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
-
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Moz Pro | | JoshMcLean0 -
Are there any free (or paid) tools available online that download Meta Tags for ALL URL's of a website?
Hi, I am looking to run an On-Site audit for a website and I'm wondering if there are any tools available online that take the existing Meta Tags on ALL pages of a website and downloads them to a .CSV or .XLS. Would need Meta Title and Meta Description for all pages at the very least. Any suggestions are appreciated - looking for Free or Paid options. Thanks.
Moz Pro | | SEO5Team0 -
No more than one canonical url Tag.
I just got the "no more than one canonical url TAG" for this page http://www.vacuumadvisers.com/1/electrolux-ultra-active-deep-clean-bagless-canister-vacuum-cleaner-review. I have no idea how to Fix that. Tried google it but none for Tag in particular. PS. I have changed the Theme recently therefore so did the URL Anyone?
Moz Pro | | bishop230 -
Site Explorer shows links as followable but they have nofollow tags
Hello, I am looking at site explorer and sites linking to my site moneyfact.co.uk. I've got thousands of links showing as 'followable' but when i check them they have rel="nofollow" tags. e.g: http://www.dianomioffers.co.uk/partner/moneyfacts.co.uk/brochures.epl?partner=93&partner_id=93&partner_variant_id=33 Why would they show as followable when the links are nofollowed? Thanks Steve
Moz Pro | | SteveBrumpton0 -
The CSV export seems to have some linebreaks in it sometimes (e.g. in title column). That breaks excel import... any tips?
Example: http://www.unav.es/alumni/actividades/enlaces.html,"Alumni | Agrupaciones territoriales | Club de montaña Alumni | Universidad de Navarra.",Kompass,39,81,2,10356,Yes,No,External,http://www.kompass.de/http://wikipedia.msn.de/wiki/Kompass_Karten, MSN Wikipedia - Kompass Karten,www.kompass.at,26,78,1,15883,No,No,External,http://www.kompass.de/
Moz Pro | | mindshape0 -
Why aren't canonical tags reducing duplicate page title/content?
We have canonical tags set up for a feature page on one of our sites. This site has an image gallery controlled by javascript. To aid the user experience the image can also be specified by a URL parameter (the javascript also uses this URL to fetch the images). The SEOMoz report complains that the links to these images have duplicate page titles and content. To try and combat this we set canonical tags to point only to the original page, without the slideshow parameter. e.g. http://www.example.com/feature-page/ http://www.example.com/feature-page/?slideshow=1 -> canonical tag set to http://www.example.com/feature-page/ http://www.example.com/feature-page/?slideshow=2 -> canonical tag set to http://www.example.com/feature-page/ The latest SEOMoz report has come back and the errors still exist. What can we do to remove these error messages? Thanks
Moz Pro | | TJSSEO1 -
Will canonical tag get rid of duplicate page title errors?
I have a directory on my website, paginated in groups of 10. On page 2 of the results, the title tag is the same as the first page, as it is on the 3rd page and so on. This is giving me duplicate page title errors. If i use rel=canonical tags on the subsequent pages and href the first page of my results, will my duplicate page title warnings go away? thanks.
Moz Pro | | fourthdimensioninc0 -
Can overly dynamic URLs be overcome with canonical meta tags?
I tried searching for questions regarding dynamic URLs and canonical tags, but I couldn't find anything s hopefully this hasn't been covered. There are a large number of overly dynamic URLs reported in our site crawl (>7,000). I haven't looked at each of these, but most of these either have a canonical meta tag or have are indicated as FOLLOW, NO INDEX pages. Will these be enough to overcome any negative SEO impact that may come from overly dynamic URLs? We are down to almost 0 critical errors and this is now the biggest problem reported by the site crawl after too many on page links.
Moz Pro | | afmaury0