On-Page Report Card, rel canonical
-
My site has the rel canonical tags set up for it. The developers say that it is set up correctly. Looking at the source code myself, it looks (to my untutored eyes) to be set up correctly. However, on the On Page Report Card for every page I have checked, it says that it doesn't point to the right page. I'd really like to change all my 'B's to 'A's, but I simply can't see what the issue is.
-
Thanks Ryan. So apparently it is OK to have relative links, as long as they are done correctly. My developers insist that they HAVE done them correctly, but SEOmoz flags it anyway because for all it knows, the base link may not have been set to the right location. I'm going to see if I can get the URLs changed to absolute.
-
It's in the code so your developer would have to do it, from Google's Guide:
Can the link be relative or absolute?
The rel="canonical" attribute can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
-
Hey James,
Not sure exactly how your site is organized but it seems like you should be able to resolve the issue using 301 direction instead of rel canonicals.
Sameer
-
1. I'm not sure how I would do that, so I would have to get the developers to do it.
2. I'm not sure if that would fix the issue
3. While it would be nice to have 'A's showing for the report cards, it isn't really essential if there isn't really a problem - and if this IS what is causing us to get dinged I'm not sure that it is truly a problem on my site, or just a limitation in the 'report card'.
-
Trying making the absolute URL, i.e. "http://www.mysite.com/category/9-Irons" as your href instead of "/category/9-Irons" in the rel="canonical" link tag.
-
Let's say that I sell golfing supplies and have the category "9-Irons". On that category page, the source code would say:
<link rel="canonical" href="[/category/9-Irons](view-source:http://www.breakoutbras.com/category/Nursing-Bras)" /> If I enter the keyword "9 Irons" into SEOmoz, and put the URL as: http://www.mysite.com/category/9-Irons I get dinged for having the wrong canonical reference.
-
Hi James. Lets say you have 15 pages that are the canonical pages and the 35 pages that are variations (alphabetically sorted, price sorted, whatnot). If those non-canonical 35 pages are being graded they're not going to have a rel=canonical that lines up because they're not the canonical page. The on page report card is only looking to match the URL you entered into the SEOmoz system and the tag that you have on your page. Is that what's happening in your situation?
I doubt it, but just in case you missed it, the explanation from On Page Report Card: If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.
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
-
Should summary pages have the rel canonical set to the full article?
My site has tons of summary pages, Whether for a PDF download, a landing page or for an article. There is a summary page, that explains the asset and contains a link to the actual asset. My question is that if the summary page is just summary of an article with a "click here to read full article" button, Should I set the rel canonical on the summary page to go to the full article? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Autoboof0 -
How to make my good sub-page rank ahead of my generic home page?
I have an ecommerce site for the clothes drying racks my family business makes, and it sells a few other laundry items also. It's about 5 years old. We used to rank on the first page for basic phrases like "clothes drying rack" and "umbrella clothesline". About 1.5 years ago we fell hard in the rankings. Since then "umbrella clothesline" has moved back to the first page, but "clothes drying rack" is stuck on the 3rd page and always with the result being the generic homepage instead of the good sub-page (which used to rank on the first page) that really shows-n-tells about our drying rack. Here are the three pages I am talking about. Home page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/ Drying rack page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/clothes-drying-rack-main.html and umbrella clothesline page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/umbrella-clotheslines.html Any ideas on how to get the drying rack page to start ranking well again? (hopefully better than the generic homepage ranks) A little technical background: the Moz campaign on this site says that the home page has a PA = 42 with 190 LRD's and 344 external links. Both the umbrella clothesline page and the clothes drying rack page have almost equal statistics of PA = 35 with 20 LRD's and 23 external links. My anchor text distribution is maybe unbalanced. The drying rack page has 15 external links with the anchor of "Clothes Drying Rack". But the umbrella clothesline page has 14 external links with the anchor of "outdoor umbrella clothesline" and it ranks on the first page for that search. I can't figure out how to get OSE to tell me anchor text stats for just the homepage and not the whole site since www.bestdryingrack.com/index.html 301's to the plain www.bestdryingrack.com (if you know how, please share) What's wrong with my poor neglected clothes drying rack page? The only way I can get it to show up on the first page is to do a real specific search like "round wooden clothes drying rack" Your help could save a faltering family business. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Rel=Canonical for filter pages
Hi folks, I have a bit of a dilemma that I'd appreciate some advice on. We'll just use the solid wood flooring of our website as an example in this case. We use the rel=canonical tag on the solid wood flooring listings pages where the listings get sorted alphabetically, by price etc.
Technical SEO | | LukeyB30
e.g. http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/?orderBy=highestprice uses the canonical tag to point to http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/ as the main page. However, we also uses filters on our site which allows users to filter their search by more specific product features e.g.
http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm/
http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/natural-lacquered/ We don't use the canonical tag on these pages because they are great long-tail keyword targeted pages so I want them to rank for phrases like "18mm solid wood flooring". But, in not using the canonical tag, I'm finding google is getting confused and ranking the wrong page as the filters mean there is a huge number of possible URLs for a given list of products. For example, Google ranks this page for the phrase "18mm solid wood flooring" http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm,116mm/ This is no good. This is a combination of two filters and so the listings are very refined, so if someone types the above phrase into Google and lands on this page their first reaction will be "there are not many products here". Google should be ranking the page with only the 18mm filter applied: http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm How would you recommend I go about rectifying this situation?
Thanks, Luke0 -
Rel="canonical" of .html/ to .html
Hi, could you guys confirm me that the following scenario is completely senseless? I just got the instruction from an external consultant (with quiet good SEO knowledge) to use a rel="canonical" for the following urls. http://www.example.com/petra.html/
Technical SEO | | petrakraft
to
http://www.example.com/petra.html I mean a folder petra/ to petra is ok - but a trailing slash after .html ??? Apart from that I would rather choose a 301 - not a rel canonical. What is your position here?0 -
Canonical Issue?
Hi, I was using the On Page Report Card Tool here on SEOMOZ for the following page: http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides and it claims there is a canonical issue or improper use of it. I looked at the element and it seems to be fine: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides" /> Can you spot the issue and how it would be fixed? Thanks. Eddy
Technical SEO | | workathomecareers0 -
Why would SEOMoz and GWT report 404 errors for pages that are not 404ing?
Recently, I've noticed that nearly all of the 404 errors (not soft 404) reported in GWT actually resolve to a legitimate page. This was weird, but I thought it might just be old info, so I would go through the process of checking and "mark as fixed" as necessary. However, I noticed that SEOMoz is picking up on these 404 errors in the diagnostics of the site as well, and now I'm concerned with what the problem could be. Anyone have any insight into this? Rich
Technical SEO | | secretstache0 -
Moz Crawl Reporting Duplicate content on "template" styled pages
We have a lot of detail pages on our site that reference specific scholarships. Each page has a different Title and Description. They also have unique information all regarding the same data points. The pages are displayed in a similar structure to the user so the data is easy to read. My problem is a lot of these pages are being reported as duplicate content when they certainly are not. Most of them are reported as duplicates when they have the same sponsor. They may have the same contact information listed. These two are being reported as duplicate of each other. They share some data but they are definitely different scholarships. http://www.collegexpress.com/scholarships/adelaide-mcclelland-garden-club-scholarship/9254/ http://www.collegexpress.com/scholarships/mary-wannamaker-witt-and-lee-hampton-witt-memorial-scholarship/10785/ Would it help to add a Canonical for each page to themselves? Any other suggestions would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
When using the On page report card I get a critical error on Rel Canonical Im not sure if I have understood this right but I think that my problem is that I own a Norwegian Domain name which is www.danske-båten.no This domain works great in norwegian, but I get problems with english (foreign) browsers. My english domain name is http://www.danske-båten.no. When you buy a domain name with the letter Å you get a non norwegian domain name as well. (dont quite get the tecnical aspect of it) Så when I publish a page (using wordpress if that means anything) I get this message: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.danske-båten.no/ferge-oslo-københavn/"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So What to do to fix this?
Technical SEO | | stlastla
</dd> </dl>0