Rel Canonical issues for two urls sharing same IP address
-
Our client built a wordpress site on url A, then opted for a better url B. Rather than moving all the wordpress files/website over to the new url B, they just contacted GoDaddy, who hosted BOTH urls under the same IP address.
When I do a term target on url B, I'm flagged for rel canonical use. I can only get a B grade for each keyword. (I've also tried using url A, but I get the same flag and B grade results).
I'm not sure if this set-up will thwart our seo efforts for the site, because only the homepage comes up when you type in url B anyway. Every subsequent page displays the original url A. Somewhere, wordpress is also adding a rel canonical link on the homepage source to url A, too, which we can't seem to edit.
So, question is: is it ok to leave this set up as is with both urls hosted on the same IP address, or should we move the whole site over to the desired url B?
Thanks much!
-
Thanks for your answer, John. So, we should have the client 301 the url A to the desired url B. Confirmed!
-
This doesn't sound ideal. So only the home page is under URL B, and the rest of the pages are hosted under URL A? That would seem really strange to me as a user if I entered through URL B, went to another page, and the domain changed completely.
Ideally, you should 301 redirect everything under URL A to URL B rather than using rel=canonical for them. There's no reason to host two identical sites like this. It's fine for multiple sites to be hosted under the same IP. Here's a really good SEOMoz blog post about using 301 redirects vs.canonical tags.
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
-
Solving URL Too Long Issues
Moz.com is reporting that many URL's are to long, these particularly affect Product URL's where the URL is typically https://www.domainname.com/collections/category-name/products/product-name, (You guessed it we're using Shopify). However, we use Canonicals that ignore all most of the URL and are just structured https://www.domainname.com/product-name, so Google should be reading the Canonical and not the long-winded version. However, Moz cannot seem to spot this... does anyone else have this problem and how to solve so that we can satisfy the Moz.com crawl engine?
Moz Pro | | Tildenet0 -
Rogerbot crawls my site and causes error as it uses urls that don't exist
Whenever the rogerbot comes back to my site for a crawl it seems to want to crawl urls that dont exist and thus causes errors to be reported... Example:- The correct url is as follows: /vw-baywindow/cab_door_slide_door_tailgate_engine_lid_parts/cab_door_seals/genuine_vw_brazil_cab_door_rubber_68-79_10330/ But it seems to want to crawl the following: /vw-baywindow/cab_door_slide_door_tailgate_engine_lid_parts/cab_door_seals/genuine_vw_brazil_cab_door_rubber_68-79_10330/?id=10330 This format doesn't exist anywhere and never has so I have no idea where its getting this url format from The user agent details I get are as follows: IP ADDRESS: 107.22.107.114
Moz Pro | | spiralsites
USER AGENT: rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-crawler+pr1-crawler-17@moz.com)0 -
How to fix overly dynamic URLs for Volusion site?
We're currently getting over 5439 pages with an 'overly dynamic URL' warning in our Moz scan. The site is run on Volusion. Is there a way to fix this seeming Volusion error?
Moz Pro | | Brandon_Clay0 -
So noob while adding competitors, why i can't add sub-directory or specific url?
I try to add my competitors but failed, but there is only sub domain we can add to competitors, so how can i add a sub-directory or specific url to my competitors?
Moz Pro | | lfproseo0 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Canonical Question
On one of my sites I have 61 notices for Rel Canonical. Is it bad to have these or is this just something that's informative?
Moz Pro | | kadesmith0 -
Finding the source of duplicate content URL's
We have a website that displays a number of products. The product has variations (sizes) and unfortunately every size has its own URL (for now anyway). Needless to say, this causes duplicate content issues. (And of course, we are looking to change the URL's for our site as soon as possible) However, even though these duplicate URL's exist, you should not be able to land on them by navigating through the site. In theory, the site should always display the link to the smallest size. It seems that there is a flaw in our system somewhere, as these links are now found in our campaign here on SEOmoz. My question: is there any way to find the crawl path that lead to the URL's that shouldn't have been found, so we can locate the problem?
Moz Pro | | DocdataCommerce0 -
Difference in data between http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty and http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/
Hi, Has any once else experienced any difference in data between http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/ and http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty Please look at the attached image. For "http://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/choosing-weight-loss-program" and "http://www.freedieting.com/" page authority and domain authority match exactly. But for "http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/weight-loss/plans/" data does not match. The data from "http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/" was retrieved brely 60 seconds latter after data from "http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty". We used our custom app for retrieve data from "http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/". The columns were matched against the specs given in "http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/13991153/URL-Metrics-API". We are retrieving following columns 1)ut(Title) 2)ueid(External Links) 3)uid(Links) 4)umrp(mozRank) 5)upa(Page Authority) 6)pda(Domain Authority) Any help will be greatly appreciated. zvFif.jpg
Moz Pro | | claytons0 -
On the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, its reporting over 100 "Title Missing or Empty" issues, but they all check out fine?
Wondering if there Is a bug with the crawler or known timeout issues? Site speed is fast, but we do run a couple of large cron jobs out of hours, which may be the cause of any timeouts, but shouldn't the crawler report that, rather saying no title tags on 100 pages, when there are? SEOmoz newbie, so still finding my feet 🙂
Moz Pro | | sjr4x40