Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
-
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
-
It's always hard to speak in generalities, but my gut reaction is that Alan's right - if the canonical tags were implemented properly, having your rankings tank from this kind of implementation seems very unlikely. A couple of possibilities:
(1) Are your canonical URLs being used in internal links? If you tell Google that one version is canonical but then act as if another version is canonical, it can cause problems.
(2) Are you sending any other, conflicting cues, like 301-redirects or Webmaster Tools parameter handling?
(3) Is it possible that your canonicalization was too broad? In other words, did you end up de-indexing some product variations that were driving long-tail traffic? For example, let's say you had a product in red, blue and green and you canonicalized them all to the "root" product page. In theory, that might be a good thing, but if people were searching for specifics and you had a lot of long-tail rankings ("buy product in red"), then it could be bad.
-
Yes, they were set up site wide and point to the proper URL for each individual product.
-
Okay so to be sure, you simply set up canonical tags to point to your newly identified "proper" URL for each product, correct?
If so, given the lapse in time between the change and the drop, I would need to assume something else has happened. Some other factor would need to be the cause, if your canonical implementation was executed properly and there's not a major flaw at the code level in the results.
While there is a slight chance it's tied to the canonical change even if that was done properly, I'd definitely look at other factors as well.
-
On every product page.
Here's why: when a new product was added to the website it automatically gave it a url like this one, www.website.com/product/productname1234. And whenever it was added to a product category such as "corner desks," a new url and page were created, www.website.com/product/cornerdesks/productname1234. Google was indexing both (or all - in the case they were in multiple categories) thus creating almost 2,000 duplicate product pages.
We added the canonical tag at the end of April and didn't really see a drop in rank until this week.
-
a canonical tag on every product page? Pointing to a different page or pointing to themselves? And what was the reason for doing so?
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
-
Should you do on-page optimization for a page with rel=canonical tag?
If you ad a rel=canonical tag to a page, should you still optimize that page? I'm talking meta description, page title, etc.
On-Page Optimization | | marynau0 -
Rel Canonical help
Is it possible to confirm this to me please? My understanding of the rel canonical tag was to tell google of duplicate content? so for instance product 1
On-Page Optimization | | TeamacPaints
www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1 Product 1a
www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1a same content just a different colour would be rel canonical'd to Product 1 as thats the main product, is my understanding correct? Now here is what I have discovered. www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1 has a rel canonical tag that reverts back to www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/ which isn't optimized as such its just a generic catalog page. This is inccorect and google will dismiss the actial product and revert to the generic catalog page? any help would be great.0 -
Canonical URL Category and Tags
Hello, I would like to know that I want to use both category and tags in my blog StylishMahi. If I index both category and tags, should I use canonical URL tag to pass referring to main category. As I want more my categories in SERP results ranking higher? I have also attached a picture. Can someone please confirm? Photo by Moz ZigdWMx
On-Page Optimization | | PratapSingh0 -
Canonical rel
I am having a few issues understanding the whole report card and canonical issue. I have a wordpress blog www.theseolab.com.au. When i created the blog i had setup http://theseolab.com.au and i thought that was my mistake. When i ran the on page report for www.theseolab.com.au . It said that my canonical was http://theseolab.com. So i changed it and my canonical points to http://www.theseolab.com.au. 5 days later i run the on page again and it still says that there are issues and it still shows that my website canonical is not pointing to the right link. Does it take time to update or am i missing something?
On-Page Optimization | | theseolab0 -
H1 tag mandatory?
Hi there! Is a mandatory to fullfill the H1 tag in order to improve SEO? I mean I'm in the case where the keyword selected is appropiate to optimize the page but not appropiate to be in H1 tag 'cause it probably "doesn't sound good" to the user. Is it enought to be present in the url, title and description?Any suggestion? Thanks in advanced.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Are tags important for SEO?
I just installed a plugin called SEO content control and it is telling me I need to write descriptions for my tags. I haven't been using tags although I did create a list of them. I don't have an endless amount of time on my hands so is this a worthwhile task?
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
How to handle wordpress tags
Hi fellow SEO mozzers, I am getting 'duplicate content' errors when our site is crawled, mainly down to our WordPress blog and how we have handled tags. Currently, they are being crawled and as such are regarded as duplicate pages. I have read several different articles on how to handle tags. Some suggest noindex the tag URL's. Others suggest to optimize them and allow them to be indexed since Google has confirmed they won't penalize a WordPress site for having archive pages that publish and point to the same content. It will select the best link to represent the cluster of links. Over the past few months, nearly 4% of our WordPress traffic have been referred by tag pages listed in search engines. Initially I was going to noindex the tag pages, but going on the above info I wonder should I leave them as they are? Or is the issue that having duplicate content will lead to inefficient crawling? Any views/opinions on how best to handle this?
On-Page Optimization | | efink0 -
Follow up on "Canonical Tag Placement - Every Page?"
But if it is like Pete said, I don't understand why e.g. SEO Moz has a Canonical Tag on this Page http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps Which leads to the exact same page!? What is the benefit of doing so? Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Here4You0