Rel Canonical Question
-
I changed /tulsa-cleaning-services/ to /services/ because the URLs were getting too long. Now I'm getting an error for Appropriate use of Rel Canonical.
I used a 301 to send old links to the new location.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Will
-
By using the 301 redirect, you have negated the effect of the cannonical tag. You should only user the cannonical tag when you have difficulties using the 301 redirect.
That's why you are getting an error. Best to only stick with the 301.
Hope this helps,
Vahe
-
Your canonical should be like (add www if appropriate to the below code)
Your redirect via htaccess should be like
Redirect 301 /tulsa-cleaning-services/ http://THEDOMAIN.com/services/
As far as the old page goes, if you 301 redirect it, then there is no need for a canonical tag if it still exist.
-
Hi Will,
Is the site we're talking about AmericanCarpetClean.com? Because when I go to http://americancarpetclean.com/tulsa-cleaning-services I am getting a page not found?
If you can show me the page that we're talking about, we should be able to help you out!
Thanks
P.S. Where are you getting the error for inappropriate use of Canonical?
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
-
Does Canonical Tag Syntax Matter?
Does anyone know definitively if the format of the canonical tag matters? Silly question I know. vs
Technical SEO | | Healio0 -
Questions About The Right Hosting
Hi All, I have a few questions about the right type of hosting that I should be using. I understand that many people say we should be using the best hosting that we can afford. However, when I have a website with just 650 pages / posts is it really worth worrying too much about where I am hosting. I am UK based so at the moment I am using a UK host along with a CDN. I have a unique IP address and on a server that has a limited amount of websites on it. The main question is there really any need to be looking at anything else. The truth is I have used cloud hosting before and the website loaded slower around the world with that than it does with my current setup. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TTGUK0 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
Canonical tag or 301
Hi, Our crawl report is showing duplicate content. some of the report I am clear about what to do but on others I am not. Some of the duplicate content arises with a 'theme=default' on the end of the URL. Is this version of a page necessary for people to see when they visit the site (like a theme=print page is) in which case I think we should use a canonical tag, or is it not necessary in which case we should use a 301? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Any Positive Experiences with Rel=Next Rel=Prev for pagination?
Hi Mozzers! Can you share your experience and observations in implementing rel=next rel=prev on sites you've worked on?
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
On-Page Report Card & Rel Canonical
Hello, I ran one of our pages through the On-Page Report Card. Among the results we are getting a lower grade due to the following "critical factor" : Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Explanation 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. Recommendation 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. This is for an e-commerce site, and the canonical links are inserted automatically by the cart software. The cart is also creating the canonical url as a relative link, not an absolute URL. In this particular case it's a self-referential link. I've read a ton on this and it seems that this should be okay (I also read that Bing might have an issue with this). Is this really an issue? If so, what is the best practice to pass this critical factor? Thanks, Paul
Technical SEO | | rwilson-seo0 -
How does a sitemap affect the definition of canonical URLs?
We are having some difficulty generating a sitemap that includes our SEO-friendly URLs (the ones we want to set as canonical), and I was wondering if we might be able to simply use the non-SEO-friendly, non-canonical URLs that the sitemap generator has been producing and then use 301 redirects to send them to the canonical. Is there a reason why we should not be doing this? We don't want search engines to think that the sitemap URLs are more important than the pages to which they redirect. How important is it that the sitemap URLs match the canonical URLs? We would like to find a solution outside of the generation of the sitemap itself as we are locked into using a vendor’s product in order to generate the sitemap. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | emilyburns0 -
Canonical Link for Duplicate Content
A client of ours uses some unique keyword tracking for their landing pages where they append certain metrics in a query string, and pulls that information out dynamically to learn more about their traffic (kind of like Google's UTM tracking). Non-the-less these query strings are now being indexed as separate pages in Google and Yahoo and are being flagged as duplicate content/title tags by the SEOmoz tools. For example: Base Page: www.domain.com/page.html
Technical SEO | | kchandler
Tracking: www.domain.com/page.html?keyword=keyword#source=source Now both of these are being indexed even though it is only one page. So i suggested placing an canonical link tag in the header point back to the base page to start discrediting the tracking URLs: But this means that the base pages will be pointing to themselves as well, would that be an issue? Is their a better way to solve this issue without removing the query tracking all togther? Thanks - Kyle Chandler0
