Will I still get Duplicate Meta Data Errors with the correct use of the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags?
-
Hi Guys,
One of our sites has an extensive number category page lsitings, so we implemented the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags for these pages (as suggested by Google below), However, we still see duplicate meta data errors in SEOMoz crawl reports and also in Google webmaster tools. Does the SEOMoz crawl tool test for the correct use of rel="next" and "prev" tags and not list meta data errors, if the tags are correctly implemented?
Or, is it necessary to still use unique meta titles and meta descriptions on every page, even though we are using the rel="next" and "prev" tags, as recommended by Google?
Thanks, George
Implementing rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let’s get started! Let’s say you have content paginated into the URLs:
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you’d include in the section:
On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2:
On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3:
And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4:
A few points to mention:
-
The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup.
-
Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup.
-
The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”.
-
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the tag). And, if you include a
<base>
link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL. -
rel=”next” and rel=”prev” only need to be declared within the section, not within the document .
-
We allow rel=”previous” as a syntactic variant of rel=”prev” links.
-
rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain:
-
rel=”prev” and rel=”next” act as hints to Google, not absolute directives.
-
When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.
-
-
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html
3. While it’s fine to set rel=”canonical” from a component URL to a single view-all page, setting the canonical to the first page of a parameter-less sequence is considered improper usage. We make no promises to honor this implementation of rel=”canonical.”
-
Dear Irving,
Im very interested in your concept could you explain in depth or give me any source or link where to learn about.
Because canonical from my point of view is a controversial thing.
I'll appreciate your help
Claudio
-
Google no longer recommends setting up pagination pages with canonical tags. The rel tags are the way to go...
-
Dear George,
In the past I was dealing with the same issue, to solve it I implement these 2 fix :
1. Canonical tag ie.:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp">
This tell the Search engines specially google the page is the referred as canonical
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp?page=1
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp?page=2
from google perspective these pages are http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page.asp (canonical)
2. On each page I add (dynamically) Page # on both title and description meta tags
<title></span><span>Your page title - Page: 1</span><span></title>
name="description" content="Your page Description meta tag etc etc - Page: 1">
This resolve the problem on both, HTML issues in Google WMT and the rank flow because you're joining all pages into the root page.
Hope this hepl
Claudio
-
You will still need unique title and meta tags to avoid duplication. It's in the W3.org spec: Anything unique will work, so you can start the title and meta description tag on page 2 with the words "Page 2: "
<a name="h-12.1.2">12.1.2</a> <a name="idx-link-2">Other link relationships</a>
By far the most common use of a link is to retrieve another Web resource, as illustrated in the previous examples. However, authors may insert links in their documents that express other relationships between resources than simply "activate this link to visit that related resource". Links that express other types of relationships have one or more link types specified in their source anchor.
The roles of a link defined by <samp class="einst">A</samp> or <samp class="einst">LINK</samp> are specified via the <samp class="ainst">rel</samp> and <samp class="ainst">rev</samp> attributes.
For instance, links defined by the <samp class="einst">LINK</samp> element may describe the position of a document within a series of documents. In the following excerpt, links within the document entitled "Chapter 5" point to the previous and next chapters:
_...other head information..._ <title>Chapter 5</title>
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
-
Does this type of writing follow the "original content" criterion of structured data?
Hi!' So, in Google's general guideline for structured data, it's stated that the webmasters must "provide original content that you or your users have generated." If I were to write an article about post similar to stuff like "how to get a driver's license" or "how to apply for an accounting license", which requires looking up information from official and non-official sources. After researching, I compiled the information I found and wrote a few blog posts. Are these considered original content? Can I apply structured data to these posts without Google penalizing them? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EverettChen0 -
Should I keep writing about the same using rel canonical?
Hi, The service we provide has not so many searches per month. A long tail keyword that describes the service well has at the most 400 searches per month. We wrote a post for this keyword and we ranked number 1 for many months. Now we're on page 2 and I the truth is we stopped writing blog posts because we were raking well for our best keywords. I added a few new posts and lost ranking on my top keywords so I gave up, deleted them and recover the rankings for the keywords I wanted the most. The problem is that I have lost these positions and I know we're supposed to be updating the blog regularly. What would you suggest? Should we keep writing about the same thing and use rel canonical? There aren't that many keywords related to what we offer. I appreciate any ideas.
Technical SEO | | Naix0 -
HREFLANG No Return Tag Error
Keep getting WMT no return tag error. Also got an email today on this issue. Here are a couple pages showing up in the error report: Originating URL: /hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ Alternate URL: /jp/hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ Here are the hreflang tags for each page: /hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ /jp/hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ The only thing I can see is the hreflang= is at the end of the snippet but doesn't seem like that would matter. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Will Google Data Highlighter support other schemas?
At the moment I see that the Data Highlighter supports a few schemas such as Events, Products, Articles, Restaurants etc. My client has a training division and runs regular training courses so we want to highlight those using the tool as "Training Courses," but this is not an option. Does anyone know why the tool doesn't support more categories and if there are plans to expand what it supports? I realise it would be better to use actual HTML markup onto the client site but their website is administered by their corporate parent in another country and they are not prepared to add in a Wordpress plugin to allow this. But the UK division, that we work for, wants to use it. We have restricted access to the Wordpress site so we don't have the access rights to add in plugins ourselves otherwise it would be no problem to do this.
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti1 -
Using rel=canonical
I have a set of static pages which were created with the purpose of targeting long tail keywords. That has resulted in Domain Authority dilution to some extent. I am now in the process of creating one page which will serve the same results but only after user selects the fields in the drop-down. I am planning to use rel=cannonical on the multiple pages pointing back to the new page. Will it serve the purpose?
Technical SEO | | glitterbug0 -
Link rel="prev" AND canonical
Hi guys, When you have several tabs on your website with products, you can most likely navigate to page 2, 3, 4 etc...
Technical SEO | | AdenaSEO
You can add the link rel="prev" and link rel="next" tags to make sure that 1 page get's indexed / ranked by Google. am I correct? However this still means that all the pages can get indexed, right? For example a webshop makes use of the link rel="prev" and ="next" tags. In the Google results page though, all the seperate tabs pages are still visible/indexed..
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=1
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=24
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=19
etc..... Can we prevent this, and make sure only the main page get's indexed and ranked, by adding a canonical link on every 'tab page' to the main page --> www.domain.nl/watches/ I hope I explained it well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Regards, Tom1 -
A rel="canonical" to www.homepage.com/home.aspx Hurts my Rank?
Hello, The CMS that I use makes 3 versions of the homepage:
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative
www.homepage.com/home.aspx homepage.com homepage.com/default.aspx By default the CMS is set to rel=canonical all versions to the www.homepage.com/home.aspx version. If someone were to link to a website they most likely aren't going to link to www.homepage.com/home.aspx, they'll link to www.homepage.com which makes that link juice flow through the canonical to www.homepage.com/home.aspx right? Why make that extra loop at all? Wouldn't that be splitting the juice? I know 301's loose 1-5 % juice, but not sure about canonical. I assume it works the same way? Thanks! http://yoursiteroot/0 -
Why am i still getting duplicate page title warnings after implementing canonical URLS?
Hi there, i'm having some trouble understanding why I'm still getting duplicate page title warnings on pages that have the rel=canonical attribute. For example: this page is the relative url http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/1 and http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/2 is the second page of this parsed list which is linking back to the first page using rel=canonical. i have over 300 pages like this!! what should i do SEOmoz GURUS? how do i remedy this problem? is it a problem?
Technical SEO | | fourthdimensioninc0