Canonical Meta Tag Best Practices
-
I've noticed that some website owners use canonical tags even when there may be no duplicate issues.For examplewww.examplesite.com has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/" />www.examplesite.com/bluewidget has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/bluewidget/" />Is this recommended or helpful to do this?
-
I prefer to think of it as "index control", since PR sculpting has a history of being abused, but you've covered the big ones. Obviously, good site architecture is the first step. If they tag exists in 2012, I pretty much covered it in this article:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
-
Sorry about not clarifying that
Tools or tags used to channel spidering and indexing and circulate page rank (e.g. robots.txt file, pagination with rel="next" and rel="prev", x-robots-tag, etc.....)
I just read an article on pagerank sculpting in visibility magazine that inspired my question
-
Sorry about not clarifying that
Tools or tags used to channel spidering and indexing and circulate page rank (e.g. robots.txt file, pagination with rel="next" and rel="prev", x-robots-tag, etc.....)
I just read an article on pagerank sculpting in visibility magazine that inspired my question
-
Sorry, not sure what you mean. Site-wide tags, or tags that perform canonicalization?
-
Thanks for the post Peter!
In addition to the canonical tag are there any others that you guys have heard of people having success with?
-
I'd generally agree with (and thumbed up) Adam - it's harmless and can sometimes help sweep up any stray URLs. I find it especially useful for the home-page, which naturally has a lot of variants.
I'd only add that you often see this in place not so much because it's strategic but because it's easier to implement, especially in a CMS. Telling the system to add a canonical to every version but the canonical URL is a lot more of a pain, so most people don't do it. Originally, Google and Bing suggested this was their preferred method, but it was so immediately obvious that it's easier to put the tag on all versions that I think they completely reversed that.
I've never seen it cause any harm, and I've seen it help a bit more than once.
-
You're welcome.
It's important to note that the use of canonicals or redirects is not intended for directing page rank. They are primarily used to direct users to the most appropriate page and to avoid any duplicate content issues with search engines.
-
Thanks Adam for posting a response. Very helpful. I read an article about pagerank sculpting and it got me thinking about the best use of canonical, robots.txt files, etc...
My site currently does not have any canonical tags or any of the others used to channel page rank. I have been told that the proper use of certain tags can possible help with rankings by directing page rank to the more important pages.
-
I'll add this to what Crimson said,
It doesn't hurt to have canonical tags on all pages.
-
Hi Nathan,
Personally I think it is good practice to use canonical tags for all pages (even those without duplicates).
Although you may not have duplicates of these pages on your site, other sites may try to scrape the content of your site including its pages. As you have the canonical tag on these pages, any content scraper will also add the canonical tag that points to the page on your site. Therefore it is a good idea to have the canonical tag as a preventative measure also.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
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
-
Meta description duplication
Hello, What does google mean by don't duplicate your meta description. For example if I my meta says : Stunning golf holidays in Florida , call xxxx and book today. and I have another page with golf holiday but in ireland this time. If I write Stunning golf holidays in Ireland , call xxxx and book today. Is it considered duplicate ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
URL Change Best Practice
I'm changing the url of some old pages to see if I can't get a little more organic out of them. After changing the url, and maybe title/desc tags as well, I plan to have Google fetch them. How does Google know that the old url is 301'd to the new url and the new url is not just a page of duplicate content? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Help FORUM ( User generated content ) SEO best practices
Hello Moz folks ! For the very first time im dealing with a massive community who rely on UGC ( user generated content ). Their forum is finding a great deal of duplicate content/broken link/ duplicate title and on-site issue. I have Advance SEO knowledge related to ecommerce or blogging but new to forum and UGC. I would really love to learn or get ressources links that would allow me to see/understand the best practices in term of SEO. Any help is greatly appreciated. Best, Yan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydesjardins2000 -
Meta Keywords: Do They Hurt Rankings
I know that Google doesn't use meta keywords, but does it hurt to have anything in there? Just wondering if I need to remove all the meta keywords that are on my site, or are they harmless to have. Also, would meta keywords ever be used by an internal search plug-in if we were to install one in the future, or do they generally look at the product title and description for that info?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b4cab0 -
Canonical tags required when redirecting?
Hello, My client bought a new domain and he wants it to be the main domain of his company. His current domain though has been online for 10 years and ranks pretty well on a few keywords. I feel it is necessary to redirect the old domain to the new one to take advantage of its ranking and avoid any broken links. The sites are exactly the same. Same sections and same content. Is it necessary to place canonical tags on one of the sites to avoid duplicate content/sites? Any thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eblan0 -
HTTP Header Canonical Tags
I want to be able to add canonical tags to http headers of individual URL's using .htacess, but I can't find any examples for how to do this. The only example I found was when specifying a file: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers N.B. It's not possible to add regular canonical tags to the of my pages as they're dynamically generated. I was trying to add the following to the .htaccess in order to add a canonical tag in the header of the page http://frugal-father.com/is-finance-in-the-uk-too-london-centric/, but I've checked with Live HTTP headers and the canonical line isn't showing : <files "is-finance-in-the-uk-too-london-centric="" "="">Header add Link "<http: frugal-father.com="">; rel="canonical"'</http:></files> Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
How to optimize an about page for SEO. Best practices? Word count?
Does anyone have any advice on word count and best practice SEO for a blog about page or even a website about page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdodd0 -
Do I need a canonical tag on the 404 error page?
Per definition, a 404 is displayed for different url (any not existing url ...). As I try to clean my website following SEOmoz pro advices, SEOmoz notify me of duplicate content on urls leading to a 404 🙂 This is I guess not that important, but just curious: should we add a cononical tag to the template returning the 404, with a canonical url such as www.mysite.com/404 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuxeo0