Deos canonicalisation work across directories?
-
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the group and can't find this question answered anywhere else.
I have a dynamic site that we aim to rewrite the URLs removing parameters and making it easier for the engines to index us and users to recall URLs.
The issue that worries me relates to canonical tags. If I put a canonical tag on a directory..
http://www.abc.com/spain (index page)
and then point all variations of that page to the index page will it stop/pass juice for those pages at the next directory level to the index page rather than properly index and rank those pages appropriately. ie.
http://www.abc.com/spain/Malaga.html will it pass any link juice I have for the second level to the first level?
It concerns me that it will as I had a conversation with someone who lost all visibility on her site and it turned out to be the canonical tag on the home page that was causing it.
Thanks in anticipation
-
Peter is correct below. I think you are heading in the wrong direction. After your explanation here, I understand a little more about where you are going. Here is what I would say to your question:
1. All "old urls" (and all versions of) will need to have a 301 redirect to the new SEo friendly url. The currency is a different issue. You cant redirect that because you would never be able to show multiple currencies to the right users. In the curreny example, you could use a canonical tag to the most popular or default currency.
2. Directories and IA (information architecture) of your site have nothing to do with redirects or canonical tags. As Peter pointed out below, /spain/malaga is a totally different page than /spain. You dont do anything special with tags here, you just create unique content for each of those pages. You pass proper link juice upwards by internally linking your /spain/malaga page up to your /spain page, and every other page that exists below a main level directory page. Essentially, you want all deeper pages linking up to your main directory page.
3. In the small cases that you will be using the canonical tag, you put those tags on all the pages except the original page.
Hope that clears things up. I was/am still a bit confused as to your structure, but think this should get you in the right direction.
-
Sorry, I'm still confused (read your reply to Ryan, who asked some good questions). The canonical, like a 301-redirect will consolidate link-juice, but only for the pages it's on and preferably only for actual duplicates.
If you put a canonical tag at the "/Spain" level, it doesn't impact "/Spain/Malaga.html" at all. It just makes sure that any stray inbound links to "/Spain" duplicates (like "/Spain?print=true") have their link-juice consolidated and don't show up in the index.
If you could give a couple of sample tags and how you're looking to use them, maybe we could dig in deeper. I feel like I'm missing something still.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the response. I have to say I'm impressed at the speed!
Hmmm, there is a bit of both going to be happening. We are restructuring some of the dynamic pages to present user and search engine friendly URLs. I understand we will need to be putting in place redirects for those pages, so far so good. We have, for example, pages were each one can have a parameter for each currency. I understand we would merely redirect every parameter version to the original page under the new user friendly URL?
We are then creating specific SEO landing pages for dedicated keywords per page. The URLs in here will be structured in directories. What I am confused about relates to differing levels of directory. If we put in a canonical tag on the top level will it direct all rank and link juice to that level, so Spain/ would benefit from the links to spain/malaga ?? Or would each level hold its own link juice spreading to links out and not the other way? I just don't want to pass link juice 'up' the chain so to speak due to a canonical tag.
Finally, and this may answer my question. If I have two pages that I want a tag to pass the link juice to one of them...do I place the tag on both pages and indicate on both tags the URL of the main page? If that is correct then I understand that the directory issue I am worried about won't exist because I will only put canonical tags on the one directory level.
Hope this isn't too long!
Thanks
Andy
-
Not sure why you want to use the canonical tag in this instance. If http://www.abc.com/spain/Malaga.html is truly a duplicate or replicated page of the new /spain page, then I guess you could do it. But it sounds to me like you are re-structuring your urls to be more friendly, and if that is the case you will want to permanently 301 redirect the old urls to the new SEO friendly one. That will pass on the SEO juice in a more effective way then canonical a bunch of the old pages that you dont want anyway.
Is that the case? It kind of depends on the content of each of the pages, and how that content interacts with the other pages. Typically canonical is used for paginated instances or duplicated content that is handle in a different matter, not redirecting juice from old urls/pages to new ones.
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
-
Canonical tag not working
I have a weebly site and I put the canonical tag in the header code but the moz crawler still says that I'm missing the canonical tag. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | ctpolarbears0 -
Best directories for a new(ish) hospital to be listed on?
Just thought I'd throw this question out to the Moz community. Anyone have leads for good, credible directories where I could get a smaller, local hospital listed on? (besides the obvious ones like HealthGrades, etc.,) Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
How are Server side redirects perceived compared to direct links (on a Directory site)
Hi, Im creating some listings for a client on a relevant b2b directory (a good quality directory) I asked if the links are 'followed' or no 'followed' and they said they are 'server side redirects' so no direct links. Does anyone know how these are likely to be perceived by Google ? All BEst Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
What directory should a site go in (url structure)?
Hi All, The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO. Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way. My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution? Appreciate the input thanks!
Technical SEO | | Mario.Souza0 -
Root directory vs. subdirectories
Hello. How much more important does Google consider pages in the root directory relative to pages in a subdirectory? Is it best to keep the most important pages of a site in the root directory? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Multiple (different) domains and canonicalisation
Hello, We've had experience with canonical tags for various domains before, such as tidying up product categories etc... However, can anyone point me to any guidelines about different domains using canonicalisation. For example: If I had the following sites, all with identical content - exampledomain.com completelydifferentdomain.net anothertotallydifferentdomain.com With canonical tags pointing to the first one (exampledomain.com), could this be harmful? Is it better to 301 redirect the other sites? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sarbs0 -
Does duplicate content on word press work against the site rank? (not page rank)
I noticed in the crawl that there seems to be some duplicate content with my word press blog. I installed a seo plugin, Yoast's wordpress seo plugin, and set it to keep from crawling the archives. This might solve the problem but my main question is can the blog drag my site down?
Technical SEO | | tommr10 -
Using a table with tabs to display information on website, work for seo?
When displaying data using a table, and a tab format to seperate different options, for example http://www.mousetraining.co.uk/ms-training/microsoft-excel-training-courses.html - under Standard Excel Training Course Levels / Training Details / Locations / Schedule - at the bottom of the page. Would search engines pick up the keywords from each of the tabs, or are they hidden?? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jpc10040