Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
-
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are.
Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
-
Dirk
Thank you for your response it is very helpful.
-
With rel next/previous you ask Google to consider all the pages with these tags to be considered as one page
With a canonical you indicate that the page is a duplicate (or variation) of the canonical url.Your developers are right - if you put the first page as canonical for the subsequent pages your are basically asking Google to ignore the 2nd, 3rd,... pages which is in conflict with rel next/previous.
It is possible to combine both canonical & rel next/previous - but not in the way as your SEO company is suggesting. Example from Google:
The canonical in this case is used to strip the sessionid which could be a cause for duplicate content.
Please not that if your category pages are split over a lot of pages (like 100) - the rel / next previous stops making sense. In that case it's probably better to focus on optimising the first page & put a "noindex/follow" on the subsequent pages.
Dirk
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
-
Is it better to create more pages of content or expand on current pages of content?
I am assuming that one way of improving the rankings of current pages will be to create more content on the keywords used... should this be an expansion of the content on current pages I am optimising for a keyword or is it better to keep creating new pages and if we are creating new pages is it best to use an extension of the keyword on the new page – for example if we are optimising one page for ‘does voltage optimisation work’ would it then be worth creating a page optimised for ‘does voltage optimisation work in hotels’ for example and so on? I am guessing maybe both might help, this is just a question I have had from one of my clients.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSI1 -
Removing old URLs that are being used for my on page optimization?
Is there a way to remove old URL's that are still being used for my keywords for my on page optimization? They are giving me grades of F since they no longer exist and if I change the URL to the current one, the grade becomes an A, but they are still showing after the new crawl.
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
Moving Top rank Page urls off my Home page and nesting them on one page? Good idea?
I am basically trying to cut down the amount of links on my home page to make it less eye boggling and move stuff around. So i have of my Urls on my home page that lead to pages that rank very well within google. My questions is can i remove those urls to a separate page to group them together and then showcase that one link to that page on my home page. Is that a good idea or i am going to loose my link juice and position in search? The physical urls on those pages wont change at all.
On-Page Optimization | | Dante130 -
How about this "onpage overoptimisation" everybody is talking about? Are the on-page optimisation reports still to be used?
Are the on-page optimisation reports still to be used? If we do check all factors we risk penalization because of latest Panda update?
On-Page Optimization | | MugurCosminFrunzetti0 -
I built a website on magentogo - IrisScottPrints.com. The seomoz crawl report states 301 rel canonical crawl notices. What if anything should I change?
Wondering if I should remove "IRIS SCOTT PRINTS |" from all the title tags and/or change the url structure of the pages, to not include the breadcrumbs... I don't really understand the whole rel canonical structure thing. Also lots of errors on page title too long - does that really matter? Lots of faith in everyone here. Thanks in advance. Marcia
On-Page Optimization | | RedTrout0 -
Use of
Hi Everyone, Encountered this NOHTMLINDEX tag within the section of a website and I am not really sure how it affects the performance of the website and its use. This meta robots tag has been used on numerous pages like the home page, content pages and forum threads. Is it good to keep it there or should it be removed and why? Thanks in advance! Steve
On-Page Optimization | | sjcbayona-412180 -
Can bad text URLs hurt pages?
If you have some pages that contain plain text URLs (not anchored links) that used to be good URLs, but are now bad, either because the website shut down or because it has been acquired by someone else and is now parked (or worse) - are those URLs enough to cause quality problems? For example: This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net These aren't the only ones. And yes, I know I should fix them, but there are probably 10,000 pages like it. I will fix them, but its not something I can do in a few minutes. (this one is easy to fix programmatically, but others are a lot more complex) So my question is: do you have actual experience that these are bad enough to cause ranking problems (making them low quality)
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0 -
Can u suggest me good one page optimization tool for wordpress based websites?
Can u suggest me good one page optimization tool for wordpress based websites?
On-Page Optimization | | dineshameh0