Canoical tags how do i use them
-
Hi i have this coming up on the report for my url www.in2town.co.uk but i am not sure how to use the canonical tag.
I am using joomla and would be grateful if anyone could please give me advice on how to use this.
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>
<dd>many thanks for your help
</dd></dl>
-
Thank you. will have a read now. Many thanks for your help
-
Dr. Pete goes into some detail about the canonical tag at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-page-is-canonical.
It's basically telling Google that "I can't fix this with a 301, but domain.com/page1, domain.com/page1/, and domain.com/page1.php are all really the exact same page even though it has three different URLs, and the canonical URL is the one that I want you to show as the real URL"
-
Hello,
It is generally used when you have two or more pages with very similar or the same content.
It basically tells the bots that you know th othr pag has similar content and it is bing don on purpose.
You use it in the link from the first similar page to the second simliar page, take a look here for a full explanation.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Hope this helps, all the best
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
-
NoIndex tag, canonical tag or automatically generated H1's for automatically generated enquiry pages?
What would be better for automatically generated accommodation enquiry pages for a travel company? NoIndex tag, canonical tag, automatically generated H1's or another solution? This is the homepage: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/ You would enquire from a page like this: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation/sunshine-coast/twin-waters/the-sebel-twin-waters This is the enquiry form: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation-enquiry.php?name=The+Sebel+Twin+Waters®ion_name=Sunshine+Coast
Technical SEO | | Kim_Lazaro0 -
ALT tags - How important are they?
I realise ALT tags are important from an accessibility perspective but in terms of organic search, do they carry much value? I have a big site and it doesn't look like ALT tags have been added generally, it would be a massive job to fix and I'm just trying to weigh up what to concentrate on first. Does anybody have any real life experience?
Technical SEO | | seoman100 -
Meta Title Tags - Quick question!
Hi all, Our category Meta Title Tags are a little woeful and so I'm in the process of rewriting them. Let's say you have a product for sale.... some inkjet cartridges for a Canon BJ10V printer for example. In an effort to keep things concise I was thinking that for this category I should have the meta title set simply as: 'Canon BJ10V Inkjet Cartridges' and perhaps our company name after this text (and a pipe delimiter) This takes us just under 50 characters which is ideal but doesn't include any real keyword variation and will result in the company name being duplicated at the tail of the title tag on 6,000 odd pages. A large number of my competitors have title tags along the lines of: 'Canon BJ10V Cheap Inkjet Cartridges for Canon BJ-10V Ink Printers' I understand the reasoning behind this but does the variation of keywords compensate for the fact that the title looks spammy (to both humans and Search Engines). What would you do? Keep it clean and concise or stuff the title full of keywords. In the event of the former would you include the company name in each title in the knowledge they would be well under 50 characters without? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate1 -
Multiple H1 tags in Squarespace
Hi. I'm using Squarespace, and I've noticed they assign the page title and site title h1 tag status. So if I add an on-page h1 tag, that's three in total. I've seen what Matt Cutts said about multiple h1 tags being acceptable (although that video was back in 2009 and a lot has changed since then). But I'm still a little concerned that this is perhaps not the best way of structuring for SEO. Could anyone offer me any advice? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | The_Word_Department0 -
Tripping versus Tripping.com in title tags?
Hi All, We had a quick question regarding the construction of title tags throughout our site (yay for optimizing!). We were wondering what is considered best practice or what we should be considering when we're deciding how to end our title tags - basically, it's between Tripping and Tripping.com. For example: This is the content | Tripping OR This it the content | Tripping.com Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seospeedwagon
Bianca0 -
Whitespace INSIDE # tag harmful?
Hi, I understand that 'whitespace' in source code is absolutely fine and is stripped out. For example the following code is fine: Red Apples some text However, how is whitespace interpreted INSIDE html tags such as H1's? My Dev team have instructions to add H1's to a page, however they have done so like this: Red Apples (37 characters long) rather than this: Red Apples (10 characters long) Do you think this extra space will be harmful? The browser renders it fine, however if you use something like the mozbar plugin is shows the H1 length as 37 characters. I know the 10 character H1 is 100% relevant to the search term "Red Apples", however is the 37 character H1 only 27% relevant? (10/37) I've made the request to the Dev team to remove this whitespace because I'd rather err on the side of caution, but its been knocked back because the HTML spec specifies consecutive white-space should be interpreted as a single space and all browsers build the DOM by trimming a tags value - and they imagine search bots do the same so don't want to mess with the compiler. Anyone have experience of this? I've never had whitespace in a H1 before so don't know. Happy to leave the whitespace in if it's not going to be an issue. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | FashionLux0 -
One H1 tag Dead Long Live multiple H1 tags?
Good afternoon from 9 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK, Ive been holding on to the mantra of one h1 tag per page but a developer has challenged me on this by stating you can have multiple h1 tags on the condition the page is HTML 5 & each h1 tag is within its own section or article tag. So the question is do i need to change my tune? Thanks in advance, David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Image optimisation, alt and title tags
Is making the alt and title tags in an image the same bad for seo? Does anyone have any recommendations? any help much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0