Canonical in head best practice
-
Hi
Is putting a list of canonical no follow links in the head the best practice? From SEO Moz analysis urls of duplicate content was flagged but now I have lots of cononicals in the head of my doc and the code looks untidy
see head here : http://carpetflooringsdirect.com/
Is there a cleaner way of doing this? and how do I retest to see if I have fixed?
Many thanks
Matt
-
Add a screenshot of the errors. This will give us more info to be able to help you.
-
So i have told the search engines not to follow.
No you haven't. You have told the search engines that homepage is a canonical version of all these other URLs, which doesn't make sense and is most probably confusing the engines.
I would remove these asap.
Then take a closer look at the error craw diagnostic summary. Perhaps include a screenshot if you're still unsure.
The canonical tag is to tell search engines which version of the page to index if you have variations of the same page which could occur through querystring parameters or something simple like this:
In this scenario you would simple add a this to the <HEAD> section of your index.html page to tell Google to only index http://www.example.com/ since index is exactly the same page.
I would have a read up here as to the correct use of canonical tags - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
Cheers,
Woody
-
THanks for this I have remover although I still havent solved my Duplicate content problem...
-
You should definitely remove those canonical tags ASAP.
Each page should only have one canonical tag - the correct canonical URL for that page.
Hope that helps!
-
THanks Woody - Yes im just down the road...
The Dashboard (craw diagnostic summary) flagged up the Urls as duplicates. So i have told the search engins not to follow - Is this not what I was suposed to do?
Matt
-
Hi there,
Not quite sure what you're trying to achieve here, but this is certainly not how the canonical tag is used.
I would remove these asap from the homepage before something negative happens to your rankings.
What are you trying to achieve? What was the duplicate content issue?
Woody
Oh, BTW - if your profile name is where you're located, I'm just down the A12 from you in Colchester.
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
-
What is the best format for animated content
We want to use some movement in our designs, charts etc. what format is the most SEO friendly?
Technical SEO | | remkoallertz1 -
301 Clean-Up - Best Practices & Procedure?
Hello Again, I have taken over managing a website for about 2 months and have fixed a whole heap of problems. Im now turning my attention to the URL rewrites as there are ALOT of them. I have fixed the most problematic offenders that were blocking products and all sorts of mischief but I now want to clean them up. The website is on Magento, and there are 240 custom URL rewrites. Question 1: Am i correct that I should edit the links on my website so that they link directly to the new page instead of utilising the re-direct for best SEO results. Question 2: If my website doesn't utilise the URL rewrite (fixed in question 1) its only purpose is to transfer link juice from any external link the page had before. If this page didnt have any external inbound links then I can delete the URL rewrite as it serves no purpose. Question 3: If Q1 and Q2 are correct, what is the quickest way to check the inbound links to a page quickly so I can make a quick decision on if i should remove the re-write. Many Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | ATP1 -
What is the recommended or "best practice" Permalink Structure?
I have always been under the impression that by connecting pages to their parent pages as described in a.) below is best practice and makes sense to me. a.) yoursite.com/category/sub-category/product/ b.) yoursite.com/product But then i also understand the importance in terms of link juice being spread out across so many sub pages, and by using Example b.) you keep the link juice in tact. Your thoughts on this? Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Beginner - needs to better understand rel=canonical. What is the best resource?
I'm pretty sure I have pages/posts that are competing on the same keyword and would like to fix it. What is the best beginners guide to understanding rel=canonical and how to use it to improve our SEO?
Technical SEO | | JonnyBird10 -
What is best suggested component for joomla seo
my site is running on joomla cms. Iam using jreviews, jomsocial. I want to know what is best componenet for seo and better results
Technical SEO | | jayadeep0 -
Site Change of Address - best method?
When changing domains, there's the obvious anxiety about sacrificing the value of your old domain. A client recently changed domains, immediately killed the old site (did everything properly with 301s, Webmaster Tools etc etc etc) and lost rankings completely for weeks. Turns out the site had been 'burnt' by the previous owner and it took a reconsideration request from Google before things recovered. Cost them rankings and cash with extra PPC spend. My question is: In order to avoid this potential hazard, what are your thoughts on submitting a change of address in Webmaster tools, but then leaving old site live for a few weeks to see how things pan out? I have never tried it and it seems to go against the grain, but interested to hear other people's experiences and how they have managed to change domain with minimal temporary damage. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0 -
How rel=canonical works with index, noindex ?
Hello all, I had always wondered how the index,noindex affects to the canonical. And also if the canonical post should be included in the sitemap or not. I posted this http://www.comparativadebancos.co... and with a rel=canonical to this that was published at the beginning of the month http://www.comparativadebancos.co... but then I have the first one in google http://www.google.com/search?aq=f... May be this is evident for you but, what is really doing the canonical? If I publish something with the canonical pointing to another page, will it still be indexed by google but with no penalty for duplicate content? Or the usual behaviour should have been to havent indexed the first post but just the second one? Should I also place a noindex in the first post in addition to the canonical? What am I missing here? thanks
Technical SEO | | antorome0 -
How to set up a rel canonical in big commmerce?
I have no clue how to set this up in the Bigcommerce store platform
Technical SEO | | Firestarter-SEO0