Product page Canonicalization best practice
-
I'm getting duplicate content errors in GWT for product list pages that look like this:
-www.example.com/category-page/product
-www.example.com/category-page/product/?p=2The "p=2" example already has a rel=canonical in place, " Shouldn't the non-canonical pages be using the canonical attribute for the first page rather than the additional product pages?
Thanks!
-
Awesome Reed. Thanks for the hat-tip on Twitter too. I appreciate that. Cheers!
-
Thanks Dana, checked out the blog and video...pinned to my RSS feed.
-
Hi Reed,
I agree with the first part of Marty's answer above, but I disagree with both Marty and Arie regarding what the proper canonical tag should be for the pages in your paginated series. It just so happens that I was studying this very subject last week and Adam Audette released an excellent post on the subject on the RKG blog.
According to Adam, the canonical tags on the pages in your series should be self-referencing. If they aren't, you run the risk of Googlebot thinking that all the content (products, items...if it's an eCommerce site) is just the same as the content on page one of the series, which of course, it isn't.
Here's a link to his most excellent blog post on the subject, which also contains some links to other talks and posts he has given regarding pagination. Pagination is one of his main authority areas:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/video-avoid-pagination-gotchas/03042014/
Hope this helps!
Dana
-
Yes, the canonical should point to the original page. If you have 2 similar pages the canonical of the second page should point to the first page.
I agree with Martin that the rel=next and rel=next is a good solution for pagination as well.
Good luck
-
Your best way of handling that is to canonicalize all pages to a "View All" page for the search engine and use rel="prev" and rel="next" for your "Next" and "Previous" links respectively.
That's the best way to handle pagination if you're going to use canonicals. To answer your question directly though, the paginated pages should not canonical themselves.
Another solution would be to noindex,follow pages 2 - n.
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
-
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Product Listings - is it worth indexing the whole product catalogue?
I'm working on a site that has around 500 product listings. This is for a rental company without any sort of ecommerce platform, so, there's no prices, no adding a product to a cart, etc. Also, there are no different sizing / color options for each product, so each product is the canonical version. After some restructuring, we're starting to see a lot of 404s and just some general mess. I have a couple of thoughts. My first is to just noindex each product. We hardly get any direct traffic to an individual product page, and if they land anywhere related to products, it's usually a category page. If I noindex the products, I don't have to worry about the 404s. My second is to implement the rel=canonical tag on each product to correspond to its primary category. While this is sort of liberal use of the canonical tag, I'm thinking that it could help drive more organic traffic to the category pages. Does anyone have any insight or thoughts on this? Thank you very much!
Technical SEO | | Savage-Solutions0 -
Best Practice - Disavow tool for non-canonical domain, 301 Redirect
The Situation: We submitted to the Disavow tool for a client who (we think) had an algorithmic penalty because of their backlink profile. However, their domain is non-canonical. We only had access to http://clientswebsite.com in Webmaster Tools, so we only submitted the disavow.txt for that domain. Also, we have been recommending (for months - pre disavow) they redirect from http://clientswebsite.com to http://www.clientswebsite.com, but aren't sure how to move forward because of the already submitted disavow for the non-www site. 1.) If we redirect to www. will the submitted disavow transfer or follow the redirect? 2.) If not, can we simply re-submit the disavow for the www. domain before or after we redirect? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | thebenro0 -
Page disappeared from Google index. Google cache shows page is being redirected.
My URL is: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse Hi. The week before last, my top Converse page went missing from the Google index. When I "fetch as Googlebot" I am able to get the page and "submit" it to the index. I have done this several times and still cannot get the page to show up. When I look at the Google cache of the page, it comes up with a different page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse shows: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/pop-in-olivia-kim Back story: As far as I know we have never redirected the Converse page to the Pop-In page. However the reverse may be true. We ran a Converse based Pop-In campaign but that used the Converse page and not the regular Pop-In page. Though the page comes back with a 200 status, it looks like Google thinks the page is being redirected. We were ranking #4 for "converse" - monthly searches = 550,000. My SEO traffic for the page has tanked since it has gone missing. Any help would be much appreciated. Stephan
Technical SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
Product Level 301 Redirects Best Practice
When creating a 301 mapping file for product pages, what is best practice
Technical SEO | | Bucktown
for which version of the URL to redirect to? Base directory or one
subdirectory/category path. Example Old URL: www.example.com/clothing/pants/blue-pants-123 Which of the following should be the new target URL: www.example.com/apparel/pants/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/blue-apparel/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/collections/spring-collection/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/blue-pants-123 This is assuming the canonical tag will be www.example.com/blue-pants-123. Also, if www.example.com/blue-pants-123 cannot be reached via site
navigation would it be detrimental to make that the target URL if Google
cannot crawl that naturally? Thanks0 -
Best Practices to Choosing a Domain Name
I have the following list of domains to choose from: http://www.xxx.net/ http://www.xxx.uk/ www.es-xxx.com Which of these domain structures seem the best, or are all 3 questionable?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
Duplicate Page Content Lists the same page twice?
When checking my crawl diagnostics this morning I see that I have the error Duplicate page content. It lists the exact same url twice though and I don't understand how to fix this. It's also listed under duplicate page title. Personal Assistant | Virtual Assistant | Charlotte, NC http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/110 Personal Assistant | Virtual Assistant | Charlotte, NC http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/110 Does this have anything to do with a 301 redirect here? Why does it have http;// twice? Thanks all! | http://www.charlottepersonalassistant.com/ | http://http://charlottepersonalassistant.com/ |
Technical SEO | | eidna220