Do non-canonical pages need to worry about things like Alt Text, H1 tags, etc?
-
Just wanted to confirm, if we have multiple similar pages, with all of their canonicals pointing towards the prime page, does it impact SEO rankings at all if the non-canonical pages were missing alt text from their images, or shared duplicate or multiple H1 tags? Basic SEO page construction stuff?
I know some will hurt user CTR but wanted to make sure that SEO crawlers don't care about them even if indexed.
-
Hi Simon
It is best practice to ensure that all Titles, Descriptions, H1, content and ALT tags are filled in correctly. The problem you may have (and I have experienced this with one of my clients recently - so it isn't theory!) is that Google may distrust the canonical if it sees that those two pages are not in fact similar.
The essence of the canonical is that both pages fulfil the same intent for the user. If that is not the case then they should be separate pages. If it is the case then it stands to reason that they are the same or markedly similar content. If you miss out any of the elements that there is a strong argument to treat them as two different pages.
If Google then re-indexes a canonicalised page then two 'similar' pages end up in search which will drop both pages!
So contrary to what Joseph says - it is actually very important to do this I hope that helps.
Kind Regards
Nigel
-
Hello Simon,
I'm guessing these pages are the landing pages for your PPC campaign because you don't care if they are being indexed. If that's the case I would:
- Add noindex meta tag to all the other similar page.
- Have all these other pages canonical to your prime landing page.
I think it doesn't matter anymore for the alt tag or other elements.
Hope this answered your question.
Regards,
Joseph Yap
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
-
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results
I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO. Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative. Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do? Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
Can a page lose ranking because it has too many bold tags?
I run a product search website for the Engineering Sector. Each of the companies listed on the website has a profile page. This page used to rank very well in google. Over the last couple of weeks these pages disappeared for google i.e they fell about 20 to 30 spots in the search results for relevant keywords like the Manufacturer Name. I was trying to analyze the page and found that Each of the Categories that the manufacturer supports was listed in "bold" and linked to the page for that category. A manufacturer can support up to 20 or 30 categories so this results in about 20 or 30 Bold keywords. Is this a bad practice? Could this be a reason for a drop in ranking or do bold keywords on a page not matter? What are your views?
On-Page Optimization | | raghavkapur0 -
Image titles and alt tags for multiple images
I'm hoping some of you may be able to help me understand the best way to optimize my image titles and alt tags for a specific situation. I'm working on an interior design website and they have hundreds of pictures. each of their projects has about 10 pictures. Is it best for me to us the key phrase in each title and tag? or is that to repetitive? here is what I mean: A project called "urban interior design" all images are of urban interior design, just different angles and features, so my initial idea is to just have each image title like this: Title: "urban interior design dinning area" Alt: "urban interior design dinning area view" Title: "urban interior design living room" Alt:"urban interior design living room couch view" Is this the best way or will it actually hurt my ranking with too much exact keyword use? Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | TBSEO0 -
Duplicate Page Content on Empty Manufacturer Pages
I work for an internet retailer that specializes in pet supplies and medications. I was going through the Crawl Diagnostics for our website, and I saw in the Duplicate Page Content section that some of our manufacturer pages were getting flagged. The way our site is set up is that when products are discontinued we mark them as discontinued and use 301 redirects to redirect their URLs to other relevant products, brands, or our homepage. We do the same thing with brand and manufacturer pages if all of their products are discontinued. 90% of the time, this is a manual process. However, the other 10% of the time certain products come and go automatically as part of our inventory system with one of our fulfillment partners. This can sometimes create empty manufacturer pages. I can't redirect these empty pages because there's a chance that products will be brought back in stock and the page will be populated again. What can we do so that these pages won't get marked as duplicates while they're empty? Write unique short descriptions about the companies? Would the placement of these short descriptions matter--top of the page under the category name vs bottom of the page underneath where the products would go? The links in the left sidebar, top, and in the footer our part of our site architecture, so those are always going to be the same. To contrast, here's what a manufacturer page with products looks like: Thanks! http://www.vetdepot.com/littermaid-manufacturer.html
On-Page Optimization | | ElDude0 -
Do I need a Meta description for every page?
HI Guys, We have just developed a new website and I'm looking to add meta descriptions with relevant key words to the pages . As the site has over 80 pages it is quite an undertaking and i was wandering if pages, such as the shopping cart and FAQ's etc, need meta descriptions as well? Thanks in advance : ) Pete
On-Page Optimization | | dawsonski0 -
Google is indexing spam pages from my site. What is the most effective way to get ride of the search results? Pages are deleted now but should I do something more?
A long time ago I created a forum (Invision Power Board) and it got full of spam. Massive amounts! /forum/ I've now deleted the forum but the spam pages are still indexed on Google. Can I do something else to hurry up the process to get ride of them?
On-Page Optimization | | ocarlsson0