Will this internal linking feature cause canonicalization issues?
-
This is a canonicalization type question, so I believe it should be a pretty straightforward answer. I just haven't had much experience with using the canonical tag so I felt I should ask so I don't blow up my site
Ok, let's say I have a product page that is at:
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct
Now on that page I have an option to see all of the specs of the product in a collapsible tab which I want to link to from other pages - So the URL to this tab ends from other pages ends up being:
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct?=productspecs
This will link to the tab and default it to open when someone clicks that link on another page.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand canonicalization correctly I believe creating this link is going to cause a duplicate page that has the opportunity to be indexed and detract from our SEO to the main product page.
My question is... where do I put the "rel=canonical" tag to point the SEO value back to the main page since the page is dynamically generated and doesn't have its own file on the server? - or do even need to be concerned with this?
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of the above. Like I said - this is something I am fairly familiar with how it works, but I haven't had much experience with using.
Thanks!
-
We'll be using IIS, but I suppose it works the same way. It's my hope to get this done with one small change and not have to update an entire database of thousands of pages.
Can that not be done?
-
Hey
So, your product pages are as follows:
productpage.php?productid=1
productpage.php?productid=2
productpage.php?productid=3And you are worried about duplicates that would be in the following format with three versions of product=1
productpage.php?productid=1
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=A
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=B
productpage.php?productid=1&variation=CIf so, then your canonical link for productid=1 which would go on all of the above variations of the productid=1 page would be:
<link <span>rel="canonical" href="productpage.php?productid=1" /></link <span>
Summary
The page name includes the bit that makes it a unique page but you are applying the canonical to all variations of that.
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Makes sense.
Let me make sure I understand.
So, basically on that parameter page in the I need to have my programmers code the rel=canonical to pass in the URL of the page in the form of "www.exampledomain.com/productpage" - and that will take care of pointing all of the duplicate content generated by those query strings back to each individual product page, and will also ensure each product page is still indexed with its full SEO value?
-
It is one tag, but not one instance of the tag. The canonical must be on each param page referring back to the product page. It would he part of your head that you dynamically generate.
-
Yes this is what I want to do. I want Google to ignore the duplicate pages that would be created by the additional parameters and pass SEO value back to the product page.
What I'm confused about is how to code the tag and how to implement it. Each page, which there are thousands of, is generated dynamically - so I only have that one container page that I can update.
How do I take care of all of the product pages with one tag? Is this something that is done in the database?
Unfortunately we don't have a CMS in place, however it's something we're highly considering.
-
Cody -
Is the URL ending in /productname the individual product page? If so, what we are saying will work to canonicalize your product page. You're simply telling Google not to pass pagerank to the /productname?=productspecs page. You're telling them to ignore the specs part of the page as a separate page and to instead pass the link juice to the main page.
Once again, please correct any misunderstandings we may have of what you are trying to do.
Also, you incorporate the canonical tag on a page level. Hopefully you can set this through the CMS (I use Yoast SEO to do this with Wordpress).
-
True, if you want pages to build PR, it needs to to be canonicalized. What you are doing with the canonical is handling anything after the ? and pointing all page value back behind the ? If I'm reading this correctly, why would you want the spec page to gain value? Sorry if I'm not, I'm remote.
-
Hey guys. Thanks for all of the responses. The query string actually comes from part of a search tool, so I don't know if it can be output as a named anchor. If so it would require reprogramming the search tool. It's possible, but I believe at this point it would probably be easier to use the rel=canonical tag.
What I'm not getting is this:
All of our product pages are dynamically generated. So they are loaded into a page at:
www.exampledomain.com/products/productname
If I put the rel=canonical tag on that host page that is populated with data wouldn't I be throwing out any possibility for my individual product pages to rank? Wouldn't it all point back to that one product?
How do I use the rel=canonical tag so that each individual product page gets all of the ranking. Is there a way to do this?
-
Marcus -
I was going to suggest this as well, but did not know if it would be relevant. Good suggestion.
Question though. Will he need to specify somewhere on the page to link to the named anchor (i.e. an index on the actual page?) for the named anchors to work, or is this not an issue? This is why I did not suggest it, because I did not know the answer to my question.
-
Named anchors I great if it meets your needs otherwise rel canonical will work.
-
I agree that this is an excellent use of the canonical tag. The canonical tag goes on the host page nameofproduct and then when any other page is called nameofproduct?=productspecs, SEs will give credit to the nameofproduct page**. **
**I hope that answers your question. **
-
I agree that this is an excellent use of the canonical tag. The canonical tag goes on the host page nameofproduct and then when any other page is called nameofproduct?=productspecs, SEs will give credit to the nameofproduct page**. **
**I hope that answers your question. **
-
Hey, using the rel=canonical tag on the page will prevent this from being a problem but a better way would be to use named anchors instead of query string variables. Named anchors are page level navigation so you are not creating a potential duplicate version of the same page.
If you use querystring variables, you are creating a problem, and then fixing it with rel=canonical. If you use named anchors as page level navigation, you are never creating the problem in the first place.
- www.exampledomain.com/products/nameofproduct#productspecs
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Nope that is what i was going to say, but you beat me to it.
-
I know that you put the canonical tag in the of your page, so it looks like:
rel="canonical" href="(originalpageURL)" />
Since you are linking a dynamic part of that page, the rel=canonical that you have specified there will hold for the page. It will be a dynamic page, but it is a subset of the page, so you should be fine.
Someone PLEASE correct me if I am wrong.
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
-
Hreflang implementation issue
We are currently handling search for a global brand www.example.com which has presence in many countries worldwide. To help Google understand that there is an alternate version of the website available in another language, we have used “hreflang” tags. Also, there is a mother website (www.example.com/global) which is given the attribution of “x-default” in the “hreflang” tag. For Malaysia as a geolocation, the mother website is ranking instead of the local website (www.example.com/my) for majority of the products. The code used for “hreflang” tag execution, on a product page, being: These “hreflang” tags are also present in the XML sitemap of the website, mentioning them below: <loc>http://www.example.com/my/product_name</loc> <lastmod>2017-06-20</lastmod> Is this implementation of “hreflang” tags fine? As this implementation is true across all geo-locations, but the mother website is out-ranking me only in the Malaysia market. If the implementation is correct, what could be other reasons for the same ranking issue, as all other SEO elements have been thoroughly verified and they seem fine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Footer link - Created by
Hi everyone We created a website for our customer, and we wanted to have a footer link: "Created by WebPerfection.biz" Some Marketing company advised our customer, that it will hurt their SEO if they have that link for us in footer Would you guys advice on this please? Thank you P.S. site for our customer: www.azsedans.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidIRC0 -
Content linking ?
If you have links on the left hand side of the website on the Navigation and content at the bottom of the page and link to the same page with different anchor text or the same would it help the page (as it is surrounded by similar text) or is the first one counted and this is it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Linking Back
Hello, I have a blog www.digitaldiscovery.eu and I have been working the link building. Now I have a few links pointing into my blog and in Google Webmaster and in Open Site Explorer I can see the URL of those websites. In scale from 1 to 10 how usefull is to have a blogroll in my blog pointing back to those high PR links? How usefull is this in link-building strategy? Tks in advance! PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Outgoing affiliate links and link juice
I have some affiliate websites which have loads of outgoing affiliate links. I've discussed this with a SEO friend and talked about the effect of the link juice going out to the affiliate sites. To minimize this I've put "no follows" on the affiliate links but my friend says that even if you have no follow Google still then diminishes the amount of juice that goes to internal pages, for example if the page has 10 links, 9 are affiliate with no follow - Google will only give 10% of the juice to the 1 internal page. Does anyone know if this is the case? and whether there are any good techniques to keep as much link juice on the site as possible without transferring to affiliate links? Appreciate any thoughts on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ventura0 -
Dupicated Site Issues?
We are launching a new site for the Australian market and the URL will just be siteAU.com. Currently the tech team (before we came on board) has it setup with almost exactly the same content (including the site css/nav/structure etc). Some product page content is slightly different, and category pages have different product orders, plus there are location pages that are specific to AU, but otherwise it's the same. The original site: site.ca has been around for 6+ years, with several thousand pages and solid organic ranking (though the last few months have dropped ) Will the new AU site create issues for the original domain? We also have siteUSA.com which follows the same logic and has been live for a while.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BMGSEO0 -
Link Request Email on Site`s Link Pages
Hello I have assembled a list of web-sites that have "Links" section that has a list of persons` favorite tools. Those pages have a link to my competitor. I know my tool is just as good if not better and want to request a link. I`m thinking of sending an email asking for a link and offering a small amount of money for it. Questions: A) How much should I offer? Should I offer anything at all B) Is there an email style that someone can suggest that has been tested and proven to work for this type of situtation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellopotap0