Do I need canonical link on target page?
-
I've placed in my head tag on duplicate content pages, but do i need to place it on the target page such as http://www.example.com/index.html too?
-
It's not instantaneous, but yes, you should see that number drop over time.
-
After implementing my canonical links, I should see my duplicate page warnings go down in the Errors section of Crawl Diagnostics correct? SEOMOZ parses these correct?
-
Ah yes, I could have been more clear with this. Thanks for the help.
-
I'm a little confused, because you gave different URLs for the target of your canonical tag and your "target page", so I just want to make sure we're referring to the same thing here. You don't typically need a canonical tag on the canonical version of the URL. Technically, you shouldn't put one there (Bing has specifically said they don't want that, but Google has eased up on it), but practically, I've rarely seen it cause any problems.
In other words, I wouldn't lose sleep over it
Just make sure that the "target page" doesn't actually represent multiple URLs. I've seen some people get confused on that. Typically, having a canonical tag on your home-page can help sweep up variants you might not think about, so I think it can make sense to have one, even on the target. In most cases, though, it's not necessary.
-
Yes you should if you are not using 301 redirection for "non www" with "www" domain.
-
Nope, not as far as I know. Just add the tag in the head of the non-canonical URLs:
This is from Google's Webmaster Tools Support section:
If you want http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html to
be the canonical URL for your listing, you can indicate this to search
engines by adding a element with the attribute
rel="canonical"
_ to the section of the non-canonical pages. To do this, create a_
link as follows:
_```
href="http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html">_Add this extra information to the section of non-canonical URLs._
http://example.com/dresses/greendress.html?gclid=ABCDh
_This tells Google that these URLs all refer to the canonical page at **http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html**. _ _**Note**: We recommend __using a link with the attribute `rel="canonical"` to_ _indicate your preferred __URL, but we can't guarantee to follow that preference_ _in all cases._ _[More information about rel="canonical".](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394)_ Hope this helps. Thanks, Anthony_
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
-
Product Page Links
I have a product category page at https://www.hurtlegear.com.au/s1000rr/ which currently has 38 products on it. Problem is, all the product titles start with the name of the text: "bmw s1000rr" (because that's what they are) - so that means there are 38 anchored internal links on that page, all starting with the same keyword. You can see how that might look to the Google crawler. Recently that page dropped from around 15 to outside the top 100, and Moz tells me that the page is keyword stuffed with "bmw s1000rr" (no suprise) so I'm guessing that may be the reason the page has disappeared out of the SERPs. I don't really want to change all the product titles (then they wouldn't make sense) so I'm just wondering if there is any way around this? Is there some way of telling Google that this is a product category page and therefore to ignore the anchor text in all of those product links? Can/should the links have some kind of markup on them? Or is the page beyond help? Basically I'm looking at a way of keeping the product titles as they are, but avoiding a page penalty from Google somehow. I'm a bit of a newbie, any suggestions would be most appreciated. Cheers, Graeme
On-Page Optimization | | graeme720 -
Duplicate content from page links
So for the last month or so I have been going through fixing SEO content issues on our site. One of the biggest issues has been duplicate content with WHMCS. Some have been easy and other have been a nightmare trying to fix. Some of the duplicate content has been the login page when a page requires a login. For example knowledge base article that are only viewable by clients etc. Easily fixed for me as I dont really need them locked down like that. However pages like affiliate.php and pwreset.php that are only linked off of a page. I am unsure how to take care of these types. Here are some pages that are being listed as duplicate: Should this type of stuff be a 301 redirect to cart.php or would that break something. I am guessing that everything should point back to cart.php.
On-Page Optimization | | blueray
https://www.bluerayconcepts.com/brcl...art.php?a=view
https://www.bluerayconcepts.com/brcl...php?a=checkout These are the ones that are really weird to me. These are showing as duplicate content but pwreset is only a link of the KB category. It shows up as duplicate many times as does affilliate.php: https://www.bluerayconcepts.com/brcl...ebase/16/Email
https://www.bluerayconcepts.com/brcl...16/pwreset.php Any help is overly welcome.0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
If a page has more than 100 links, rather than splitting up the page into multiple pages, is it ok to use name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />? The page in question lists links to articles so the page itself isn't that important to appear in serps, but the articles are the helpful content pages: www.ides.com/articles/processing/injection-molding/
On-Page Optimization | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Navigation Links
Our developers typically have a CSS driven html menu at the top of the page with links to inside pages. They then have the same links in the footer. Does this double navigation cause any SEO issues or does Google disregard the second set of links? Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | DenverKelly0 -
Some of my pages are ranking for terms which I want other pages to rank for. What can I do to effectively switch the ranking?
Some of the pages are ranking for terms I have optimised other pages for. The pages which are ranking are quite rightly falling, because they aren't optimised for the terms they're showing for. However, I have pages which are optomised for those terms. How do I switch the SERPS to the page I want?
On-Page Optimization | | GlobalLingo1 -
City targeting on home page
Client has a site that ranks well for "Town_A_KW", "Town_B_KW" and "Town_C_KW". The home page is the page that's ranking. These towns are part of the larger metro area for Portland. They want to start ranking for "Portland_KW" and normally, I'd recommend optimizing the home page for this phrase, and better optimizing the sub-pages for town A, B and C KW's. The client is understandably nervous about messing with re-targeting the home page since it already ranks well. Is it best to: Add "Portland_KW" to home page meta titles, content, etc. to try and rank for that phrase? (so home page would be optimized for Town A, B and C KW's + Portland_KW). Re-target home page for "Portland_KW" only, and better optimize sub-pages for town A, B and C? Leave home page as is, and create a "Portland KW" sub-page? (client's original idea). Thanks in advance for your insights!
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0 -
What is the effect of too many internal links on a page?
Hi there! We have been doing a great effort during the last year but our main competitor is still above us in search rankings. Basically, the main differente remains now in the number of internal links, specially in our homepage. We have more than 200 and they only have around 100, so I think we are wasting too much link power among some irrelevant pages. What could be the effect of this?
On-Page Optimization | | bodaclick0