Categories and rel canonical
-
Hello everyone,
I have a doubt in how to approach this problem.
I have a local business website, and i want to rank this website for our main KW.
So the idea is to rank the main Keyword to the home page www.sitename.com
At the same time we blog every week and one of the categories is the same has the main Keyword. It makes sense because the majority of the blog posts are about it.
In a certain way the homepage and the category page are competing for the same keyword. How can i approach this problem?
Should i use rel canonical in the category page, pointing to the homepage?
Thanks for your help.
-
While I think keyword cannibalization is a valid concern, it's natural for there to be some overlap when a site is clearly focused on a topic. I hate to over-generalize, but my gut reaction is that the home-page and a single category page aren't a big problem. Sure, they'll compete a little, but we're only talking about two pages, and the home-page is generally already stronger. I think the canonical might be artificial here (these aren't true duplicates, and it could look a bit odd to Google).
I'd think more about how the two pages can co-exist - are their certains aspects of the keyword that one more naturally fits than the other? Could you reflect those in the on-page content/tags (TITLE tag, especially)? If the topic merits an entire site, there almost definitely enough facets to it that two pages can live together perfectly well.
Again, don't to over-generalize, but I think you may be worrying too much about this one. If the pages compete in an undesirable way later, you can always add a canonical, but two pages shouldn't be a big issue.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, do NOT 301-redirect. That's going to kill your category page, as 301s impact human visitors as well as search bots.
-
I apologize I did not have the opportunity to get back to last night.
Wordpress SEO by YOAST Is a great plug-in. With the plug-in you will not have to worry about
<code>rel="canonical"</code>
<code>The plug-in has all of the built-in so when you go to make </code>
<code>a page will not have to worry about ``` <code>rel="canonical"</code> ``` ``` Might I ask what framework you're using and what host? ```</code>
<code>Sincerely,</code>
Thomas
-
yes, with Wordpress SEO by YOAST
-
Are you using WordPress?
-
you definitely do not need to make the home page have a / with the keyword it is not necessary if you optimize site correctly. However if you were to do that and you want to know what the rel=canonical is it would be
<code>however if you can keep from having to do this for your homepage I would do a 301 redirect</code>
<code>that way your site is set the way you want to be and you have a link that is clean. Then do a</code>
<code>a ``` <code>you want the rel=canonical to reflect the page that you want to be the homepage you want to tell Google this is the page I want.</code> ``` ``` So your best cases is www.KeywordBrand.com ``` ``` Sincerely, ``` ``` Thomas ```</code> ```
-
It's a www.KeywordBrand.com type domain.
And the category is keyword
So we have www.KeywordBrand.com/Keyword
And in theory the Homepage is the same has the category but with an introduction.
In this case what's best ?
a 301 to the homepage, a rel=canonical or not doing nothing?
-
I thought I should welcome you to SEOmoz as well this is the best place on the planet to get search engine advice. Try reading over some of the information here regardless of its title is always useful to anyone.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
if you want to rank well of course you should use rel canonical all tips are right here http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
if your local business register immediately with Google places. is 90% of search engine optimization for local.
Are you talking about that exact match domain? If I were to say I don't mean his example.com and my keyword is example?
In order to blog effectively in each blog 300 words or more at least 4 times a week or 20 times a month. It also must be engaging content that keeps people coming back.
I hope it helped you,
Thomas
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
-
Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document
Error: Missing Canonical Tag
Technical SEO | | ahmadmdahshan
But URL is not a webpage it is a PDF document, is this fixable?0 -
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Questions about canonicals
Howdy Moz community, I had a question regarding canonicals. I help a business with their SEO, and they are a service company. They have one physical location, but they serve multiple cities in the state. My question is in regards to canonicals and unique content. I hear that a page with slightly differing content for each page won't matter as much, if most of the content is relevantly the same. This business wants to create service pages for at least 10 other cities they service. The site currently only have pages that are targeting one city location. I was wondering if it was beneficial to use a template to service each city and then put a canonical there to say that it is an identical page to the main city page? Example: our first city was san francisco, we want to create city pages for santa rosa, novato, san jose and etc. If the content for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, city were the same content as the 1st city, but just had the slight change with the city name would that hurt? Would putting a canonical help this issue, if i alert that it is the same as the 1st page? The reason I want to do this, is because I have been getting concerns from my copywriter that after the 5th city, they can't seem to make the services pages that much different from the first 4 cities, in terms of wording of the content and its structure. I want to know is there a simpler way to target multiple cities for local SEO reasons like geo targeted terms without having to think of a completely new way to write out the same thing for each city service page, as this is very time consuming on my end. Main questions? Will making template service pages, changing the city name to target different geographic locations and putting a canonical tag for the new pages created, and referring back to the main city page going to be effective in terms of me wanting to rank for multiple cities. Will doing this tell google my content is thin or be considered a duplicate? Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Rel canonical between mirrored domains
Hi all & happy new near! I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice: I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...) So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content. I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern: Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp. I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
Technical SEO | | AlexSG
-The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
-The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa? I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot! Best regards from Singapore!0 -
Will rel canonical tags remove previously indexed URLs?
Hello, 7 days ago, we implemented canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues that had been caused by URL parameters. These "duplicate content" had already been indexed. Now that the URLs have rel canonical tags in place, will Google automatically remove from its index the other URLs with the URL parameters? I ask because we have been tracking the approximate number of URLs indexed by doing a site: search in Google, and we have barely noticed a decrease in URLs indexed. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | yacpro130 -
ECommerce categories in path name or alternative
Our store is in magento and many recommend to turn of category names in product paths as magento creates duplicate pages for the same content when products are in multiple categories. I have a canonical plugin that should fix dup paths. This has not bothered me until I decided to create GA goals for seeing multiple products and realized I dont have an easy filter because the paths dont have categories. I think I can add a suffix to products like /?t=p - If I can do so will that be enough for me to create goals in GA - or am I better off adding back category paths.
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
Rel=author
Hi everyone, i'm trying to understand the rel=author thing for cotent, i need some clarification please. Firstly do you only use it for content on your site or can you have it for a guest post you have done on another domain which is not your own - linking to your author profile on your domain? Secondly implementing it, i understand it's 3 links: 1., Link on your content where the blog post is with a rel=author going to your domain authort page. 2., a link from your domain author page going to your google + profile. This is rel=me 3 a link on your google+ profile to your blog? if so how do i do this? i only have an option to edit about page and add recommended links? there is no 'contributor' section. I am UK profile also. Any help really appreciated, thanks guys.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Rel Canonical Question
I changed /tulsa-cleaning-services/ to /services/ because the URLs were getting too long. Now I'm getting an error for Appropriate use of Rel Canonical. I used a 301 to send old links to the new location. Any ideas? Thanks! Will www.americancarpetclean.com
Technical SEO | | WillWatrous0