Rel Canonical problem or SEOmoz bug ?
-
Hello all,
I hope that sombody out there could help me with my question.
I am very new in SEO and in SEOmoz community. I am not familiar with coding. I am goining to start learning soon enough but till now I now only basics.
At the website where I am trying to optimize for SEO I am reciving this Crawl Diagnostic Programme.
Issue: Rel Canonical (Notice) not Error
I searched and lerned what it is. So I contact the developers of the website. Build in wordpress and ask them how to corrected ? They told me that they are using Canonical Tags to all their pages and have no idea why SEOmoz keep identifining it as a "notice"
They also tel me to check the source code of page to see the canonical tag. I did and their is actuall a canonical tag there.
Cjeck please here www.costanavarinogolf.com
So do you have any idea why this is happening ? could you help me explaiin to developers what they should do to overcome this ?
Or it's just a bug of SEOmoz and not a reall problem exist ?
Thank you very much for your time
-
I'd honestly leave it alone. I've never seen a preventive canonical (even if unnecessary) cause problems. As you expand the site, it could help prevent future problems, implemented correctly.
In terms of SEOmoz, I wouldn't worry about the notice - it's just a notice, which we put even below a warning. We're evaluating how to assess canonical for future versions of the software, because it is confusing to people.
-
Thank you both really for helping me out.
SEOmoz crawls 20 pages and all the pages have a canonical notice. I know that is not something big and maybe not important. But I really want to know why is happening as will help me to undrstand canonical issues better. I did a lot of research alone to realize what is canonicalization and trust meis very dificult if you have no idea about codeing.
So you suggest to tell the delelopers only to use cnonical on home page. and then wait to see if this solve the issue ?
Thank you very much both for your help
-
I'm not seeing any issues. Your canonical tags seem correct. The "Notice" level is the least severe, and we may just be seeing a mismatched URL or two (we're crawling the non-canonical, in other words). In many cases, that's fine. I see no signs of duplicate content in the Google index itself.
We sometimes to recommend preventive canonical tags, especially on dynamic sites, but they're not necessary on all page. I do highly recommend using it on the home-page, as home pages can easily collect variants ("www" vs non-www, secure/https, tracking parameters, etc.).
I think our system is being hyperactive on this one, though. I see no reason to worry.
-
Technically Yes,
As your site is currently being used canonical seems redundant, The site is Wordpress, so the ability to redirect must be available (I am assuming of course)
So I am not sure I see a reason for a site wide implementation of Canonical, although there are so many other reasons, that really without having more knowledge about your particular situation, I cannot for sure say they are right or wrong.
I would only suggest that you ask them why Canonical is implemented, and if it even needs to be there since duplicate content does not seem to be a factor.
If you do not like their answer then I would bring it back to this forum. (not necessarily this thread as it may not get answered if alot of time has passed)
Shane
-
So you think it is better to ask them remove the canonical tag ?
-
I really did not spend to long looking at your site, but was not sure I understood why canonical was used at all?
I see that this site, is not really being utilized as a traditional "Blog" so you would not actually have the duplicated content issues that come along with Blog Posts having their own page, plus being on the homepage.
I am not sure I can give you a suggestion to give to the developers except, why is canonical being used when it appears it does not need to be used?
If you do have multiple pages of duplicate content then this would be a reason, but I did not see them.
The notices you are getting from SEOMOZ are just that... Notices that the Canonical is in place i believe.
So i guess in summary the actual question I would have is do you really need the Canonical Tag at all? I am not sure it is hurting you, but not sure you need it either.
There are also some META tags that really have no use.. example INDEX, FOLLOW the default without a counter NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW or robots.txt is always INDEX FOLLOW.
Hope this helps
w00t!
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
-
Rel=canonical and redirect on same page
Hi Guys, Am I going slightly mad but why would you want to have a redirect and a canonical redirecting back to the same page. For Instance https://handletrade.co.uk/pull-handles/pull-handles-zcs-range/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/?tag=Dia.&page=2 and in the source code:- <link href="<a class="attribute-value">https://handletrade.co.uk/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/</a>" rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" /> Perfect! exactly what it is intended to do. But then this page is 301 redirected tohttps://handletrade.co.uk/pull-handles/pull-handles-zcs-range/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/ The site is built in open cart and I think it's the SEO plugin that needs tweaking. Could this cause poor SERP visibility? This is happening across the whole site. Surely the canonical should just point to the proper page and then there is no need for an additional bounce.
Technical SEO | | nezona1 -
Doctype language declaration problem
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Silviu
I have a problem with an SEM Rush warning on a website audit, for www.enjoyprepaid.com. It tells me "5852 pages are lacking language declaration", but I don't understand what it means and how to actually fix this problem. Also I run a W3 validator and have a doctype and language problem but again don't understand what they mean and how to fix them https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.enjoyprepaid.com%2FAfghanistan-calling-cards-2.html0 -
Having Problems to Index all URLs on Sitemap
Hi all again ! Thanks in advance ! My client's site is having problems to index all its pages. I even bought the full extension of XML Sitemaps and the number of urls increased, but we still have problems to index all of them. What are the reasons? The robots.txt is open for all robots, we only prohibit users and spiders to enter our Intranet. I've read that duplicate content and 404's can be the reason. Anything else?
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
When we have 301 page is a Rel=Canonical needed or should we make 1 Noindex?
Hi, When we have a page as 301 (Permanent Redirect) is a Rel=Canonical needed or should we make 1 Noindex? Example http://www.Somename.com/blog/138760 when clicked goes to http://www.Somename.com/blogs/whenittyam Should i noindex the below pages http://www.Somename.com/blog/138760 and add Rel=Canonical Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Identifying a 301-redirect problem?
I was looking at the Search Engine Optimization reports for one of my clients in Google Analytics, and I saw that their two biggest landing pages are www.website.com and http://website.com. Does this mean that Google is serving both the 'www' and 'non-www' versions of the website, and thus harming the website's overall ranking? Thanks for any input!
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
Problems with pages loading within seomoz account
any one else have the problem of pages loading once logged into their seomoz account??
Technical SEO | | james1000 -
Querystring params, rel canonical and SEO
I know ideally you should have as clean as possible url structures for optimal SEO. Our current site contains clean urls with very minimal use of query string params. There is a strong push, for business purposes to include click tracking on our site which will append a query string param to a large percentage of our internal links. Currently: http://www.oursite.com/section/content/ Will change to: http://www.oursite.com/section/content/?tg=zzzzwww We currently use rel canonical on all pages to properly define the true url in order to remove any possible duplicate content issues. Given we are already using rel canonical, if we implement the query string click tracking, will this negatively impact our SEO? If so, by how much? Could we run into duplicate content issues? We get crawled by Google a lot (very big site) and very large percent of our traffic is from Google, but there is a strong business need for this information so trying to weigh pros/cons.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Canonical Tag Pointing To The Same URL
Does it matter if a canonical tag points to the URL in which the tag is on? Example Page: http://www.domain.com Canonical tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" /> I only ask because a client of mine has a CMS that automatically does that to every page on the site and there's no way to remove it. Will this have a negative impact or does it not matter at all? Any insights would be great because I can't find a clear answer anywhere online. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0