way that Google, most likely, won't notice that fact. ergo producing "duplicate content" problems. Ok! So I could sort this problem with a "rel canon" but then we are in a situation where the only thing that tells Google that we are talking about a blue t-shirt is the link to the master from the product listing. We end up in a situation where the master is the only one getting indexed, not a problem except for when people come from google directly to the product, I have no way of telling what color the costumer is looking for and hence won't know what image to serve her. Now I could tell my client that they have to write a unique text for each varient but with 100 of thousands of variant combinations this is not realistic ir a real good solution. I kinda need a new idea, any input idea or brain wave would be very welcome. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReneReinholdt0 -
Is this splitting my authority or link juice?
Hi Using seomoz i am getting told that a 302 temporary redirect is occurring on some of my pages for instance. http://www.eco-environments.co.uk/solar-power/ Then redirects here http://www.eco-environments.co.uk/solar-power/default.phuse is this splitting my page authority because of the temporary redirect? I just want to make sure i have fully understood what's happening before i go to the company who designed and developed our site as i am convinced this is hurting my rankings. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nickhoyle10 -
301 Redirect To Corresponding Link No Matter The URL?
Hey guys I have hosting on Host Gator with I believe an apache web server. I need a code to put in the HT ACCESS to redirect all WWW URL's to their corresponding http URL. I haven't been able to get a code to work. For example, http://www.mysite.org/page1.html -> http://mysite.org/page1.html , without having to redirect hundreds of pages individually Here is the format my server uses in the HT ACCESS file for 301 redirects. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.org$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.org
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DustinX
$RewriteRule ^Electric-Pressure-Cookers.html$ "http://mysite.org/Pressure-Cookers.html" [R=301,L] Thanks0