Is it important to have a Rel-Canonical tag on every webpage?
-
Our website just had its first crawl test and about 90% of the pages have the tag.
-
Sean
It's not really necessary to use canonical url's. If you are sure that every piece of content on your site is available on a unique url you don't need to implement them.
It doesn't hurt having them either. Using canonical url's (if implemented properly) can help to avoid duplicate content issues. Like Patrick mentioned, having canonicals doesn't imply that no duplicate content issues exist (I've seen sites where the canonical url is always equal to the url - which renders them completely useless)
Crawl tools like Screaming Frog are the best option to check if you need canonicals, and if you have them, to check if they are properly implemented.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Sean
Yes, this is important, but make sure the canonical tags are implemented correctly and pointing to the right page. Just because pages have canonical tags, doesn't mean they are correct.
You can use tools like Moz or ScreamingFrog to check.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Yes, important. Any reason you wouldn't? Which pages don't?
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
-
Duplicate Content & Rel Canonical Tag not working
I'm really questioning the legitimacy of the duplicate content flags with moz. I'm building a website that sells home decor products and a lot of the pages are similar in structure (As would be expected with a store that sells thousands of individual products). It seems a little overkill to me to flag the following pages as duplicate content. They have different urls, titles, h1, h2, and h3 tages, different meta tags, etc. Right now, it's saying that the following have duplicate page content: http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com
Moz Pro | | cp_web
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x6 Any ideas? Also, it seems like it's not honoring the rel-canonical tag. It keeps saying that pages with a rel canonical tag are duplicates when some of the urls that it's flagging shouldn't even be indexed because of the canonical tag. The "pi" in the query string should not be indexed! http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=10
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=9
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=1
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=2
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=40 -
H1 tag Audit & Image Alt Tag Audit Tools
Hi Mozzers, Anyone know of a good FREE tool that has no limits to use to scrape my site for H1 tags & image alt tags by page? Ideally it would produce a report with a list of page URLs, corresponding H1 tags and each image alt tag on each page. Anyone? Bueller?
Moz Pro | | dsinger0 -
Spammy Directories Using Title Meta-Tag For Link
I've been noticing a growing amount of spammy directories using my title Meta-Tag to create a link back to my site. Since my title uses competitive keywords, these external links on spammy directories look over optimized and I fear an algo penalty might get triggered. Should I be concerned and what can I do?
Moz Pro | | alrockn0 -
Does Moz recognize rel next prev tags? Magento question
Howdy Mozzers! We are running a store in magento where we have many products in each category. Hence view all for category pages is not an option. We have applied rel next prev tags to our paginated pages in the following manner Example for page 2 in a category: The issue we are facing is that Moz suggests www.domain.com/category and www.domain.com/category?p=1 as duplicates, even though rel next prev tags are implemented. 1. Does nel next prev consolidate link juice?
Moz Pro | | MozAddict
2. Does Moz recognize the tags?
3. Will this work for us or should we implement canonical tags as well?0 -
Seomoz duplicate rel="next" pages
Hello my page has this Although with seomoz crawl it says that this pages has duplicate titles. If my blog has 25 pages, i have according seomoz 25 duplicate titles. Can someone tell me if this is correct or if the seomoz crawl cannot recognize rel="next" or if there is another better way to tell google when there a pages generated from the blog that as the same title Should i ignore these seomoz errors thank you,
Moz Pro | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Canonical Question
On one of my sites I have 61 notices for Rel Canonical. Is it bad to have these or is this just something that's informative?
Moz Pro | | kadesmith0 -
Is there a recommended format when placing a business address on a webpage?
Hi All, I ask the question as I was trying to GeoTarget tool which happened to not recognise a business address I place in the footer on one of my sites. The tool states that including the address on page helps the search engines identify your location, so I'm curious whether a specific format works best when optimizing for local search? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | davebrown19750 -
Title tag on sitemap.xml
The SEO moz is showing an error on one of the sites within my SE Moz account campaign under Crawl Diagnostics: Title tag missing or empty. No problem here but the file associated with this issue is sitemap.xml and that just dose't look right as as far as I know xml files are title tag free. I've searched around and i've been able only to confirm my initial thought that sitemap.xml dose't use a title tag .. like any other xml. is this an issue ? (the error that is) or i should let it slide. can it be fixed ? if yes, how ? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | eyepaq1