Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
-
My client has an ecommerce site with over 1,000 products. We have a ton of duplicates because of how their ecommerce system handles product pages.
Each time a new product is added, there is a default product page created (/product/12345-product-name.aspx).
Each time that product is added to a specific product category, another, separate URL is created (/product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx).
The site has over 1,000 duplicates (at least one for each product) because of how the ecommerce system structures URLs. We are unable to have unique content on /products/12345-product-name.aspx and /product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx because both pages pull from the same database.
Their webteam informed me that they can't implement canonical tags on individual pages, they must be dynamically added to the site all at once. Thus forcing me to choose all of the default product pages as primary URLs.
Both types of URLs are getting indexed and the product URLs that were added to the categories are SEO friendly so I'm leary to eliminate one or the other with a canonical tag or a no index.
Suggestions?
-
It is a custom built ecommerce site in asp.net.
-
What is the e-commerce solution your client is using?
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
-
How to analysis Responsive VS Dynamic site?
Hello Experts, Can you please throw your knowledge on How to analysis Responsive VS Dynamic site? Also please suggest best tool to optimize both type of sites plus if I have to optimize manually then what is the best way? It will help lots of people as currently google focusing more on mobile site so we can optimize our responsive and dynamic site. Pls suggest. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | adamjack0 -
New jobboard: Can redirecting folder (site.com/jobboard) to subdomain (jobboard.site.com) hurt SEO?
Hi there, I'm planning to implement a jobboard on my website which needs to be installed on a subdomain (jobboard.site.com) but I'd really like to use site.com/jobboard for promoting this jobboard (jobboard collects external industry jobs). Are there any possible disadvantages when I set up a 301 redirect from jobboard.site.com to site.com/jobboard? Also: What if I want to move this jobboard to a unique domain one day (e.g. jobboard-industry-xy.com), Would that be tricky (as I'd basically have to redirect the folder-to-subdomain redirect to an external domain and therefore get a folder-to-subdomain-to-external-domain redirect...)? Cheers, Thomas
On-Page Optimization | | stl990 -
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
I have encountered problems regarding rel canonical. When I ran On-Page Report Card it says **Error: ** Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Canonical URL: "http://www.sourcedental.createmyid.net/teeth-whitening/" Explanation: If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply." I just don't know how to fix this. I am using Wordpress SEO by Yoast but I haven't change any settings regarding rel canonical. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | projectassistant0 -
Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.
Please clarify: In the page optimization tool, seomoz recommends using the canonical url tag on the unique page itself. Is it the same canonical url tag used when want juice to go to the original page? Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today. Please give example.
On-Page Optimization | | AllIsWell0 -
Customer forum on an ecommerce site, good or bad idea?
Hi, We are an online furniture retailer in Ireland and have been going for about 4 years, there is about 1000 visitors onto the site everyday. We have been thinking of new ways to interact with the customer and build the sites online content and constantly working to improve rankings. Have been toying with the idea of a user/customer forum and was wondering what the general consensus was with that as an idea, I appreciate that there could be negative aspects for the brand and was wondering if anyone had experience of similar and how that was perceived by the user and in what way did people interact with the forum. I assume differently to how they would interact with an "independent" furniture forum. My hope would be that the forum would be used for discussing general home improvements, asking questions relating to the home for community feedback and assistance and other similar home related topics. All thoughts and feed back welcome. Cheers. Eunan.
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0 -
Canonical tag help
Hi, We have a product which is marketed by affiliates . Affiliates send referrals to our sale page by adding their affiliate IDs to our product page like http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345. We want to avoid the content duplication impression to Google by using canonical tags but we are not clear about its use. Should we use it on http://www.mysite.com/products.php ( actual page) or we should create temporary pages for each referral id i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345 and then add canonical tags to all those pages linking to proper page i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php ? Thanks, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0 -
Small Site Title Tag / Structure Question
Bit embarrassed to ask this question, but will ask it anyway! I have done some quite reasonable basic SEO for clients in the south of Spain with small sites and had reasonable success. My wife and I came to the Pyrenees in the south of France to take over and run bed and breakfast in a lovely old farm and some self-catering accommodation in one of the pastures (with my continuing to do a bit of work for clients too). We are running and developing the place for friends who are away 3-4 years. They had an abysmal site, so we designed one to together: http:www.loubetaspyrenees.com/ (I have given the French version because it's what I am most concerned with - there is an English version in case I can tempt you to a holiday here!) It's been very well received by users, so that's great. We have the place on about 12 agencies amd almost all link to our site, so it serves as a good showcase. Here's my issue (for the French site): It went online 11th Feb and is already doing well for more "long tail" searches, and for more local and specific searches, but is proving slow on our prime search terms. The prime market is French, and they key terms are "Gîtes" for the self-catering accommodation, and "Chambres d'Hôtes" for the Bed and Breakfast. Our key Geographical term for the French market is "Hautes Pyrenees" - it's a departmental area. In Google.fr We are around result 100 out of 600k results for "Chambres d'hôtes hautes pyrénées" and aren't in the first 200 for "Gîtes Hautes Pyrénées". This is a competitive market and we are competing with optimised and long-established agencies but still hope to do better. I know I am losing from poorly constructed title tags cannibablising the results, but cannot see how to solve this: Home Page Title tag: "Gîtes et Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées | les Baronnies" I have two main pages on the Gîtes: Gîte for 2-3 people Title tag "Gîte dans les Hautes Pyrénées pour 2-3 personnes en les Baronnies"
On-Page Optimization | | PeterMurray
Gîte for 3-9 people Title tag "Location Gîte dans les Baronnies Pyrénées pour groupe 3-9 personnes" ("Location" means rental) Google understood the above and put us no 1 out of over 1miillion results for a search for a gite for 9 people in the south west of France ("gite sud ouest 9 personne") And 2 pages for the Bed and Breakfast: B&B in the farm building: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées dans une ferme restaurée"
B&B in gite apartments with sitting rooms: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées avec salon et terrasse" I am not sure how to handle the titles for the Home Page and for the 4 subpages - sounds silly, but have you any advice on how I might handle these titles better? I thought of using more general terms on the Home Page ("Holiday accommodation in the ..."), but on such a small site (18 pages in each language version) I feel that would be unwise. It seems I must try to find some way of differentiating the titles on the other 4 pages so that i am not cannibalising but where there are so few alternatives I am not sure how! Oh dear, sorry this was so long!0