Help I don't understand Rel Canonical
-
I'm really stuck on how to fix up Rel Canonical errors on a Wordpress site. I went in and changed all the URLs to remove the www and added / to the end.
I get this message on page analysis details:
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.some-url.com.au/",</dd>
<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/", and</dd>
<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/"</dd>
<dd>Well the first one with the www doesn't exists and the second two urls are the same! (Note that I have removed the actual URL for this post)</dd>
<dd>I'm not sure how to read and fix the errors from the reports ether. The only issues I can see is that the 'Tag Value' has the www and the 'Page Title - URL' doesn't have the www.
</dd> -
Yeah, unfortunately, on a CMS or template-driven site, it's really easy to put a canonical tag in place that impacts the wrong pages. Hopefully, you caught it in time.
The 270 notices in are system are just telling you that 270 URLs we crawled had a canonical tag pointing to a different page. In this particular case, it was a problem, but it isn't always an issue.
Unfortunately, with the bad canonical tag in place, it's tough to tell why they were there before. This is usually just a notice, and non-critical, but once the bad canonicals clear out, let us know if you're still getting the notice (it may take a couple of weeks to go away).
-
I think I know what I have done wrong. I placed this code line in the header instead of the index:
I only did this last week, so hopefully the damage won't last long. I still don't understand the 270 Rel Cononical errors, because they were already there. Is this a Wordpress problem?
-
I just checked, and it actually looks like you've got a potentially serious problem. All of your canonical tags that I've seen are pointing to the home-page, even archives and blog posts. This will essentially de-index those pages. Something is set up badly - that canonical tag should only appear on the actual home-page.
Since this is public, I won't reveal details, but look at the, for example, the canonical tag on your "About" and "Services" pages - they're pointing to the home-page.
-
So whats the best way to fix the 270 Rel Cononical errors? How do I actually tell Google what URL is the same pages as another URL?
-
The basic problem, and it's actually confusing to a lot of people, is that what you think of as a "page" is the physical file on your server (like your home-page). What Google thinks of as a page is a URL. So, if multiple URLs go to the same place, they look like duplicate copies to Google (who sees them as all different pages).
It's especially common with home-pages, where you can have www vs. non-www, root ("www.example.com") vs. the filename ("www.example.com/index.php"), etc. If those variations get crawled and indexed by Google, the duplicates can dilute your index and weaken your ranking ability. So, rel-canonical helps tell Google that those variations are all the same page.
-
Zapprabbit,
I would like to underline the main reason of canonical tag usage.
We use canonical to eliminate duplicate content which is cause by different paths to the same content.
In order to eliminate this, you point out to search engines which of the paths is the one that you are optimizing for (which path you want to be indexed).
So let's take your example:
<dd>"http://www.some-url.com.au/",</dd>
<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/", and</dd>
<dd>"http://some-url..com.au/"</dd>
All of the above are different versions of the index.php (wordpress), right?Ok so you have the following:Index.php is shown as:
- http://www.some-url.com.au
- http://www.some-url.com.au/
- http://www.some-url.com.au/index.php
- http://some-url.com.au
- http://some-url.com.au/
- http://some-url.com.au/index.php
all the links above are different paths for Search Engines.
Now you put a canonical tag into the header of index.php which point out for "www.some-url.com.au". What happens?
Search Engines now crawl all versions of your index.php, but they know that they only need to index one version: www.some-url.com.au
What happens from link juice point of view?
If people will start linking to http://some-url.com.au/ or http://www.some-url.com.au/index.php or any other version of your index.php file the link juice will be targeted to the canonical version in some portion (aprox. 85% because you will loose some "juice").
I hope that is clearer now
Gr.,
Istvan
-
The bit I'm stuck on is what am I looking for when I click on the Cannonical URL Tag?
Duplicated URLs? Too many URLs pointing to the same place?
I know I must sound stupid but I just can't get my head around the problem.... Any pointers?
-
Hi Zapprabbit, For you to understand the Rel Cannonical errors you must visit the Cannonical URL Tag.
In wordpress these cannonical url errors are fixed up with all in one seo wordpress plugin.
I hope that your query had been solved.
-
Hi Zapprabbit,
You have the following issue:
1. You didn't proper place the canonical
2. you miss the non www. -> www. 301 redirect
So let's take it step by step:
1. Canonicals: In order to have the chance to set the canonicals right, I would advice you to use the Yoast WP plugin. On the same page you will have how-to articles and usage tips for the plug-in.
2. 301 redirect: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
This should solve your issue.
Gr,
Istvan
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
-
The correct way to rel=canonical
When adding the rel=canonical tag to a landing page inside a folder, should the tag read: or With or without the index.php? TY KJr
On-Page Optimization | | KevnJr1 -
301 to canonical
I'm doing some work on a website, they have a very popular product search where you enter a specific part code (6 digits) and it takes you to the product. So for example Search: 123456 Page redirected to domain.com/product/123456 With a canonical of domain.com/product/this-is-the-product-title Would it be beneficial to redirect from /product/123456 to /product/this-is-the-product-title Google seems to be indexing both versions. For some of these products a reasonable amount of links are built.
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Can't rank for a target key word "penalized?"
I've been trying to rank for the key word "kayak fishing" for my site www.yakangler.com. Last year when I started working on the SEO for my site I was on page 30 for Google search results so like the 300th result. After tweaking things on my site I managed to get to the second page but have since fallen all the way back to page 25-26 in the search results. I'm wondering if I'm penalized for this key word. I can't figure out why my site is ranking soooo badly for "kayak fishing" Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | mr_w0 -
Disappearing Rel=Canonical Code
Hi, I've been getting a lot of rel=canonical warnings from seomoz. I went into the original pages and pasted in plain text the following code: link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/blog/my-awesome-blog-post"< (the > are reversed). After a few crawls I couldn't see any effect from posting the code. When I went and checked again, it didn't stay in the wysiwyg editor. It disappeared! We are using Drupal 6. Could someone tell me what code I should be pasting? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OTSEO0 -
What's a reasonable bounce rate for school website?
Does anyone have a baseline on what the average bounce rate should be on a school website?
On-Page Optimization | | BillyBobGriffin0 -
Panda Smacked - now it's your turn
Hi all Ok so we were smacked by Panda way back in June 2011, and are recovering from it, (though definitely still not back up to pre-Panda levels). Since then we have: 1. Taken down a load of thin content pages. 2. Increased content. 3. Tried to reduce page template complexity. However, one of the issues we have is that we make money from Adsense, so don't want to reduce the number of ads - however, we may still be falling foul of Panda because of it. So, please take a look at this sample page and tear it /us apart: http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/children/children-act-orders.html Thank you. And if we can ever help the community back, please just ask.
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100