Rel="canonical" on home page?
-
I'm using wordpress and the all in one seo pack with the canonical option checked. As I understand it the rel="canonical" tag should be added to pages that are duplicate or similar to tell google that another page (one without the rel="canonical" tag) is the correct one as the url in the tag is pointing google towards it.
Why then does the all in one seo pack add rel="canonical" to every page on my site including the home page? Isn't that confusing for google?
-
There are mixed opinions on using it on every page, but I think it's very useful on the home-page, for exactly the reasons that @donford suggests. It's easy for the home-page to get a bunch of variants indexed, including tracking parameters.
Originally, Google said that canonical wasn't proactive, but they've eased up on that. Worst case, they may just ignore it, but the All-In-One SEO approach on a blog isn't a bad bet. It's just so easy for dynamic sites to spin off duplicate URLs that it's better to be proactive.
I've never seen a penalty or devaluation due to using canonical when it's not necessary. I think Bing implied that they may ignore it if they see it too often, but I've never even seen a concrete example of that happening. It's so commonplace now that you'd hear about it if sites were being penalized.
-
It would also make sense if you're home page generates something like
www. A Site.com
www. A Site.com/
www. A Site.com/index.php
www. A Site.com/index.php/This prevents duplicate page content issues as those pages while the exact same, are different URL's. The canonical tag should point to a single page whichever one is the real url for your site.
Hope that helps,
Don
-
it is confusing indeed.. had the same problem but read a lot about in on internet and Woj Kwasi is absolutely right.
It tells google, hey look, this is the original page with this original content.
also: use it in combination with htaccess files and you should be able to fix every problem
-
It's just saying to Google that the page it's on is the originator of the content
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
-
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
"Google-selected canonical different to user-declared" - issues
Hi Moz! We are having issues on a number of our international sites where Google is choosing our page 2 of a category as the canonical over page 1. Example; https://www.yoursclothing.de/kleider-grosse-groessen (Image attached). We currently use infinite loading, however when javascript is disabled we have a text link to page 2 which is done via a query string of '?filter=true&view=X&categoryid=X&page=2' Page 2 is blocked via robots.txt and has a canonical pointing at page 1. Due to Google selecting page 2 as the canonical, the page is no longer ranking. For the main keyphrase a subcategory page is ranking poorly. LqDO0qr
On-Page Optimization | | RemarkableAgency1 -
Is it better to create more pages of content or expand on current pages of content?
I am assuming that one way of improving the rankings of current pages will be to create more content on the keywords used... should this be an expansion of the content on current pages I am optimising for a keyword or is it better to keep creating new pages and if we are creating new pages is it best to use an extension of the keyword on the new page – for example if we are optimising one page for ‘does voltage optimisation work’ would it then be worth creating a page optimised for ‘does voltage optimisation work in hotels’ for example and so on? I am guessing maybe both might help, this is just a question I have had from one of my clients.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSI1 -
Should I "No Index" Certain Pages On My Site?
I have some pages on my site that don't really have any content other than some iframes that are embedded from another site. I thought it would be best to tag the page with a no-index so that search engines would leave the page alone since it has no content as far as the search engine can tell (but does provide value to my site visitors). Is this the proper approach or does it do more harm than good?
On-Page Optimization | | Kyle Eaves0 -
Need I add rel="dofollow" or not?
Hello, My website is http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com is using the href links without meta tag rel="dofollow" such as I am using . Should I put ref="dofollow" in this: Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
How is this page ranking?
Hi. A client of mine is being outranked by a competitor whose landing page does not include the keyword within their page content AT ALL. Nor does their URL. Nor do any image alts. And their page title features the keyword in the middle of it, not at the start. Their link profile is not great with directories and the like. They are not socially active.. I am confused! I thought content on a page absolutely had to include the keyword to get ranked for it. Here's the page: www.springsoft.ie, keyword is "water softeners" Any thoughts I would appreciate. Many thanks.Christoffa
On-Page Optimization | | Christoffa0 -
Is it impossible to get out of Panda? Matt Cutts says if you fix the problem you "pop back" but if so why are their so few examples?
In this video matt cutts says: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IzUuhTyvJk about 15 "once we re-run our data (every few weeks) if we determine your site is of higher quality you would pop back out of being affected" Panda has effected thousands of sites and a lot of smart people have been working on the problem for about 2 years since the first panda was launched, but I can only find 1 site that has "popped back" to their original rankings. e.g. http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-two-years-later-losers-still-losing-one-real-recovery-149491 Apart from Motortrend.com I can't find any sites (of reasonable size) / case studies of sites that have solved the panda problem, and were definitely hit by panda. Which doesn't feel right, some people have deleted a ton of pages, redesigned their site, improved their content, etc with no success. Therefore is it a pointless exercise? Therefore, is it better to simply give up and start a new site?
On-Page Optimization | | julianhearn1 -
On page "F" and I changed my tags long ago to match everything and still F?
My on-page analysis shows that my title tags are not supporting my keyword..........but they are! My title tag has my EXACT keyword phrase. What gives? Keyword is "San Diego Party Bus" Title is "San Diego Party Bus | xoxoxox | xoxoxoxo" F grade! ????????
On-Page Optimization | | DrewSpinoso0