Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
-
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus.
The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes)
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx(I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider)
So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this:
http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" />
With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in?
For Example:
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
will become
http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man
My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page?
I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!
-
no what you need to do is out of the conocal URL reference whatever is going to be shown to the user as the preferable content so if the pages http://www.omnipress.com/boss-woman" />
and next pages
">http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> you will of course need 301 redirect as usual and anyone that tells you rel="canonical is not important does not understand much about SEO and that's not a sly on anyone.
rel="canonical Tells Google where the original pages are it no matter what helps you immensely who searc it on SEOmoz see what Rand has to say or we could just look at this link that claims it's the most important advancement in SEO since site maps so please do use a canonical-url-tag http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps
here is exactly how to implement them and I wish you all the best. http://www.metatags.org/rel_canonical
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi,
Canonical tag is only required if the search engines are able to access both the pages. There is no need to apply canonical tag as long as the duplicate pages are being redirected to the new/original page.
As you've specifically mentioned to Google that these page do not exist anymore and I've created a new page for all these pages, and now you want your visitors/search engines to visit the new page which doesn't have any duplicate entry.
Canonical tag only works if you're running a
- multilingual website or
- you're using some query strings for tacking purpose
- you've multiple copies of the one page and those page can not be deleted.
If you're sure that after 301 redirect there will not be any duplicate entry for the page, you don't need to apply canonical tag.
Hope it helps
-
If your using a 301 redirect, there is no need to use the Rel=canonical tag. However, I would like to point out that the rel=canonical tag is basically made for this type of situation where your CMS is creating multiples of the same page. So adding a rel=canonical tag looks to be exactly what you’re looking for.
-
You only need to use a 301.
Ps. Your links are going to 404 pages
-
It depends,
Doing a 301 will transfer the search engine/user from Page A to Page B which is fine. However, if Page B and Page C have a similar URL structure like the first example you gave I would recommend using a canonical tag.
I would recommend using a canonical tag in any case, to let the search engine spider know which page you want it to crawl. If the content/URL is very similar on two pages or more I would highly recommend it to avoid duplication.
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
-
Will using a reverse proxy give me the benefits of the main sites domain authority?
If I am running example.com and have a blog on exampleblog.com Will moving the blog to example.com/blog and using a reverse proxy give the blog the same domain authority as example.com Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | El-Bracko0 -
Old URL that has been 301'd for months appearing in SERPs
We created a more keyword friendly url with dashes instead of underscores in December. That new URL is in Google's Index and has a few links to it naturally. The previous version of the URL (with underscores) continues to rear it's ugly head in the SERPs, though when you click on it you are 301'd to the new url. The 301 is implemented correctly and checked out on sites such as http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php. Has anyone else experienced such a thing? I understand that Google can use it's discretion on pages, title tags, canonicals, etc.... But I've never witnessed them continue to show an old url that has been 301'd to a new for months after discovery or randomly.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin0 -
Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether
Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Should you allow an auto dealer's inventory to be indexed?
Due to the way most auto dealership website populate inventory pages, should you allow inventory to be indexed at all? The main benefit us more content. The problem is it creates duplicate, or near duplicate content. It also creates a ton of crawl errors since the turnover is so short and fast. I would love some help on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gauge1230 -
Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?
If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Do Q&A 's work for SEO
If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
Is it ok to use both 301 redirect and rel="canonical' at the same time?
Hi everyone, I'm sorry if this has been asked before. I just wasn't able to find a response in previous questions. To fix the problems in our website regarding duplication I have the possibility to set up 301's and, at the same time, modify our CMS so that it automatically sets a rel="canonical" tag for every page that is generated. Would it be a problem to have both methods set up? Is it a problem to have a on a page that is redirecting to another one? Is it advisable to have a rel="canonical" tag on every single page? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDLOnlineChannel0
