Which pages should use rel="canonical" links?
-
I have many pages showing up as multiple content. Most of the them belong to product pages for my store, login pages that show up everywhere on the site, etc. I know that I need to use the rel=canonical link in the header but after searching the forum I'm still unsure of what pages need it. Is it the pages that I don't want searched/crawled by Google or the other way around?
Thanks!
Crystal
-
Google will still crawl canonical pages. How soon the index will reflect that will depend on how fast that crawl happens. I'm not sure there's anything you can do to speed that up.
-
Yes, you're right -- they are notices, not warnings. Thanks for the response.
Do you have an answer for my #2 question?
-
You shouldn't be getting warnings. They appear as notices in my campaign and they're there to let you know that the spider found them. The reason you need to know is that canonical has a downside: crawl budget.
Bots still have to crawl your canonical pages. If you add content on a frequent basis, this could impact how quickly that content gets indexed. It's always better to have fewer pages but, when you can't avoid it, there's canonical. That's why SEOMOZ tracks it for you.
-
Follow-up questions:
[1] My site development tool (XSP) has recently added the canonical reference as an auto-generated line of code, every page of my site now has it. Why is SEOmoz warning me that I have hundreds of pages of canonicals if it's supposed to be a GOOD thing?
[2] Google is still seeing the pages without the canonical tag because that's how they were indexed. Will they eventually get purged from their index, or should I be proactive about that, and if so, how?
Thanks for any input.
-
Perfect, thank you! This will be my homework for the evening.
Crystal
-
If you have duplicate content, Google only wants to keep one in their index. It used to be that Google would just pick one but, with canonical, you can pick. Pick what page you want indexed and then put a canonical with the URL of the page you want to keep on the other pages. Google will then keep the page you wanted and ignore the rest.
A visual guide here
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
-
Proper Use and Interpretation of new Query/Page report
When I'm in WMT/Search Console - I start a process of looking at all of the data initially unfiltered Then I select a query. Let's say its a top query for starters and I filter my results by that top query (exactly) With the filter on, I flip over to Pages and I get about a dozen results. When I look at this list, I get the normal variety of output: impressions, clicks, CTR, avg. position One thing that seems a bit odd to me is that most of the average positions for each of the URLs displayed is about the same. Say they range from 1.0 to 1.3. Does this mean that Google is displaying the dozen or so URLs to different people and generally in the 1st or 2nd position. Does this mean that my dozen or so pages are all competing with each other for the same query? On one hand, if all of my dozen pages displayed most of the time in the SERP all at the same time, I would see this as a good thing in that I would be 'owning' the SERP for my particular query. On the other hand, I'm concerned that the keyword I'm trying to optimize a particular page for is being partially distributed to less optimized pages. The main target page is shown the most (good) and it has about a 15x better CTR (also good). But all together, the other 11 pages are taking in around 40% of impressions and get a far lower CTR (bad). Am I interpreting this data correctly? Is WMT showing me what pages a particular query sends traffic to? Is there any way to extract the keywords that a particular page receives? When I reset my query and then start by selecting a specific page (exact match) and then select queries - is this showing my the search queries that drove traffic to that page? Is there a 'best practices' process to try to target a keyword to a specific page so that it gets more than the 60% of impressions I'm seeing now? Obviously I don't want to do a canonical because each keyword goes to many different pages and each page receives a different mix of keywords. I would think there would be a different technique when your page has an average position off of page 1.
On-Page Optimization | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Does anyone use No Sweat WP Internal Links Lite?
Would you recommend it? Are there any other plugins that you'd recommend instead?
On-Page Optimization | | --Chantal--0 -
Use External Links
Hey 🙂 I noticed when analysing my pages that Moz gives the following advice about adding external links to my articles; "On any page specifically targeting a keyword, link externally to at least one (and possibly more than one) relevant, trusted resources as a best practice." As a small business I work pretty damn hard to get visitors to my website, so why on earth would I want to go to all that trouble just to send them away again to a trusted resouce? Secondly, what exactly is a "trusted resource"? Can I simply use search and use the top competitor, for example Moz or Wikipedia and does the anchor need to be an exact match or will a partial suffice. I say this because I already have the top spot for my longtail, so an exact match would be pointless. And lastly, I notice that pretty much all quality sites use external links to open in the same window i.e. not target=_blank, I never thought of it before today, but now that I'm considering using external linking in my articles I guess it's important to know the answer - i.e. Is this a best practice and does this give any seo benefit? Cheers, Lee :)
On-Page Optimization | | LeeC0 -
Rel canonical tag on a single page site?
I have a wordpress theme site which essentially is all in 1 page. Do I need to use rel-canonical tag? It would just loop?
On-Page Optimization | | graftene0 -
Links to Paywall from Content Pages
Hi, My site is funded by subscriptions. We offer lengthy excerpts, and then direct people to a single paywall page, something like domain.com/subscribe/ This means that most pages on the site links to /subscribe, including all of the high value pages that bring people in from Google. This is a page with an understandably high bounce rate, as most users are not interested in paying for content on the web. My question is are we being penalized in Google for having so many internal links to a page with a very high bounce rate? If anyone has worked with paywall sites before and knows the best practices for this, I'd be really grateful to learn more.
On-Page Optimization | | enotes0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Too Many On-Page Links on a Directory type website?
Hi there, I run a website which is a directory therefore there are a lot of On-Page links. If you take a look at the site, www.south-african-hotels.com, you will see there are a number of links on all pages which are completely relevant. I'm not sure what to remove as everything is relevant. The top navigation is available throughout and that alone has 120 links in it to give users easy access to information. Do I ignore the Too many On-Page links suggestion or do I change something? Any suggestions welcome! Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RyanMackie0 -
Canonical Tag for a 404 page
Hi i have a got a 404 page for example : www.example.com/404.aspx can i use canonical tag on this page so that when the search engine hits the page www.example.com/123123123 13123 it will say Will this be right method ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0