Canonical tags pointing at old URLs that have been 301'd
-
I have a site which has various white label sites with the same content on each. I have canonical tags on the white label sites pointing to the main site. I have changed some URLs on the main site and 301'd the previous URL to the new ones. Is it ok to have the canonicals pointing to the old URLs that now have a 301 redirect on them.
-
So, you basically (in some cases) have a canonical pointing to a URL, and then that URL 301s to a new URL? If that's the case, I think Nakul is right - it's not ideal. It's not a disaster, but you're basically putting Google through extra hops and you could be losing link-juice. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to calculate how much. Ideally, I'd change the canonicals to point to the new URLs.
-
It would be best to update the canonical URLs to go directly to the new location. Having too many redirects, canonicals can often create these complex situations causing issues in the long-run. The intent of the canonical tag is to pass the bots a strong directive about what the correct URL is. So it would be wise to use the correct URL instead of a URL which does not exist (301'd). I hope this helps.
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
-
Understanding Redirects and Canonical Tags in SEO: A Complex Case
Hi everyone, nothing serious here, i'm just playing around doing my experiments 🙂
Technical SEO | | chueneke
but if any1 of you guys understand this chaos and what was the issue here, i'd appreciate if you try to explain it to me. I had a page "Linkaufbau" on my website at https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau. My .htaccess file contains only basic SEO stuff: # removed ".html" using htaccess RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.html\ HTTP RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ $1 [R=301,L] # internally added .html if necessary RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$ RewriteRule (.*) $1\.html [L] # removed "index" from directory index pages RewriteRule (.*)/index$ $1/ [R=301,L] # removed trailing "/" if not a directory RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$ RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301,L] # Here’s the first redirect: RedirectPermanent /index / My first three questions: Why do I need this rule? Why must this rule be at the top? Why isn't this handled by mod_rewrite? Now to the interesting part: I moved the Linkaufbau page to the SEO folder: https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau and set up the redirect accordingly: RedirectPermanent /linkaufbau /seo/linkaufbau.html I deleted the old /linkaufbau page. I requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau in the Google Search Console. Once the page was indexed, I set a canonical to the old URL: <link rel="canonical" href="https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau"> Then I resubmitted the sitemap and requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau again, even though it was already indexed. Due to the canonical tag, the page quickly disappeared. I then requested indexing for /linkaufbau and /linkaufbau.html in GSC (the old, deleted page). After two days, both URLs were back in the serps:: https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau.html this is the new page /seo/linkaufbau
b14ee095-5c03-40d5-b7fc-57d47cf66e3b-grafik.png This is the old page /linkaufbau
242d5bfd-af7c-4bed-9887-c12a29837d77-grafik.png Both URLs are now in the search results and all rankings are significantly better than before for keywords like: organic linkbuilding linkaufbau kosten linkaufbau service natürlicher linkaufbau hochwertiger linkaufbau organische backlinks linkaufbau strategie linkaufbau agentur Interestingly, both URLs (with and without .html) redirect to the new URL https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau, which in turn has a canonical pointing to https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau (without .html). In the SERPs, when https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau is shown, my new, updated snippet is displayed. When /linkaufbau.html is shown, it displays the old, deleted page that had already disappeared from the index. I have now removed the canonical tag. I don't fully understand the process of what happened and why. If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful. Best regards,
Chris0 -
Canonical Tags - Do they only apply to internal duplicate content?
Hi Moz, I've had a complaint from a company who we use a feed from to populate a restaurants product list.They are upset that on our products pages we have canonical tags linking back to ourselves. These are in place as we have international versions of the site. They believe because they are the original source of content we need to canonical back to them. Can I please confirm that canonical tags are purely an internal duplicate content strategy. Canonical isn't telling google that from all the content on the web that this is the original source. It's just saying that from the content on our domains, this is the original one that should be ranked. Is that correct? Furthermore, if we implemented a canonical tag linking to Best Restaurants it would de-index all of our restaurants listings and pages and pass the authority of these pages to their site. Is this correct? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | benj20341 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Do I need both canonical meta tags AND 301 redirects?
I implemented a 301 redirect set to the "www" version in the .htaccess (apache server) file and my logs are DOWN 30-40%! I have to be doing something wrong! AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com
Technical SEO | | spkcp111
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm
RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] IndexIgnore *
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.luckygemstones.com/internal-serv-error.htm
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.luckygemstones.com/forbidden-request.htm
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.luckygemstones.com/not-authorized.htm I've also started adding canoncial META's to EACH page: I'm using HMTL 4.0 loose still--1000's of pages--painful to convert to HTML5 so I left the / off the tag so it would validate. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks, Kathleen0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
Is there a great tool for URL mapping old to new web site?
We are implementing new design and removing some pages and adding new content. Task is to correctly map and redirect old pages that no longer exist.
Technical SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
301 redirects and old domain names
Thanks to the great advice i've received on this forum, I'm combining 50 different truck sites into a single, ultimate truck website. So my question is how long should I make a website 301 redirect to the appropriate page on my new website? My thought is that if it works well to have a single website, it might be nice to eventually sell off some of the old domain names that I won't be using anymore. Thanks! Andy
Technical SEO | | daenterpri0 -
Duplicate content and URL's
Hi Guys, Hope you are all well. Just a quick question which you will find nice and easy 🙂 I am just about to work through duplicate content pages and URL changes. Firstly, With the duplicate content issue i am finding the seo friendly URL i would normally direct to in some cases has less links, authority and root domain to it than some of the unseo friendly URL's. will this harm me if i still 301 redirect them to the seo friendly URL. Also, With the url changed it is going to be a huge job to change all the url so they are friendly and the CMS system is poor. Is there a better way of doing this? It has been suggested that we create a new webpage with a friendly URL and redirect all the pages to that. Will this lose all the weight as it will be a brand new page? Thank you for your help guys your legends!! Cheers Wayne
Technical SEO | | wazza19850