Has anyone ever seen this canonicalization problem with Google?
-
I recently move my site (www.leatherhidestore.com/servlet/StoreFront) off of the ProStores platform because I could never get Google to show my homepage in SERP results - instead always selecting random product pages to rank. However, I never had this problem with Yahoo and Bing as they always defaulted to the homepage except when the category was a better match.
Fast forward and I have just launched the site (www.leatherhidestore) on Magento Community and I STILL CANNOT GET GOOGLE TO USE MY HOMEPAGE FOR SERP RESULTS although I'm getting okay SERPS for random pages.....ERRRRRR! Of course, as if to rub salt in the wound, Yahoo and Bing are behaving just perfect. Still, I must think that if my Google would recognize my homepage (where the PR is and backlinks point to) I would be doing 10x better.
I am showing duplicate page content and title problems which the developer is trying to solve but I do not know if this will fix the homepage Google issue. I feel like I must be in some sort of canonicalization death spiral. Has anybody dealt with this issue before and will mercifully share what I should do to fix it...please!
Hunter
-
Hey Irving,
Thanks for these insights...I have been doing the keyword optimization on the site and perhaps that is not such a great idea. I was happy when the moz page analyzer gave me an A for the homepage but I was looking at keywords and not overall page health.
I think I need a good on-site SEO person who can systematically work through these issues and implement solutions. Naively, I thought my developer of the Magento site would bring these skills to the table but perhaps that is a very different skill set. Do you agree? If so, are there some folks you can recommend (that are reasonable and available....difficult combination I know)?
I really appreciate your time...it is kind of like therapy as I feel like I am on my own out here!
Hunter
-
Removing links may help.
some other tips:
1. add a robots.txt to the site
2. using htaccess force https to redirect to http (perhaps share your the contents of your htaccess for review)
https://www.leatherhidestore.com/ should not resolve ...
3. get rid of the meta name="keywords" tag
4. Some tips from SEO moz report card for your home page.
-
Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document
Easy fix
<dl>
<dt>Occurrences of Keyword</dt>
<dd>21</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>We've seen evidence that excessive use of keywords can negatively impact rankings and thus suggest moderation.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Remove instances of the targeted keyword(s) from the document text of this page to bring it below 15</dd>
</dl>
<a class="more expanded">Minimize</a>
-
Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Page Title
Easy fix
<dl>
<dt>Page title</dt>
<dd>"Upholstery Leather - Buy Wholesale Leather | Leather Hide Store"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>Using the targeted keyword(s) more than twice in the title tag may be perceived as keyword stuffing (a form of search engine spam) by the engines, and thus we recommend against it.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Do not employ more than two instances of the targeted keyword(s) in the title tag.</dd>
</dl>
<a class="more expanded">Minimize</a>
Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization
Easy fix
<dl>
<dt>Cannibalizing link</dt>
<dd>"Leather Buying Guide", "Our Leather Collection", and "Leather Remnants"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>It's a best practice in SEO to target each keyword with a single page on your site (sometimes two if you've already achieved high rankings and are seeking a second, indented listing). To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. Note that using modified versions is sometimes fine (for example, if this page targeted the word 'elephants', using 'baby elephants' in anchor text would be just fine).</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Unless there is intent to rank multiple pages for the target keyword, it may be wise to modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match.</dd>
</dl>
Canonical URL Tag Usage
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt>
<dd>0</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page</dd>
</dl>
-
-
Hey Irving,
It turned out that the Open site explorer info was erroneous.....errr. My developer spent a couple of hours trying to find something wrong.
He sink me these links to third party redirect verifications that don’t show anything like what seo moz is saying.
http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect?utf8=✓&url=www.leatherhidestore.com
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
Any other advice regarding the homepage not ranking for keywords? Pretty frustrating when even the moz tools are working as they should. I did disavow some of those link exchanges per your advice.
Happy Holidays!
-
Hey Irving,
Thanks for responding and I have forwarded the info to my developer (who also host the site). Open site explorer can lag behind so I am not sure if it is picking up something that is no longer there. I do know that my old URL is of course no longer indexed in Google so I am not sure how my new URL could redirect to it and it not throw some sort of page not found error? Do you think duplicate content could be playing a role or is that incidental to this issue? Lastly, I wouldn't know the problem with the htaccess is I was looking right at it. Can you recommend someone who would be especially capable at resolving such an issue?
Thanks again!
Hunter
-
Something very screwy with your URL. Open site explorer says its redirecting back to the old URL - The URL you've entered redirects to another URL. We're showing results for www.leatherhidestore.com/servlet/StoreFront since it is likely to have more accurate link metrics. See data for www.leatherhidestore.com instead? I would look into htaccess settings and your configuration settings on magento and your hosting provider.
Also, I would disavow your links from the link exchanges.
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
-
Javascript content not being indexed by Google
I thought Google has gotten better at picking up unique content from javascript. I'm not seeing it with our site. We rate beauty and skincare products using our algorithms. Here is an example of a product -- https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tide-free-gentle-he-liquid-laundry-detergent-100-fl-oz When you look at the cache page (text) from google none of the core ratings (badges like fragrance free, top free and so forth) are being picked up for ranking. Any idea what we could do to have the rating incorporated in the indexation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Google crawling different content--ever ok?
Here are a couple of scenarios I'm encountering where Google will crawl different content than my users on initial visit to the site--and which I think should be ok. Of course, it is normally NOT ok, I'm here to find out if Google is flexible enough to allow these situations: 1. My mobile friendly site has users select a city, and then it displays the location options div which includes an explanation for why they may want to have the program use their gps location. The user must choose the gps, the entire city, or he can enter a zip code, or choose a suburb of the city, which then goes to the link chosen. OTOH it is programmed so that if it is a Google bot it doesn't get just a meaningless 'choose further' page, but rather the crawler sees the page of results for the entire city (as you would expect from the url), So basically the program defaults for the entire city results for google bot, but for for the user it first gives him the initial ability to choose gps. 2. A user comes to mysite.com/gps-loc/city/results The site, seeing the literal words 'gps-loc' in the url goes out and fetches the gps for his location and returns results dependent on his location. If Googlebot comes to that url then there is no way the program will return the same results because the program wouldn't be able to get the same long latitude as that user. So, what do you think? Are these scenarios a concern for getting penalized by Google? Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Google Sitelinks Search Box
For some reason, a search for our company name (“hometalk”) does not produce the search box in the results (even though we do have sitelinks). We are adding schema markup as outlined here, but we're not sure about: Will adding the code make the search bar appear (or at least increase the chances), or is it only going to change the functionality of the search box (to on-site search) for results that are already showing a search bar?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Canonicalized Website
We are new to SEO MOZ, and as we are doing our evaluation, multiple page problems have arisen. Our domain is www.moxicopy.com and www.moxicopy.com/blog. Our blog is wordpress hosted but integrated into our site. As we ran our analytics from MOZ PRO, we got TONS of Duplicate Page Title and Duplicate Page Content warnings, over 90 each. Most seem to come from our blog and our different products (we are an ecommerce website). Would the canonicalization of the pages be the cause? And couuld someone further explain exactly what canonical/canonicalization is>? I am very confused, and have a feeling that this is what has hurt our site so much in the last 2-3 weeks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moxicopy.com0 -
Sitelink demotion from Google Webmaster
HI Everybody, When I search Vallnord on Google one of the sitelinks takes you to a site that does not exists. In order to avoid this sitelink to appear I Demoted that URL using Google Webmaster. Any idea how much time will this take in order to see the results? Regards, G.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Why does this page not show in google at all?
www.lavenderblue-flowers.co.uk Sorry for formatting, below is the source. There are alot of blocks from robots.txt but is there anything easily rectified to get this site SOME visibility? Duplicate content maybe PANDA had it? No backlink profile too which isnt helping but even still, surprising to see a domain auth of 1. Thanks in advance for any responses. DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html><head><meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"><meta http-equiv="expires" content="Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:06:27 GMT"><title>Bridport Interflora Florist, Lavender Blue, Dorset, DT16 3XDtitle><meta name="description" content="Lavender Blue in Bridport, Dorset, DT16 3XD delivers to Interflora florist based in Bridport is a well established family run business with a dedicated team of florists. We specialise in beautiful wedding flowers and take great pride in our funeral tributes, floral arrangements designed for any occasion for local, national and worldwide delivery."><meta name="keywords" content="Bridport,Interflora Florist,Lavender Blue,Dorset,DT16 3XD"><meta name="abstract" content="Interflora florist based in Bridport is a well established family run business with a dedicated team of florists. We specialise in beautiful wedding flowers and take great pride in our funeral tributes, floral arrangements designed for any occasion for local, national and worldwide delivery."><meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/kernel/styles/print.css?new=new" media="print"><link rel="stylesheet" href="/kernel/styles/d4.css?designtype=d4;theme=blue;" type="text/css"><style type="text/css">style><script language="JavaScript1.2" src="/kernel/utils.js?new" type="text/javascript">script><script language="JavaScript1.2" type="text/javascript" src="/kernel/interflora.js?head=1;si=1000343;">script><script language="JavaScript1.2" type="text/javascript">script><script language="javascript"> var b_site_url = getcookie('b_site_url');if (b_site_url != "" && !getcookie('referral_id') && location.protocol == 'http:' && b_site_url != location.host && location.pathname.indexOf('catalog2') == -1) location.href = location.protocol + "//" + b_site_url + location.pathname + location.search;script>head><body><img border="0" src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="1" height="1" alt class="nospace"><div id="page-body"><table class="page-topbanner" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td background="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_03.gif" align="left" valign="top"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_01.gif" alt>td><td colspan="2" style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_03.gif); background-position: top; background-repeat: repeat-x;"><img src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="300" height="50" alt>td><td align="right" valign="top" background="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_03.gif"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_04.gif" alt>td>tr><tr><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_05.gif); background-repeat: repeat-y;" align="left" valign="top"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_01b.gif" alt>td><td valign="top" class="sd-image_only" id="sd-logo_store" colspan="1" rowspan="1"><img src="/kernel/imageload?ttl2=15;table=content_images;key1=fd_img_2606422_1" alt="" title="">td><td class="logo-if" align="right"><img src="/kernel/images/logo-if.png" alt="interflora.co.uk the flower experts™">td><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_07.gif); background-position: right; background-repeat: repeat-y;"> td>tr><tr><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_05.gif); background-position: left; background-repeat: repeat-y;" colspan="3" align="center"><table id="website" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center"><tr><td colspan="3" id="fol_address">1 Lilliput Lane, Bridport, Dorset, DT16 3XDtd>tr><tr><td id="email" colspan="3"><b>Email:b> lavenderblueflowers@hotmail.co.uktd>tr><tr><td style="padding-right:10px;"><b>Phone:b> 01308 459145td><td style="padding-right:10px;"><b>Fax:b> 01308 458417td>tr>table>td><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_07.gif); background-position: right; background-repeat: repeat-y;"> td>tr><tr><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_05.gif); background-position: left; background-repeat: repeat-y;" colspan="3" align="center"><div class="page-topmenu"><table class="page-topmenu" cellspacing="0"><tr><td id="account"><a href="/myaccount/"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/icon-account.gif" style="margin: 3px 3px 4px 3px; vertical-align: middle;" width="15" height="13" alt="My Account">My Accounta>td><td id="menu"><a href="/">Homea><img class="bullet" src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="2" height="2" alt style="margin: 10px 4px 10px 4px;"><a href="/page.xml?page_name=about">About Usa><img class="bullet" src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="2" height="2" alt style="margin: 10px 4px 10px 4px;"><a href="/page.xml?page_name=delivery">Delivery Infoa><img class="bullet" src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="2" height="2" alt style="margin: 10px 4px 10px 4px;"><a href="/page.xml?page_name=contactus">Contact Usa>td><td id="cart"><a href="/shopcart/"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/icon-shopcart.gif" style="margin: 3px; vertical-align: middle;" width="14" hieght="14" alt="Shopping Basket">Shopping Basketa>td>tr>table>div>td><td style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_07.gif); background-position: right; background-repeat: repeat-y;"> td>tr>table><p id="browser-warning" style="display: block; padding: 2px; border: 2px solid #FC9F85; margin: 0px; background-color: #FDFFC4;"><b>For your information:b> This message has appeared because we've noticed your browser doesn't fully support all functions of this site. For further information please <a href="/page.xml?page_name=faq">click herea>.p><script language="JavaScript1.2" type="text/javascript">var theBrowser = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();if(is_nav7up || (parseInt(is_moz_ver) >= 1) || is_ie5_5up || theBrowser.indexOf("safari") != -1) {hideElement('browser-warning',0);}script><table class="body" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td align="left" valign="bottom" style="background-image: url(/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_05.gif); background-position: left; background-repeat: repeat-y;"><img src="/kernel/images/d4/border-blue_05.gif" alt>td><td class="menu" valign="top"><img src="/kernel/images/speck.gif" width="150" height="1" border="0" alt><br><form method="get" action="/search/index.xml" id="leftnav_search"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" class="global-search"><tr><th colspan="2">SEARCHth>tr><tr><td width="50%"><input class="text" type="text" name="keywords1" id="search" value maxlength="50" size="15">td><td align="left"><input type="submit" class="button" name="search" id="search" value="GO">td>tr><tr><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="/search/advanced_search.xml">Advanced Searcha>td>tr>table>form><div class="menusection"><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2003443" href="/catalog/category.xml?category_id=2003443"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Anniversaryspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2003443">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2003453" href="/catalog/category.xml?category_id=2003453"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Congratulationsspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2003453">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_4" href="/category/flower-arrangements/"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">All Flower Bouquetsspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_4">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2003493" href="/catalog/category.xml?category_id=2003493"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Sympathy & Funeralspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2003493">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2003463" href="/catalog/category.xml?category_id=2003463"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Thank Youspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2003463">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2001478" href="/category/same-day-flowers/"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Same Day Flower Deliveryspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2001478">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2124203" href="/category/summer_flowers/"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Summer Flowersspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2124203">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_2003403" href="/category/luxury-flowers/"><div class="spacer">div><span class="menu-bullet"><img src="/kernel/images/arrow.gif" class="menu-bullet">Luxury Flowersspan><div class="spacer">div>a><div class="menuChildren" id="menuChildrencat_2003403">div><a class="menuParent_off" id="parentcat_1000343" href="/catalo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ewanstevenson0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1