Using a 302 redirect for language variants. How should I use the canonical?
-
Hi there,
I have a question regarding the canonical tag. The current setup is like so...
302 redirects to..
I want to add canonical tags on every page to avoid duplicate content but I'm not sure about the homepage. Should the canonical URL be
or
? I'm concerned that I could be about to hurt my ranking.
Thanks,
Mitch -
Hello,
okay so if you were going to set a canonical I'd set it on DE as you're redirecting the traffic to that page anyway. The schema You can declare the language and to a degree target country using markup which can aid in understanding of your site with search engines etc.
Sorry just saw the edit, yes i can image structuring your site that way will do the job too and avoid the whole issue.
Hope that helps. Seems like you some what resolved it your self
-
Actually there are only 2 languages, English and German. Both live on a sub holder so nothing is in the root.
That's correct, www.site.com and www.site.com/de/ share the same content, both German. Although the / redirects to the /de/ with a 302.
What sort of schema did you have in mind?
I'm considering move the homepage content to the root (without /de/) and leaving internal pages at the /de/ level. Do you think that's a good/bad idea?
-
Hello,
With that language i assume you've got a few languages on your site so it boils down to are the two urls sharing the same content? If they are in two different languages I wouldn't say this counts. Worst case here I'd even look at leaving the canonical and setting up some decent schema to tell search engines its targeted at somewhere else or to someone else (language).
So do www.site.com and www.site.com/de/ share the same content ?
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
-
Rank regional homepages using canonicals and hreflangs
Here’s a situation I’ve been puzzling with for some time: The situation
Technical SEO | | dmduco
Please consider an international website targeting 3 regions. The real site has more regions, but I simplified the case for this question. screenshot1.png There is no default language. The content for each regional version is meant for that region only. The website.eu page is dynamic. When there is no region cookie, the page is identical to website.eu/nl/ (because Netherlands is the most important region) When there is a region cookie (set by a modal), there is a 302 redirect to the corresponding regional homepage What we want
We want regional Google to index the correct regional homepages (eg. website.eu/nl/ on google.nl), instead of website.eu.
Why? Because visitors surfing to website.eu sometimes tend to ignore the region modal and therefor browse the wrong version.
For this, I set up canonicals and hreflangs as described below: screenshot2.png The problem
It’s 40 days now since the above hreflangs and canonicals have been setup, but Google is still ranking website.eu instead of the regional homepages.
Search console’s report for website.eu: screenshot3.png Any ideas why Google doesn’t respect our canonical? Maybe I’m overlooking something in this setup (combination of hreflangs and canonicals might be confusing)? Should I remove the hreflangs on the dynamic page, because there is no self-referencing hreflang? Or maybe it’s because website.eu has gathered a lot of backlinks over the years, whereas the regional homepages have much less, which might be why Google chooses to ig nore the canonical signals? Or maybe it’s a matter of time and I just need to wait longer? Note: I’m aware the language subfolders (eg. /be_nl) are not according to Google’s recommendations. But I’ve seen similar setups (like adobe.com and apple.com) where the regional homepage is showing ok. Any help appreciated!0 -
Is a canonical tag required for already redirecting URLs?
Hi everyone, One of our websites was changed to non-www to www. The non-www pages were then redirected to avoid duplicate issue. Moz and Screaming Frog flagged a number of these redirected pages as missing canonical tags. Is the canonical tag still required for pages already redirecting? Or is it detecting another possible duplicate page that we haven't redirected yet? Also, the rankings for this website isn't improving despite having us optimising these pages as best as we could. I'm wondering if this canonical tag issue may be affecting it. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez0 -
Blogger /blog Folder level redirect setup using .htaccess
We have a blog currently powered by the free blogger.com website. We have set it up as blog.example.com we wish to seti it up as example.com/blog how can we do this using .htaccess file? we understand how to update htacess, but we don't know what code we should enter to achieve what we want our website is hosted on Apache servers with plesk control panel
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Rel=canonical redirect form sign-up to homepage
hi guys, just an idea- in our product- TrackTest.eu we have couple of authoritative websites linking directly to our Sign-up page. Does it make sense to use rel=canonical on Sign-up page with pointing to the homepage so we will pass some link juice to homepage ? I understand that it is not a use how was canonical designed (it is not duplicated content) and don't want to screw anything. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tracktest.eu0 -
When to use mod rewrite / canonical / 301 redirect
Hello, I have taken over the management of a site which has a big problem with duplicate content. The duplicate content is caused by two things: Upper and lower case urls e.g: www.mysite.com/blog and www.mysite.com/Blog The other reason is the use of product filters / pagination which mean you can get to the same 'page' via different filters. The filters generate separate URLs. http://www.mysite.com/casestudy
Technical SEO | | Barques-Design
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?solution=0&page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy?page=1
http://www.cpio.co.uk/casestudy/filter?solution=0" Am I right to assume that for the case sensitive URLs I should use a 301 redirect because I only want the lower page to be shown? For the issue with dynamic URLs should we implement a mod-rewrite and 301 to one page? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Mat0 -
Meta data & xml sitemaps for mobile sites when using rel="canonical"/rel="alternate" annotations
When using rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" annotations between mobile and desktop sites (rel="canonical" on mobile, pointing to desktop, and rel="alternate" on desktop pointing to mobile), what are everyone's thoughts on using meta data on the mobile site? Is it necessary? And also, what is the common consensus on using a separate mobile xml sitemap?
Technical SEO | | 4Ps0 -
302 redirect and NO DATA as HTTP Status in Top Pages in SEOMOZ Link Analysis
I recently performed a link analysis using SEOMOZ and my home page (top page) indicates that there is a 302 status. Is this bad? Also, 2 other key landing pages have [NO STATUS] as the http status and [NO DATA] for the page title. Could anyone offer insight into what might be happening here, and whether or not it's something that is potentially hurting us? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | dstepchew0 -
Setup 301 Redirects
I have been asked to transfer a clients old domain over to a new domain with a new site. All of the inbound links basically go to the homepage, and the few links that dont go to the homepage on the old site, might as well be redirected to the homepage on the new site. I'm wondering is there a "catch all" sort of redirect such as www.oldsite.com/* redirects to newsite.com. So any redirects we havent set up will automatically go to the new site homepage? And secondly, whats the easiest way to the redirects up? Can I just add it as a parked domain or addon domain in cpanel, and do the redirects in there? Or does it needs its own hosting for the old domain with its own htaccess file? Any help appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | timscullin0