Help with Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
-
Whenever i enable Canonical URL through the 3DCart Control panel I get this Critical Factor error when running the on page report card:
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://rcnitroshop.com/Nitro-Monster-Truck"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>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.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>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.</dd>
</dl>
Now if I disable Canonical URL then run the on page report card again the critical error goes away but I get this Optional Factor error instead:
Canonical URL Tag Usage
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt>
<dd>0</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>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.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd>
</dl>
So basically I disabled it because obviously a Critical error is much worse then an optional error. Is there a way I can get rid of both errors?
-
We are a creative design and development agency as well as a search marketing agency, we can build and develop ecommerce websites and look after all migration, hosting and configuration - we can manage everything basically. We are based in the UK though so unsure if you are looking for someone a bit nearer to you.
I also appreciate that it's not really a recommendation if we are pushing our own services to you so if I were to recommend another company that I have no affiliation with, in terms of anything Magento related, Inchoo would be my recommendation.
-
It will not let me change that part. I wish I could. It would look a lot better.
I didn't really think about hiring someone to do it. Is there anyone you would recommend talking to about doing something like that (Switching over to Magento).
-
Glad you identified the setting, thought it looked something like that.
Site is looking a little better, is there any way you can change the layout of the product pages, perhaps putting the price and options alongside the image gallery or anything similar to that? Any kind of layout options available from the admin panel?
Appreciate your decision to stick it out with 3dCart for now, can sometimes prove a daunting task migrating to a new ecommerce provider - it should be a relatively smooth transition if you hire the right person/company if you decide to do so in the future though.
Happy to advise on your current site as required based on what the platform will allow you to do though.
-
Well in 3DCarts control panel I noticed that in Settings>Store Settings all the way at the bottom it says Store URL : The URL was "rcnitroshop.com". I just added "www." in front of that. BTW after listening to what you told me about my website I did some redesigning if you want to check it out. I added a phone number at the top, decreased white space, added some images on the sidebars to gain some trust, overall I feel I made the site a little more trustworthy and hopefully will be a little more efficient. I'm just going to stick with 3DCart for a little while until I feel like putting a week into switch all of my products over. I will just try to make the best of it for now lol. Still got a lot of work to do though.
From You:
Conversions
- Design is not fluid.
- Too much whitespace.
- Everything just appears in one wide column, needs to be split into easily digestible sections with call to actions.
- There is nothing catching my attention and no existing call to actions.
- Ask yourself - Why should people buy from you?
-
No problem Bill, glad you sorted it - what was the cause in the end?
-
I figured it out. Thanks for the response!
-
Potentially an issue with 3dCart's canonical URL feature?
I think there is potentially a bigger issue with your site / URL structure causing this maybe. Have you recently changed whether your website makes use of www / non www in the URL's? Instances of both versions are indexed in Google currently - did you enter the canonical URL in 3dCart with the www or without. And if you use Google Webmaster Tools, is this set to display URL's with or without the www?
There is currently a www redirect from non www to www however, so one would presume www is preferred - so just ensure any settings in 3dCart's admin panel that include your domain, are inserted with the www included.
Maybe on this page.
Hope this helps initially.
-
Someone has had to run into this before : /
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
-
We use Bigcommerce and want to make changes to our mobile site
Our current mobile site does not show the banners we use on the desktop site. Can anyone tell us how we can change the mobile site to show these banners.
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Can Javascript Links Be Used to Reduce Links per Page?
We are trying to reduce the number of links per page, so for the low-value footer links we are considering coding them as javascript links. We realize Google can read java, but the goal is to reduce level of importance assigned to those internal links. Would this be a valid approach? So the question is would converting low-value footer links to js like below help reduce the number of links per page in google's eyes even though we're reasonably sure they can read javascript. <a <span="" class="html-tag">href</a><a <span="" class="html-tag">="</a><a class="html-attribute-value html-external-link" target="_blank">javascript:void(0);</a>" data-footer-link="/about/about">About Us
On-Page Optimization | | Jay-T0 -
Traffic Down - May Need Outside Help
Hi Moz Community - Our website (www.motivators.com) experienced a small traffic drop in mid-March. This was followed by a steady decline in traffic through May, June and July. Please note that a site redesign went live on April 4th. Starting in mid-July, we began implementing aggressive site improvements (mostly based upon site speed), but our traffic is still down. Can anyone recommend a service or company that can look at our site and determine the root cause / more strategies for improvement? Thanks for your suggestions!
On-Page Optimization | | Motivators0 -
Should I use nofollow when interlinking large, networked sites?
My company runs a network of very large networked sites, each with thousands of content pages. In our main navigation we are currently not nofollowing links between these networked sites. The links appear on every single page in the top navigation, and there are thousands of pages on each site. I am worried this will look to Google like we have suspiciously received thousands of links from one domain - one link from every page on the domain. Should we be nofollowing these navigation links between the different sites in our network?
On-Page Optimization | | Natasha90040 -
Can Sitemap Be Used to Manage Canonical URLs?
We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
I have 2 canonical links. Must get rid of one?
On my wordpress blog, i have 2 canonical links for every single post, like this: One is generated by wordpress theme: rel='canonical' href='http://site.com/article-title/' /> The other one is generated by AllinOne seo pack: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">http://site.com/article-title/</a>" /> I tried to remove one of them, but if i uncheck from AllinOne, the source code is the same. Also, on-page analysis from SeoMoz tells me that i need only one canonical link. I don't have errors in Google Webmater Tools. What should I do?
On-Page Optimization | | Vladone800 -
Using categories in Permalinks
I am looking at updating my WP Permalink structure and wanted to know if I should continue to include the category after my domain as in www.maximphotostudio.net/weddings/6081/columbus_wedding_photography/ or maybe www.maximphotostudio.net/6081/columbus_wedding_photography and www.maximphotostudio.net/6082/dayton_wedding_photography. Any help is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | maximphotostudio0 -
Repeat Keyword Phrase or Use Variations
Is it better to repeat a keyword phrase on a page's text that you have already used once, or to use a different variation of the keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0