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?
</dd></dl>
-
Are you still having this problem? If so, I think the best thing is to email help@seomoz.org with your question -- I'm guessing that the foreign characters are part of the problem here, and it's something they should know about if they don't already. Thanks!
-
If you can do that I would been a huge help to me:)
Maybe I can help you do that and just to clarify, by char set you mean the proper words to match my language? Instead of the letter Å we just use the letter A. (it that is waht you meant)
-
Ok, but is there anything I can do about it in any way?
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
-
Broken canonical link errors
Hello, Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that. Eg.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error. Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong? Thanks,
G1 -
Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!
Hi Everyone, I a currently migrating a Magento site over to Shopify Plus and have a question about best practices for using the canonical URL. There is a competitor that I believe is not doing it the correct way, so I want to make sure my way is the better choice. With 'Vendor Pages' in Shopify, they show up looking like: https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor. Not as clean. Problem is that Shopify also creates https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor. Same products, same page, just a different more clean URL. I am seeing both indexed in Google. What I want to do is basically create a canonical URL from the URL with the parameter that points to the clean URL. The two pages are very similar. The only difference is that the clean URL page has some additional content at the top of the page. I would say the two pages are 90% the same. Do you see any issue with that?
Technical SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Question on canonicals
hi community let's say i have to 2 e-commerce sites selling the same English books in different currencies - one of the site serves the UK market ( users can purchase in sterling) while another one European markets ( user can purchase in euro). Sites are identical. SEO wise, while the "European" site homepage has a good ranking across major search engines in europe, product pages do not rank very well at all. Since site is a .com too it s hard to push it in local search engines. I would like then to push one of the sites across all search engines,tackling duplicate content etc.Geotargeting would make the rest. I would like to add canonicals tag pointing at the UK version across all EU site product pages, while leaving the EU homepage rank. I have 2 doubts though: is it ok to have canonical tags pointing at an external site. is it ok to have part of a site with canonical tags, while other parts are left ranking?
Technical SEO | | Mrlocicero0 -
Unique use of nofollow tag
Love the community here. I just had a quick question about the using noindex, nofollow. We are a car dealership group that uses a website provider (cobalt). Since they provide the website they are the only ones with access to remove pages etc. We can add pages but only they can remove them. There are some pages we need to have removed but according to them they are unable to remove them, (I think the manufacture might mandate having some pages), anyway some of these pages literally have nothing on them, and there isn't really any useful content we could add to them. So we are using noindex on them to ensure that they stay out of search indices, but I am wondering if we should also use nofollow on them. If I understand nofollow correctly it just means search engines won't follow the links on the page, well for most of these pages the only links on them are the navigation, and since we don't plan on adding any content to these pages and we can't remove them should we use noindex and nofollow as a way to "remove" them from the site as much as we can?
Technical SEO | | Murdock_Auto_Group0 -
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 -
Using Web Applications for SEO
I am in the sign/banner business, for years I have had a flash based web application that I developed which allows customers to design their own signs/banners online. With the demise of flash i am prompted to begin developing an HTML5 based application to take it's place. Developing this software is a rather expensive endeavor so many local sign shops, which don't sell on the web, don't bother to develop such an application, but what if i gave it to them? I assume a fair amount would find great value in such an application thereby allowing their clients to communicate a design idea without having to drive to the store front. The application would actually run embedded on my site thus earning me a link back to my site. Question is this: Is this a bad idea. If dozens of sign shops are running my application embedded on their sites will the help or hurt me? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RocketBanner0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical - Should I use it under the following circumstances?
I have a number of hyper local directories, where businesses get a page dedicated to them. They can add images and text, plus contact info, etc. Some businesses list on more than one of these directory sites, but use exactly the same description. I've tried asking businesses to use unique text when listing on more than one site to avoid duplication issues, but this is proving to be too much work for the business owner! Can I use a cross-domain canonical and point Google towards the strongest domain from the group of directories? What effects will this have? And is there an alternative way to deal with the duplicate content? Thanks - I look forward to hearing your ideas!
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0 -
Remove a directory using htaccess
Hi, Can someone tell me if there's a way using htaccess to say that everything in a particular directory, let's call it "A", is gone (http 410 code)? i.e. all the links should be de-indexed? Right now, I'm using the robots file to deny access. I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do since Google webmaster tools is showing me the link as indexed still and a 403 error code. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | webtarget0