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
-
Number of internal links and passing 'link juice' down to key pages.
Howdy Moz friends. I've just been checking out this post on Moz from 2011 and wanted to know how relevant it is today? I'm particularly interested in a number of links we have on our HP potentially harming important landing page rankings because not enough 'link juice is getting to them i.e) are they are being diluted by all the many other links on the page? (deeper pages, faqs, etc etc) It seems strange to me that as Google as has got more sophisticated this would still be that relevant (thus the reason for posting). Anyway, I thought I was definitely worth asking. If we can leverage more out of our on-page efforts then great 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
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 -
Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?
Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Should "contact" and "Privacy Policy" pages be no-followed?
I have a few pages like the contact and privacy policy page that I could really care less about as far as whether people visit them, or whether the search engines index them. They also don't have any sort of unique content on them... pretty much duplicates of what you'd probably find on hundreds of other websites. Would it be logical then to just nofollow those pages? I just don't know if maybe there's something hidden that I'm not thinking of. For example, maybe Google wants to see that your website has a privacy policy, and by excluding it, you're actually hurting yourself.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Rel=canonical Query
Hello Everyone, We have just launched our new ecommerce site for flooring in the UK. I have run through the first crawl and there are 549 instances of rel=canonical including the homepage? Is this a major issue in any way, i have never had to tackle it before and i would appreciate any advice that could be offered on the subject. Many Thanks Andrew
On-Page Optimization | | DFD20120 -
Should we add a link from every page with main keyword back to homepage
Dear all, We have a call for action on the bottom of all our 10K plus pages which has the words private jet charter in it. Here is what the sentence looks like: Call +1-877-727-2538 to hire private jet charter flights or get a private jet quote The "private jet charter" link goes to the homepage - the homepage has always ranked for the same keyword. Even though we have a separate page for private jet charter itself which may or may not be competing with homepage for the same keyword. The question is - does this help our efforts to rank higher for private jet charter or does it not. It used to be that the more links from all pages for specific keyword coming back to homepage was good - but now maybe algorithms may have changed and not sure.
On-Page Optimization | | Richard7770 -
Link Juice not passing for root domain to an internal page
Hi Im working in a SEO proyect for the web fagorarrasate.com, it has good root domain ranking, but it seems like the root domain isn't passing any of its link juice to other internal pages of the site although there are links which link to these sub pages For example if I seach in Google for the page http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Stamping+System+and+Presses The firs page appears without any page ranking, so it seems that the root domain is not passing any of its ranking Why could this be happening? Thanks Jordi
On-Page Optimization | | joralles0