Rel Canonical Syntax
-
My IT department is getting ready to setup the rel canonical tag, finally. I took a look at the code on our test server and see that they are using a single quote in the tag syntax (see code block below). Should I be concerned? Will Google read those lines the same?
<link rel='canonical' href='[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)' />VS. **versus** <link rel="canonical" href="[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)" />
-
To quote W3C draft specification on HTML5
Attributes are placed inside the start tag, and consist of a name and a value, separated by an "
=
" character. The attribute value can remain unquoted if it doesn't contain spaces or any of"
'
```=
<
or>
. Otherwise, it has to be quoted using either single or double quotes. The value, along with the "=
" character, can be omitted altogether if the value is the empty string.The accepted convention is " but according to the standard both are supported.
P.S. Is a version of your site live, if so I would maybe like to blog about it as it is related to what we are doing in baby toddler items (looking at your avatar).
-
<link rel="canonical" href="<a class="external" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.sitename.com/</a>" /> would be correct. Don't forget the double quotes!
-
Double quote is the norm in HTML
-
I have used it like this and haven't had any issues<link rel="canonical" href=http://www.sitename.com />If you use wordpress - yoast seo plugin - does it the same way.Read this post it will clear your question
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps -
I agree with John... why chance it? It should be a piece of cake for them to set it up with conformity to the standard
-
I'm not positive about how they'll deal with it, but why take a chance? It won't be that hard for them to change it from a single to a normal quotation, especially since it's on your test server.
Better safe than sorry.
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
-
Canonical vs 301 - Web Development
So I'm having a conversation with the development team at my work and I'm a little tired today so I thought I would ask for other opinions. The currently the site duplicates it's full site by having a 200 show with or without a trailing slash. I have asked for a 301 redirect to with the trailing slash. They countered with having all the rel=canonical be the trailing slash, which I know is acceptable. My issue is that while a rel=canonical is acceptable, since my site has a very high level of competition and a very aggressive link building strategy, I believe that it may be beneficial to have the 301 redirect. BUT, I may be wrong. When we're talking hundreds of thousands of links, I would love to have them directly linked instead of possibly splitting them up between a duplicate page that has a correct canonical. I'm curious to what everyone thinks though....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn1 -
What happen if a canonical tag points to a noindex page?
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
I have question. We have hundreds of affiliates that have implemented our datafeed on their websites, and to avoid duplicate content issues we are requiring them to put a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to our own original product page. So, for example, if an affiliate has a page about our Product 101, they will have to add a canonical tag pointing to the corresponding product page on our own website: www.ourwebsite.com/products/product101 Now, since many of our product pages have defined a "noindex" tag (due to Panda issues), may that be a problem? In other words: what kind of problems could cause having our affiliates defining a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to the original product page on our website which have a "noindex" met tag defined? Maybe it is a stupid question we shouldn't worry about, but any thoughts about this scenario are very welcome! Thank you in advance.0 -
Blog URL Canonical
Hi Guy's, I would like to know your thoughts on the following set-up for blog canonical. Option 1 domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com/blog"> domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com/blog"> domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = no canonical option 2 domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"="">(as option 1)</link rel="canonical" href="domin.com> domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"="">(this time has the canonical of the category)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com> domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" how-to-set-canonical"="">(this time has the canonical of the article full URL)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com> Just not sure which is the best option, or even if it is any of the above! Thanks Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan1e10 -
Backlinking from a Canonical Page to the Non-Canonical Doman - Wrong Signals?
Hi Mozzers, Let's say you have www.mysite.com/page, which is a duplicate of www.yoursite.com/page. www.yousite.com/page has a rel canonical link identifying www.mysite.com/page as the original source. www.mysite.com/page has a followed backlink going towards www.yousite.com/home-page. mysite.com has a DA of 44
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
yoursite.com has a DA of 33 Google has chosen to index www.yoursite.com/page instead of www.mysite.com/page. Is the followed backlink responsible for the wrong page being indexed? Thanks!0 -
Canonical URL Question
Hi Everyone I like to run this question by the community and get a second opinion on best practices for an issue that I ran into. I got two pages, Page A is the original page and Page B is the page with duplicate content. We already added** ="Page A**" />** to the duplicate content (Page B).** **Here is my question, since Page B is duplicate content and there is a link rel="canonical" added to it, would you put in the time to add meta tags and optimize the title of the page? Thanks in advance for all your help.**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRTBA0 -
Canonical URL redirect to different domain - SEO benefits?
Hello Folks, We are having a SEO situation here, and hope your support will help us figure out that. Let's say there are two different domains www.subdomian.domianA.com and www.domainB.com. subdomain.domainA is what we want to promote and drive SEO traffic. But all our content lies in domainB. So one of the thoughts we had is to duplicate the domainB's content on subdomian.domainA and have a canonical URL redirect implemented. Questions: Will subdomain.domainA.com get indexed in search engines for the content in domainB by canonical redirect? Do we get the SEO benefits? So is there any other better way to attain this objective? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Canonical tag vs 301
What is the reason that 301 is preferred and not rel canonical tag when it comes to implementing redirect. Page rank will be lost in both cases. So, why prefer one over the other ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Is having a canonical tag for the link that IS the canonical a negative thing?
Throughout our site, canonical tags have been added where needed. However, the canonical tags are also included for the canonical itself. For example, for www.askaquestion.com, the canonical tag has been added as www.askaquestion.com. Will this have a negative impact or does it not really matter whether there is such a loop?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0