Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
-
When I'm checking my page on SEOmoz should I use http://www. or http:// or www. or just keyword.com?
And I get this for my check
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>XXX</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>
<dd>I have absolutely NO idea what this means
</dd></dl>
-
I don't understand what you said
-
The tag is usually used to indicate you have duplicate/very similar content on the same site.
So if you have the tag pointing to an offsite site/page it could be the reason you are getting the warning?
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
-
SEO Implications of using Images for Article Titles
Hi guys! New to Moz Pro. I just recently completed an online course with Moz... I have a client who is writing some new content for their site, and we are approaching it with SEO in mind. I was wondering about using an image with text on it as the article title, instead of an actual "text on the page" title. Wondering if that's going to "cost" us anything, SEO wise. I guess we could use alt-text/title/description fields to make sure the keywords are crawlable for our article title but do they have less "weight" than a standard title? How does that work? Hope my question makes sense. Article header attached mB0PXsA.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | JakeWarren1 -
Ecommerce Canonical Question
Hi all, first question (eek) Could I pick the brains of fellow users around an issue we are having with canonical urls on a magento website. At the moment we do not have these enabled as it seems to break our indexing. Cut a long story short, we have thousands of products but haven't rewritten many of the descriptions from the manufacturers yet and so have noindexed all the product pages (freeing them as we go). The goal, for now, is to pull in traffic via the filtering options we have on the site The goal, for now, is to pull in traffic via the filtering options we have on the site. For example, if you go to Dresses, there then are several filtering options which would allow you to choose a colour, shape and material - if you wished to filter that precisely. These filtering options are all crawlable and so we would then have a page that google could index for, for example, Green Lace Maxi Dress. All good there, few people search for specific products and a lot search for types of products so we are covered. To get back to the issue at hand. If we enable the canonical option on our magento plugin it will stop us from being able to target these terms. Whereas the filtering option would create domain.com/dress/green/maxi/lace with the page title of Green Lace Maxi Dress, if we enable the canonical part of the seo plugin the canonical link which would be added to the page would be - instantly removing our ability to rank for longer tail dress related searches (we are not going to compete with the big players on the premium terms, yet!). There are alternative plugins we can buy for magento to add the correct tag, however, if every page's canonical just points back it itself like this, is there really much point spending nearly $1000 on the 4 licences we would need to cover our range of sites. Is it really necessary, in this case, that we have a canonical for the product filtering? Sorry for the long post, hope it made sense. Thanks for any assistance.
On-Page Optimization | | DSCarl0 -
Is there a limit to the number of duplicate pages pointing to a rel='canonical ' primary?
We have a situation on twiends where a number of our 'dead' user pages have generated links for us over the years. Our options are to 404 them, 301 them to the home page, or just serve back the home page with a canonical tag. We've been 404'ing them for years, but i understand that we lose all the link juice from doing this. Correct me if I'm wrong? Our next plan would be to 301 them to the home page. Probably the best solution but our concern is if a user page is only temporarily down (under review, etc) it could be permanently removed from the index, or at least cached for a very long time. A final plan is to just serve back the home page on the old URL, with a canonical tag pointing to the home page URL. This is quick, retains most of the link juice, and allows the URL to become active again in future. The problem is that there could be 100,000's of these. Q1) Is it a problem to have 100,000 URLs pointing to a primary with a rel=canonical tag? (Problem for Google?) Q2) How long does it take a canonical duplicate page to become unique in the index again if the tag is removed? Will google recrawl it and add it back into the index? Do we need to use WMT to speed this process up? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dsumter0 -
Use of the word Find in Title Tags
Hey, So i'm looking to make content that is optimized for Finding an injury lawyer in boston. The Phrase "Personal Injury Lawyers in Boston" get's a lot more searches than "Find Personal Injury Lawyers in Boston" but with the Find is it less competitive? The same thing goes for "Find lawyers in Boston" vs. "Lawyers in Boston." My question is, is it better to put the word FInd in front or not? Is there a downside?
On-Page Optimization | | RafeTLouis0 -
301, Canonical, and Page Authority
I have been trying to find an answer to this question for awhile now but I am having trouble. I have a clients site that I need to redirect and Canonical the pages to correct duplicate content issues and title tags however, the issue with this client is that some of the www. pages have a higher PA than non-www and the reverse is true. I am wondering if there is an issue with chasing the PA to get the highest PA per page (even if this means the site is going to be a mix of www. and non-www. pages)? I am extremely new to SEO so I apologize ahead of time if I missed this in the forum.
On-Page Optimization | | Highline_Ideas0 -
When Adding content to the site. Should I use the same keyword term on each page or select a secondary keyword to focus on?
I have created a site www.autoinsurancefremontca.com. The index page is SEO for the key term auto insurance fremont ca. I want to add more content on another page of this site. Should I have that page also SEO'd for the same keyword or should I pick another keyword to focus on?
On-Page Optimization | | Greenpeak0 -
What is the best way to make use of internal anchor text links without appearing to be a 'spammy' webpage?
I've recently been spending some time going through all the content on our website, henstuff.com, adding internal anchor text links to product copy with the link following back to the product's generic catagory. I've been focusing on the search term 'hen party accessories', but have also been using 'hen do accessories' and 'hen night accessories'. I know that internal linking has value when it comes to SEO and rankings, but was keen to find roughly at what point usage of a certain search term for anchor links is seen as spam by the engines. Is there a certain formula to follow when it comes to internal anchor text links? You can see some examples at: http://www.henstuff.com/hen-night-accessories/hen-party-accessories/willy-bubbles http://www.henstuff.com/hen-night-accessories/hen-party-devil-horns/hen-night-pink-devil-horns Many thanks Oli
On-Page Optimization | | RobertHill1