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
-
My website isn't showing on releated: google command
Well the title says everything... I really cannot understand why this happens... if you want to check by yourselves just copy paste the following in google: related:www.pccdkeys.com
On-Page Optimization | | dos06590 -
Use of '&' in meta title
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title? Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best. buy fruit cake & bread buy fruit cake & fruit bread buy fruit cake and fruit bread Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | russellbrown0 -
Product Colour Variation and Canonicals
Hi there, We are currently doing an SEO audit of an ecommerce website and we ar eunsure on the best practice in terms of using canonical link tag for some product variations. An example is that the company has a product with two colour variations: Black and Tan. These are for the same product and have 99% the same content. Within the content of the page the colour is the only thing that changes (along with the meta information and imagery of course). My question is should we choose one product and canonically link back to that one i.e. Black is the main product and we link Tan back to this via a canonical link? Many thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | yousayjump0 -
Google Doesn't Display A Right Page Title
For some reason Google Displays a wrong page title of some of my pages. E.g. page http://www.imoney.my/home-loan The title in the search reach results says "Home Loan - iMoney", but the one I've set up is <title></span><span class="webkit-html-tag">Housing Loan: Compare Mortgages of All Malaysian Banks @iMoney.my</span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title> Even when I preview it on the preview tool, it shows the full title, but when I google - again the short one. Does anyone know what the reason for that is?
On-Page Optimization | | imoney0 -
Image URL's have knocked my sub-pages down (WP)
I had most of my keywords within the top 10 for this site, some were even ranking in the top 5. For a possible minor boost, more-so to cover all the bases, I decided to add images to all of the pages, and they were uploaded as a gallery with most of the image file names being the same as the keyword. Thus, url's were created with our targeted phrases, extending off of the corresponding sub-page. After that, Google quickly picked up the url's to the images and began indexing them, when that occurred the sub-page which was to be the landing page, quickly tanked. Nothing else on-site changed besides the uploading of the images, so I'm sure they're conflicting and for whatever reason Google can't decide which page to index. The page that contains the images used, or the actual intended landing page. With WP I didn't see a way to not have them link to anything at all, and just be static when using a gallery, stock at least. So, my question is how can I quickly alleviate this problem and what should I do in the future to avoid this? I believe if I change link thumbnails to image file instead of attachment page, that should fix the issue... Then, I'll have dead URL's which I suppose I should 301 to the sub-page. Alternatively, is there a better solution that will work, I was also thinking about no-indexing the attachment URL's, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320 -
How to solve Rel Canonical issue?
I have created one campaign for my website on SEOmoz. I found Rel Canonical issue for following 2 URLs. I can not understand that, what is error with that? Can any one help me to solve it? http://vistastores.com/blog/?p=1 http://vistastores.com/blog/?page_id=2
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Does anyone know why my Home page isn't visible in search terms?
If I type in my meta description for my homepage in google search or any of my keywords only my inner pages are returned in the results. I have a PR3 on the homepage so I don't think google is blocking my site and all my inner pages seem to show up.
On-Page Optimization | | Michael.Constable0 -
Rel="canonical"
Can you tell me if we've implemented rel="canonical" properly? We want this to be our primary: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- while this would be duplicate and refer robots back to the URL above: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6054284 We've added the following to both pages: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- "/> Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jonesatl0