Which Version Url to Use for Canonical Tags and in General for Homepage.
-
I want to put canonical tags on the homepage of a site.
cant figure out the version of URL of the homepage should be with a / at the end or without the / ( www.example.com of www.example.com/ )
if I put into the google the URL with / I get the URL without the / in my browser, and it isn't showing as a redirect in my moz extension or other tools. But when I copy the URL from browser and paste elsewhere it pastes with a /
I have two questions
1 - in general how does it work with URLs of homepages - I see this happening with lots of sites?
2 - which URL should I set as the canonical version of my homepage?
Thanks so much
-
You are welcome!
-
Thanks, Joe
that was really helpful.
I appreciate the sources that you sent.
-
Hi Ruchy,
Honestly, it shouldn't make a difference, Google looks at homepage URLs with and without the trailing slash as equivalent. For my clients, I typically include the slash (" / ") at the end of the homepage canonical tag, but again, this shouldn't matter.
I actually commented on a similar post that discusses how search engines view these two different variations of the homepage, you can see that here.
Google looks at root domain URLs with and without trailing slashes as equivalent, see the resources below.
-
"Should we always add the final / or avoid it? Does it make a difference?" Answer: "There's no difference between them. (As opposed to not putting a slash on links into a directory, for example.)" (source)
-
"Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck Norris." (Source - Google Webmasters Blog)
-
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
-
Why do two pages compete while a canonical tag is active?
Hi guys, My SERP analysis show me that two pages compete eachother for the keyword kinderfiets, which should not happen since there is a canonical tag is active. www.halfords.nl/fiets/kinderfiets/kinderfiets/ Ranks #6 and www.halfords.nl/fiets/kinderfiets/ Ranks #7. The first one is a subcategory which is one step deeper than the second one. I prefer consumers to land on the broader subcategory, because that one shows more products.Furthermore, we already did some SEO tweaking for the #7 page, but did not work on the #6 page. So it is even kind of strange that this page ranks higher.Can somebody help me out?Kind Regards,Tom
Technical SEO | | Sebastiaan10 -
Why put rel=canonical to the same url ?
Hi all. I've heard that it's good to put the link rel canonical in your header even when there is no other important or prefered version of that url. If you take a look at moz.com and see the code, you'll see that they put the <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://moz.com" /> ... pointing at the same url ! But if you go to http://moz.com/products/pricing for example, they have no canonical there ! WHY ? Thanks in advance !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
URL removals
Hello there, I found out that some pages of the site have two different URL's pointing at the same page generating duplicate content, title and description. Is there a way to block one of them? cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
What is the best way to use canonical tag
Hi, i have been researching this since yesterday and have looked at this subject many times before but still cannot get my head around it. i done a report on my site which was very useful, i used http://www.juxseo.com for my site www.in2town.co.uk and it brought me some useful information but part of that info was it was telling me that i should have on my home page a canonical tag which would improve my seo. Now i am using sh404sef for my friendly urls and i am using joomla 3.0 and when i approached the makers of the sh404sef to ask about the tag they said i would need to be careful of using it as it could damage my site and my rankings. i have read lots of information but still do not have a clear understanding behind it. can anyone please explain the best way to use this and should i be using where i may have some sort of duplicate page, any help to understand this would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Rel Canonical tag using Wordpress SEO plugin
Hi team I hope this is the right forum for asking this question. I have a site http://hurunuivillage.com built on Wordpress 3.5.1 using a child theme on Genesis 1.9. We're using Joost's Wordpress SEO plugin and I thought it was configured correctly but the Crawl Diagnostics report has identified an issue with the Rel Canonical tag on the sites pages. I have not edited the plugin settings so am surprised the SEOMoz Crawl has picked up a problem. Example: Page URL is http://hurunuivillage.com/ Tag Value http://hurunuivillage.com/ (exactly the same) Page Authority 39 Linking Root Domains 23 Source Code Considering the popularity of the plugin I'm surprised I have not been able to find tutorials to find what I'm doing wrong or should be doing better. Thanks in advance. Best Nic
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
How to keep a URL social equity during a URL structure/name change?
We are in the process of making significant URL name/structure change to one of our property and we want to keep the social equity (likes, share, +1, tweets) from the old to the new URL. We have been trying many different option without success. We are running our social "button" in an iframe. Thanks
Technical SEO | | OlivierChateau0 -
Variables in URLS?
How much do variables in URLs hurt indexing of that page? I'm worried that with this huge string of variables that the pages won't get indexed. Here's what I think we should have: http://adomainname.com/New/Local/State/City/Make/Model/ Here's the current URL:http://adomainname.com/New/Local/MN/Bayport/Jeep/Liberty?curPage=1&pageResultSize=50&orderDir=DESC&orderBy=ModifiedDate&conditionId=1&makeId=7&modelId=141&stateProvinceName=Minnesota&mc=1
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Rel-canonical tag
Hi, I'm having some confusion with the rel-canonical tag. A few months ago we implemented the rel-canonical tag because we had many errors specifically duplicate page content come upon the SEOmoz web app (mostly because we use tracking code). I had asked what to do about this and was advised by the SEOmoz web app to implement the rel-canonical tag. However, when I'm working on the Keyword Optimizer Tool, it always checks off that I'm using the rel-canonical tag improperly, and then when I go into our sites' CMS for that page and uncheck "Use Canonical URL", the keyword optimizer tool up's my grade for that correction/that I've made an improvement. So my question is if the page I'm working on is the one I want search engines to find, should I not be using the Canonical URL tag? Should the Canonical URL tag only be used on URL's with the tracking code?
Technical SEO | | aircyclemegan0