Canonical home page
-
I have a site that shows duplicate page content for:
www.autoserviceexpertsonline and www.autoserviceexpertsonline/index.html
When looking at the files using the cms (intuit) file manager, I only see the /index.html version.
I added the Caononical tag referencing/pointing to both the domain name only and then changed to .../index.html
No matter how I code this, the seomoz On-Site SEO Grader still has a problem with it.
Is this a bug with the Grading program or am I doing something wrong?
Please help as I think this is causing me problems with Google and I'd like to get this right for future sites I will be working on.
Thanks,
Bill
-
No problem at all - good luck!
-
Thank you very much for the clear answer and the time it took you look at the site and write your post.
I will follow the instructions and see if things clear up. I have this site set up on Campaign mode, so tomorrow it should get a full crawl and then we'll know if the Duplicate Page error goes away (which is the reason for this whole exercise).
Have a blessed day.
-
Hi Bill,
I've just had a look at your site and the canonical tag is set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autoserviceexpertsonline/index.html"/>I'd advise changing it so that index.html isn't included (simply because that's the most likely way that people are going to link to you and how they'll get to your site, so it makes sense that the canonical tag points to the most popular 'page' in the eyes of both users and search engines). So, you'd end up with:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autoserviceexpertsonline/"/>The error that you're getting through the Report Card may appear if you're checking the base URL of your site (http://www.autoserviceexpertsonline/) as SEOMoz would see your canonical tag pointing to a different place (index.html) and therefore being incorrect.
My advice would be to do the fix (as above) and recheck your page through SEOMoz immediately - you shouldn't need to wait until the following Tuesday when using the report card tool as it does an immediate refresh of the page content.
Also, to explain why you only see index.html in the file manager (in simple terms) is that the webserver (apache) sees index.html as being the base file for your site. So, when someone goes to http://www.autoserviceexpertsonline/ apache grabs the index.html file and shows it on the page.
Hope that's helpful - let me know if you have any more questions,
Matt
-
I think it is coded correctly.
No, I'm not waiting until Tuesday... didn't realize there was a weekly time-frame on the SEO Report Card Tool.
-
Hi Bill,
Two questions:
-
Are you sure you formatted the tag properly?
-
Are you waiting until the following Tuesday for your site to be recrawled?
-
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
-
Should you 301, 302, or rel=canonical private pages?
What should you do with private 'logged in' pages from a seo perspective? They're not visible to crawlers and shouldn't be indexed, so what is best practice? Believe it or not, we have found quite a few back links to private pages and want to get the ranking benefit from them without them being indexed. Eg: http://twiends.com/settings (Only logged in user can see the page) 302 them: We can redirect users/crawlers temporarily, but I believe this is not ideal from a seo perspective? Do we lose the link juice to this page? 301 them: We can do a permanent redirect with a short cache time. We preserve most link juice now, but we probably mess up the users browser. Users trying to reach a private page while logged out may have issues reaching it after logged in. **Serve another page with rel=canonical tag: **We could serve back the home page without changing the URL. We use a canonical tag to tell the crawlers that it's a duplicate of the home page. We keep most of the link juice, and the browser is unaffected. Yes, a user might share that different URL now, but its unlikely. We've been doing 302's up until now, now we're testing the third option. How do others solve this problem? Is there a problem with it? Any advice appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | dsumter0 -
Noindex pages being indexed
Hi all Wondering if anyone could offer a pointer on a problem i am having please. I am developing an affiliate store and to prevent problems with duplicate content I have added name="robots" content="NOINDEX,FOLLOW" /> to all the product pages to avoid google penalties. However, Google appears to be indexing product pages. When I do a site: search I see a few hundred product pages in the engine. This is odd as the site has always had noindex on these pages. Even viewing the cache of the indexed page shows the noindex meta tag to be in place. I'm at a loss as to why these pages are being indexed and could do with removing them asap to stop any penalties on the site. Many thanks for any help.
On-Page Optimization | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
Should a company worry about how many domains it maps to the same home page?
I seem to be at logger heads with developers regarding domain mapping. The scenario: I have a company with one site on a primary domain name, but all the other domains they own are mapped using a tool provided by their hosting vendor. But. what I see is a keyword loaded domain that shows it has been 'mapped' to the primary domain, but you can type into the browser this keyword loaded domain and it will serve up in your browser that same home page you see on the PRIMARY DOMAIN. So, picture this - you are looking at the home page on wwww.keyworddomain.com and see the same home page as www.primarycompanydomain.com - but if you select anything from the menu at www.keyworddomain.com you will be taken immediately to www.primarycompanydomain.com/page-you-selected I just get a feeling this is not right as I can search Google for www.keyworddomain.com and Google lists the site home page on that domain. But when I click through from the listed result, I am taken to www.primarycompanydomain.com which is ideally where I want to be and I would want Google to focus on this domain, and I have told it to do so within the feature included within Google Webmaster Tools. The developers say there is nothing wrong. There argument - why would a hosting company provide this domain mapping feature if it was not best practice. My argument - but Google is listing that domain URL (www.keyworddomain.com) despite the fact it takes me through to www.primarycompanydomain.com - will Google not think this strange despite me telling it via GWMT that www.primarycompanydomain.com is the one and only domain I am working on. Tell me if I am going mad or not, and who is right and who is wrong. Appreciate all your answers.
On-Page Optimization | | ICTADVIS0 -
Local on-page SEO
If it feels like you are doing something wrong, then you 'probably' are... Local on-page SEO When optimising a page for local SEO, and trying tick all the usuals boxes, you find yourself adding words like 'golf clubs leeds' which sounds awful when part of a natural paragraph of text. Does Google recognise this poor use of grammar? We try to be as creative as possible, as not to offend the visitor, but it feels wrong... any advice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | indicoll0 -
Canonical tag?
I have an e-commerce website and the query strings of the URL's are causing duplicate content/titles. I'm thinking of adding a site-wide canonical tag which should fix them all. Any other ideas of making it neater or better?
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
How can I reduce Too Many On-Page Links? I am looking for best method through which I can reduce by on page link.
Hello, As I have the Pro Account in SEOMOZ . I have created the campaign for my website and I have seen the warring for on page analysis for Too Many On-Page Links. As per my knowledge in past it's matter that you can put maximum 100 links per page but now is it still matter or harm if pages has Too Many On-Page Links? And if yest then please let me know the best method to reduce my On-Page Links with out doing any major changes in website
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hi, I did a SEOmoz campaign and got results today, One of the results is Too "Many On-Page Links" when i am drilling down, i see that that's include inside links. for example, i sale food, i have my main department window - inside i have 30 products - each product is linked to a detailed page about the product. so automatically i have 30 links - not including all the others in this page, and i easily get over 100 and even sometimes 200 is this a big issue? does it damages my SEO? If yes, is there a way to write the HTML in a way that internal links like that wont be counted? Thank you SEOWiseUs
On-Page Optimization | | iivgi0 -
SEO value of "in the news" links on home page?
Notice more sites have an "in the News" section on the home page, or something similar like press releases... Apart from providing users fresh content, is there an SEO value to this? What is the explanation for this? Have a feeling the answer is obvious but just not too sure Thanks a lot.
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0
