How to use rel="alternate" properly for mobile directory.
-
Hey everyone,
For the URL - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/dakota-alert-dcpa-p/dkdcpa2500.htm - I have the following tags in the header:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/dakota-alert-dcpa-p/dkdcpa2500.htm" />
rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/mobile/Product.aspx?id=37564" />
Yes Google WMT is reading these as duplicate pages with duplicate titles, meta descriptions etc.
How can I fix this? Thanks!
-
Hi there! It looks like both these tags are present on the same URL, your desktop version. The rel="canonical" tag should be implemented on the mobile version of the page instead, and only the rel="alternate" tag should be kept on the desktop versions. This is how you signal the bidirectional, or two-way, relationship to Google. 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
-
Using a 302 redirect for language variants. How should I use the canonical?
Hi there, I have a question regarding the canonical tag. The current setup is like so... www.site.com 302 redirects to.. www.site.com/de/ I want to add canonical tags on every page to avoid duplicate content but I'm not sure about the homepage. Should the canonical URL be www.site.com or www.site.com/de/ ? I'm concerned that I could be about to hurt my ranking. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | zuriwolf
Mitch0 -
Is this a correct use of 302 redirects?
Hi all, here is the situation. A website I'm working on has a small percentage of almost empty pages. Those pages are filled "dynamically" and could have new content in the future, so, instead of 404ing them, we automatically noindex them when they're empty and remove the noindex once they have content again. The problem is that, due to technical issues we can't solve at the moment, some internal links (and URLs listed in sitemaps) to almost empty pages remain live also when pages are noindexed. In order not to waste Google crawler's time, sending it to noindexed pages through those links, someone suggested us to redirect those pages to our homepage with a 302 (not a 301 since they could become indexable again, so it can't be a permanent redirect). We did that, but after some weeks Search Console reported an increase in soft 404s: we checked it and it is 100% related to the 302 implementation. The questions are: is this a correct use of 302 redirects? Is there a better solution we haven't thought about? Maybe is it better to remove 302s and go back to the past situation, since linking to noindexed pages isn't such a big problem? Thank you so much!
Technical SEO | | GabrieleToninelli0 -
"non-WWW" vs "WWW" in Google SERPS and Lost Back Link Connection
A Screaming Frog report indicates that Google is indexing a client's site for both: www and non-www URLs. To me this means that Google is seeing both URLs as different even though the page content is identical. The client has not set up a preferred URL in GWMTs. Google says to do a 301 redirect from the non-preferred domain to the preferred version but I believe there is a way to do this in HTTP Access and an easier solution than canonical.
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en GWMTs also shows that over the past few months this client has lost more than half of their backlinks. (But there are no penalties and the client swears they haven't done anything to be blacklisted in this regard. I'm curious as to whether Google figured out that the entire site was in their index under both "www" and "non-www" and therefore discounted half of the links. Has anyone seen evidence of Google discounting links (both external and internal) due to duplicate content? Thanks for your feedback. Rosemary0 -
Webmaster Tools "Links to your site" history over time?
Is there a way to see a history of the "links to your site"? I've seen a lot of posts here from people say "I just saw a big drop in my numbers." I don't look at this number enough to be that familiar with it. Is there a way to see if Google has suddenly chopped our numbers? I've poked around a little, but not found a method yet. Thanks, Reeves
Technical SEO | | wreevesc0 -
Rel=author: Which Google+ profile do I use (personal profiles or profiles set up under company email domain)?
Since our organization uses Google Business Apps, everyone in our org has a Google account under our company's domain name. When Google+ came out a lot of our employees set up two separate Google+ accounts (one under their work email address and one under their personal email address). Some people use one account more than the other. I'm about to set up rel=author on our blog, but I'm not sure which profiles to link to: personal account, business account or the account the individual uses the most?
Technical SEO | | janrain0 -
Is it OK for a sitemap to appear as a "Top URL" in Google Webmaster?
I'm using Google Webmaster (alongside other tools) to understand how Google is indexing my site. One of the tools is "Content Keywords", where it lists keywords that Google sees as significant for your site. The keywords shown are generally fine, but when I click on an individual word, I am often seeing our sitemap as one of the "Top URLs" that the keyword is found on (our sitemap is at system/sitemap1.xml.gz) - is this OK? Obviously I don't want to add the sitemap URL to robots.txt, but I also want to ensure that 'real' user-focused pages (e.g. our homepage) appear higher in the "Top URLs" list for the keywords, as I'm assuming this is an indicator of how the site is performing in search. Any help appreciated!
Technical SEO | | anilababla0 -
International Websites: rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Hi people, I keep on reading and reading , but I won't get it... 😉 I mean this page: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077&topic=2370587&ctx=topic On the bottom of the page they say: Step 2: Use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" Update the HTML of each URL in the set by adding a set of rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link elements. Include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for every URL in the set, like this: This markup tells Google's algorithm to consider all of these pages as alternate versions of each other. OK! Each URL needs this markup. BUT: Do i need it exactly as written above, or do I have to put in the complete URL of the site, like: The next question is, what happens exactly in the SERPS when I do it like this (an also with Step1 that I haven't copied here)? Google will display the "canonical"-version of the page, but wehen a user from US clicks he will get on http://en-us.example.com/**page.htm **??? I tried to find other sites which use this method, but I haven't found one. Can someone give me an example.website??? Thank you, thank you very much! André
Technical SEO | | waynestock0 -
Will a "blog=example "parameter at the end of my URLs affect google's crawling them?
For example, I'm wondering if www.example.com/blog/blog-post is better than www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example? I'm currently using the www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example structure as our canonical page for content. I'm also wondering, if the parameter doesn't affect crawling, if it would hurt rankings in any way. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Intridea0
