Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
-
Hi SEOmozers,
I have another question. =] Thanks in advance.
First question: How important is the breadcrumb for SEO? I know that breadcrumb makes better UX because it shows how the visitor landed on this page and the breadcrumb may show up in the search engine. But other than that, how important is it?
Second Question:
If I have a page that can be found via 2 locations, how should I handle this in regards to breadcrumb?
For example, I have page A. You can access page A via Category A and Category B. Therefore, what I did was list Page A under Category A and when someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it will redirect to the page A that was found via Category A.
The problem is on page A, the breadcrumb is Home > Category A > Page A. So if someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it redirects and the breadcrumb shows Home > Category A > Page A.
What should I do with the breadcrumb for Category B > Page A?
Should I create another page A and just use canonical on it?
Should I create another page A but do not index it?
or leave it as is? 1 Page A, can be access via 2 categories.
Please advise.
Thank you!
-
You are spot on on the question.
I was thinking along the same line as your answer. So now you just confirmed it.
Thank you very much!
-
Hi Tommy,
Not exactly. I think I misunderstood your original question. I thought you had two pages with the same content, and they were accessible via two different categories.
But I think you're saying you have one page, but you can access that one page via the two different categories, but the breadcrumbs are the same no matter which route they took, whether through A or B, they show category A breadcrumbs.
I wouldn't worry so much about the breadcrumbs, I would worry more about duplicate content and urls.
Let's say you're selling a flashlight, and you just have one flashlight product page. But, because of the content of your site, you listed it under two different categories. Let's just say the categories are tools and gadgets.
So if you had two urls:
http://www.site.com/tools/flashlight and http://www.site.com/gadgets/flashlight
but they were technically the same page (same content and everything just different url), this would be bad.
The fix for this would be to pick the url you want to rank, then put that url as the canonical for the other, so when google crawls it, they know you prefer the other url.
However if it were the same url, no matter which category they came from, there is no problem, because there is no duplication.
Now back to the beginning
If you really want the breadcrumbs to reflect which category they came from, instead of just redirecting to category A, then create another page for category B, make it identical to the page for category A. But on the new page, put the url of page A as the canonical on the new page for B.
So users get the same product page (content speaking) with the breadcrumb that reflects their path, but Google will only count one url no matter which one they crawl.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for replying. So you are saying I should create a new Page A and have it list under Category B and use the canonical tag on the one I want to be indexed. So in the end I will have 1 Page A in Google's eye and 2 Page A in users' eye.
-
Breadcrumbs are more for UX like you say, however they do help search engines crawl your site's pages better as well, especially if they're not in main navigation.
I think the canonical issue is the more important one rather than what links appear in the breadcrumb. I would select which page you would prefer to rank, then put that url in the canonical tag of the other page.
So the canonical would be for Google, and the breadcrumb would be for user.
Also, who knows, maybe having the different breadcrumb is better for the user, because they came from a different path to that product in the first place. But Google would count both pages as the same.
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
-
Canonical and Sitemap issue
Hi all, I was told that I could change my homepage Canonical tag to match that of my XML sitemap, this sitemap is being generated for me automatically and shows the homepage as e.g. https://www.mysite.com/index.html, yet my Canonical tag has been set to https://www.mysite.com. Google currently shows as https://www.mysite.com/ being indexed, but https://www.mysite.com/index.html is not currently displayed in search results. Can someone please tell me if I should change the Canonical to the index.html version, or if I should do nothing, or remove the Canonical tag altogether? Thank you for looking.
Web Design | | scarebearz0 -
Regarding rel=canonical on duplicate pages on a shopping site... some direction, please.
Good morning, Moz community: My name is David, and I'm currently doing internet marketing for an online retailer of marine accessories. While many product pages and descriptions are unique, there are some that have the descriptions duplicated across many products. The advice commonly given is to leave one page as is / crawlable (probably best for one that is already ranking/indexed), and use rel=canonical on all duplicates. Any idea for direction on this? Do you think it is necessary? It will be a massive task. (also, one of the products that we rank highest for, we have tons of duplicate descriptions.... so... that is sort of like evidence against the idea?) Thanks!
Web Design | | DavidCiti0 -
Can someone please help with technical question!
I have noticed that our website tool to get a quote does not work with active scripting disabled is this bad? How many people have this disabled?
Web Design | | BobAnderson0 -
Simple Wordpress Question regarding Footer Link
I have a client with a site that has the company that built their website's link in the footer. How can I remove this? I am pretty proficient with Wordpress but I am drawing a blank. The site is www.northatlantacleaning.com Thanks and I do extend the courtesy of awarding 'Best Answer' and thumbs up etc to good responses.
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Rel Canonical tag usage on ECommerce website
Hello, I have read up on the rel canonical tag and I'm ready to apply it to my site's categorization structure. However, I'm concerned that, because my website does not have a "view all" button for our product pages, the rel canonical tag would not be appropriate. For example, if you come to my site's main category url, you come to mysite.com/main-category At this level - you get the top 12 items in the category. if you want to see the next page, you click a crawlable link that goes to mysite.com/main-category12-24 etc. etc. The site does not offer a view all function. Would applying the rel canonical tag be appropriate in this instance, or do I have to let Google crawl and index each page independantly? Thanks.
Web Design | | Blenny0 -
Canonical Tag
I've been helping someone out with their website, and I noticed the person who built the site made the canonical tags like this:
Web Design | | StandUpCubicles
href="http://www.example.com/" rel="canonical" /> I'm use to seeing it how seomoz does it: Does this matter? Is it ok to have it inverted? They also have another canonical tag in there like this:
var hs_canonical_url = "http\x3A\x2F\x2Fwww.example.com\x2Fhome" Any idea what that is? Could it be hurting the site?0 -
Another Panda question
Hi all, Yes, it's another Panda question.... Would Panda effect an entire site or just specific pages. Many people have said that it penalizes entire sites, however, some of the questions that Google is said to have asked Panda testers seem to be page specific. What's the general consensus?? Thanks
Web Design | | A_Q0 -
Question about web site structure
Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte. store.com/gadgets store.com/lasers vs. store.com/gadgets/lasers
Web Design | | johnshearer0