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
-
Why are only a few of our pages being indexed
Recently rebuilt a site for an auctioneers, however it has a problem in that none of the lots and auctions are being indexed by Google on the new site, only the pages like About, FAQ, home, contact. Checking WMT shows that Google has crawled all the pages, and I've done a "Fetch as Google" on them and it loads up fine, so there's no crawling issues that is standing out. I've set the "URL Parameters" to no effect too. Also built a sitemap with all the lots in, pushed to Google which then crawled them all (massive spike in Crawl rate for a couple days), and still just indexing a handful of pages. Any clues to look into would be greatly appreciated. https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/auctions/
Technical SEO | | Blue-shark0 -
Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as: /latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface and /component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface The latter being the duplicate. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO! I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail. Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
Technical SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
ECommerce Problem with canonicol , rel next , rel prev
Hi I was wondering if anyone willing to share your experience on implementing pagination and canonical when it comes to multiple sort options . Lets look at an example I have a site example.com ( i share the ownership with the rest of the world on that one 😉 ) and I sell stuff on the site example.com/for-sale/stuff1 example.com/for-sale/stuff2 example.com/for-sale/stuff3 etc I allow users to sort it by date_added, price, a-z, z-a, umph-value, and so on . So now we have example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=price example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=a-z example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=z-a example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=umph-value etc example.com/for-sale/stuff1 **has the same result as **example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added ( that is the default sort option ) similarly for stuff2, stuff3 and so on. I cant 301 these because these are relevant for users who come in to buy from the site. I can add a view all page and rel canonical to that but let us assume its not technically possible for the site and there are tens of thousands of items in each of the for-sale pages. So I split it up in to pages of x numbers and let us assume we have 50 pages to sort through. example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=2 to ...page=50 example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=price&page=2 to ...page=50 example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=a-z&page=2 to ...page=50 example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=z-a&page=2 to ...page=50 example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=umph-value&page=2 to ...page=50 etc This is where the shit hits the fan. So now if I want to avoid duplicate issue and when it comes to page 30 of stuff1 sorted by date do I add rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1 rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=29 or rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=29 or rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1 rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=29 or rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=30 rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=29 or rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=30 rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?page=29 None of this feels right to me . I am thinking of using GWT to ask G-bot not to crawl any of the sort parameters ( date_added, price, a-z, z-a, umph-value, and so on ) and use rel canonical = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=30 rel next = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=31 rel prev = example.com/for-sale/stuff1?sortby=date_added&page=29 My doubts about this is that , will the link value that goes in to the pages with parameters be consolidated when I choose to ignore them via URL Parameters in GWT ? what do you guys think ?
Technical SEO | | Saijo.George0 -
Does all in one seo pack still have a rel canonical issue?
Hi All, I know that the all in one had errors in its rel canonical links on Wordpress but I wondered if this has been fixed. I get mixed info on the web. Anyone know for sure? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | xvpn9020 -
When doing the ranking report I see my site showing up on google with out the www in front. So the report is not picking it up how do I fix that?
The ranking report is not picking up my site even though it's there. It would seem that the www. Is missing from the site on google so it's not registering in the report. How do i fix this?
Technical SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0 -
Getting on to page 1 again
I have recently set up a website, and as soon as it got indexed by google, I ranked on the first page at number 10... However, Ever since I have started trying to backlink.. the more I seem to do, the more I seem to drop down the rankings! The same for both Bing and Yahoo... I am really not sure what the problem is. My site is www.arilinegamesatc.com, and the ranking words are airline games and airline game. Any help woudl be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
SEO MOZ report showing duplicate content pages with without ending /
Hello the SEOMOZ report is showing me I have a lot of duplicate content and then proceeds listing almost every page on my site as showing with a URL with an ending "/" and without. I checked my sitemap and only one version is there, the one with "/". I have a Wordpress site. Any recommendations ? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | dpaq20110