Canconical tag on site with multiple URL links but only one set of pages
-
We have a site www.mezfloor.com which has a number of Url's pointing at one site. As the url's have been in use for many years there are links from many sources include good old fashioned hard copy advertising. We have now decided that it would be better to try to start porting all sources to the .co.uk version and get that listing as the prime/master site.
A couple of days ago I went through and used canonical tags on all the pages thinking that would set the priority and that would also strengthen the page in terms of trust due to the reduced duplication. However when I went to scan the site in MOZ the warning that the page redirects came up and I am beginning to think that I need to remove all these canonical tags so that search engines do not get into a confused spiral where we loose the little page rank we have.
Is there a way that I can redirect everything except the target URL without setting up a separate master site just for all the other pages to point at.
-
Yes, it is good when there is a clear Google guideline to follow. I'm happy for your quick win!
-
Thanks
I am pleased I do not have to go through the whole site again and even more pleased as I have a number of other sites to work on.These could certainly do with a bit of a boost and this is a quick win.
-
So you want to put a canonical of www.b.co.uk/index.html on a page that can be reached via www.b.co.uk/index.html and you are worried that it will become a loop?
Don't worry. Google specifically thought about the possibility that people might use self-referential canonicals (SEO plugins do it all the time) and engineered it so that this does not cause a loop. (See Matt Cutts on the topic.)
I myself inherited some ugly urls for which I made nice user-friendly aliases and I tagged those pages with the friendly canonical. There were no problems and the pages started doing much better. (In my case it was not cross-domain, but cross-domain canonicals are supposedly supported and in fact I have succesfully used them in other situations.)
-
Hi thanks for the response
The issue is we have one set of pages on a server which is addressed through several different url's.
I never got involved in the server side of things so I do not know if that was by redirects at the route URL. Just maybe I am trying to add canonical links that just are not required.
If I have www.a.co.uk/index.html, www.a.com/index.html, www.b.co.uk/index.html and want them all to point to www.b.co.uk/index.html. As index.html is on the server once then my thought was that I should have a canonical link to that page from within that page with the www.b.co.uk/index.html as the route. This may be right or wrong but there is the risk that a spider stops when it gets to the link and goes to the start of the same page, again and again in a loop.
You are of course right that the Google bot should be OK with this but the Moz bot stopped in its tracks and asked if I wanted the page indexed so I had to do this manually.
Gut feel says I should remove the links for now but need to understand what we did server side. Gut feel maybe wrong and I would prefer to do the right thing!
-
Okay you lost me a little but let me see If I can help.
First off the canonical tag - Its fantastic for duplicate content (even across other sites) now so good if you don't have duplicate content.
301's - It's very similar to above can work well with duplicate content but not essential. Now you can 301 a few pages into one page so if a user types a URL in (or even has it as a bookmark etc.) the will land on the page you want. its normally a good idea to 301 into similar pages to you don't get users thinking they are going to buy (e.g.) a pair of boots and land on a page about t-shirts.
Google getting lost - Don't worry about Google getting lost, if a user can get around so can Google, plan plan and plan again if you plan it all out (you can even draw flow diagrams) so you know where its all going to and from until you are happy. You can also get someone who doesn't know your site to test it see if they get lost.
Hope that background helps a bit, you lost me here-
"Is there a way that I can redirect everything except the target URL without setting up a separate master site just for all the other pages to point at."
Why can't you redirect all your pages to the target URL ?
One helpful tool I recommend is screaming frog it can help you pick up redirects 404 etc.
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 I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
How to Break Up a Page with Too Many Links
My client has a live page with 100+ links subdivided into 10 categories that each have great potential keyword targeting opportunities. I'd like to improve this page and my intuition is to split it into 11 pages, one page with links to all the others and a bit of content about each. Here's an example of the potential IA: Dog Rescue Groups
Technical SEO | | elenarox
Golden Retriever Rescue - description
Poodle Rescue - description
Cocker Spaniel Rescue - description
Poodle Rescue - description
Labrador Retriever Rescue - description
etc. --------- Golden Retriever Rescue
Link 1 - description
Link 2 - description
Link 3 - description Is this a good idea and will I see a big traffic drop overall at first? Also, these are all internal links, not external.0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Google is somehow linking my two sites that aren't linked! HELP
Good Morning... In my Google webmaster account it is showing an increase of backlinks between one site i own to the other.... This should not happen, as there are no links from one site to the other. I have thoroughly checked many pages on the new site to see if i can find a backlink, but i can't. Does anyone know why this is showing like this (google now shows 50,000 links from one site to the other).. Can someone please take a look and see if you can find any link from one to the other... original site : http://goo.gl/JgK1e new site : http://goo.gl/Jb4ng Please let me know why you guys think this is happening or if you were actually able to find a link on the new site pointing back to the old site... thanks a lot
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
External Links on a Front Page
Does anyone have any links to information about external links on a front page ? I am advising a client that this is not the best idea and that they could be put in a different place but can't find any proof of this.
Technical SEO | | marcelo-2753980 -
Can I use canonical tags to merge property map pages and availability pages to their counterpart overview pages?
I have a property website, for each property are 4-5 tabs each with their own URL, these pages include the overview page which is content rich, and auxilliary pages such as maps, availability, can I use a canonical tag to merge the tabs with very little content to their corresponding overview page which is content rich? I.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview This page has tabs for map, town info, availability which all have their own url i.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/map
Technical SEO | | assertive-media
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/towninfo Because these auxilary pages do not contain much content can I place a canonical tag in them pointing back to the content rich overview page at www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview?0