Blog URL Canonical
-
Hi Guy's,
I would like to know your thoughts on the following set-up for blog canonical.
Option 1
domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com/blog">
domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com/blog">
domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = no canonical
option 2
domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"="">(as option 1)</link rel="canonical" href="domin.com>
domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"="">(this time has the canonical of the category)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>
domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" how-to-set-canonical"="">(this time has the canonical of the article full URL)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>
Just not sure which is the best option, or even if it is any of the above!
Thanks
Dan
-
Without seeing the actual site in question, that's my opinion, yes.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the info, so from everything you have suggested, it seems as if my option 2 would be the better way?
In other words having a canonical for each element
domain.com/blog = <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domin.com>
domain.com/blog-category-general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>
domain.com/blog-article/this-is-it = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" this-is-it"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>
Have I understood you correctly?
Many thanks
Daniel
-
I honestly don't think that's a big deal - as long as you aren't creating tags or adding categories in a way that this could spin out of control. You've basically got 20-ish search result pages. They aren't high value, but they are useful paths to the blog content and they could rank for category keywords. I think it's a balancing act, and in many cases internal search can spin out of control and harm a site. My gut reaction, though, is that you're not in that situation, and cutting off these pages might do more harm than good.
-
Just snippets, a paragraph then a read more link to the main article.
-
Are these just snippets (link + paragraph) or are you displaying large portions of the posts on the home/category pages?
-
Hi Peter,
we don't have a have many categories less than 20, obviously when we create a new article it shows in the main domain.com/blog (for a limited time) but the same article can also appear in more than 1 of the categories, so based on this do you feel that option 2 would be the better way to go ?
many thanks
Daniel
-
It depends a bit on the site structure, but I'd actually be wary of setting the category page canonicals back up to the main blog. These aren't really duplicates, and that could send an odd signal (and potentially negative) to Google, especially if there are a lot of them.
If you're talking about a few category pages, leave it alone. Use rel=prev/next for pagination and make sure you're handling and search filters (and not spinning out URLs), but just let these pages get crawled normally. They're an important path on the site.
If you've got a ton of categories, sub-categories, and tags, then I'd go with META NOINDEX. Important note, though: in most cases, you'd use NOINDEX, FOLLOW (not NOFOLLOW) - you don't want to cut the path for crawlers to reach your individual posts. Again, this does depend a bit on the site architecture and whether you have other crawl paths.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply, this makes perfect sense
I was unsure if we should be creating a canonical for the full blog article or just leaving it and letting Google work it out!!
I will talk to our developer about adding the noindex and no follow to the category/archive pages.
Thanks
Daniel
-
Hi Dan
I'd say it's Option 1...and a half!
As a general rule of thumb, I want to put a self-referring canonical tag (a tag that points to the same URL) on any page I'd want to rank. So, I'd have one for domain.com/blog and domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical.
For any page I want Google to disregard, in terms of ranking, will have a different URL in their canonical tag. So, you're right in this sense to have your blog category page to be like this: domain.com/blog-category/general = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog"="">.</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>
Remembering that canonical tags are a strong directive, not command, to Google, I tend to also noindex and nofollow my category and/or tag pages as well, just to be doubly sure that Google is not flagging them as duplicate. You can do this by simply adding to the head tag of the web page.
Hope this helps Dan.
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
Google Only Indexing Canonical Root URL Instead of Specified URL Parameters
We just launched a website about 1 month ago and noticed that Google was indexing, but not displaying, URLs with "?location=" parameters such as: http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/?location=great-falls-virginia and http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/?location=mclean-virginia. Instead, Google has only been displaying our root URL http://www.castlemap.com/local-house-values/ in its search results -- which we don't want as the URLs with specific locations are more important and each has its own unique list of houses for sale. We have Yoast setup with all of these ?location values added in our sitemap that has successfully been submitted to Google's Sitemaps: http://www.castlemap.com/buy-location-sitemap.xml I also tried going into the old Google Search Console and setting the "location" URL Parameter to Crawl Every URL with the Specifies Effect enabled... and I even see the two URLs I mentioned above in Google's list of Parameter Samples... but the pages are still not being added to Google. Even after Requesting Indexing again after making all of these changes a few days ago, these URLs are still displaying as Allowing Indexing, but Not On Google in the Search Console and not showing up on Google when I manually search for the entire URL. Why are these pages not showing up on Google and how can we get them to display? Only solution I can think of would be to set our main /local-house-values/ page to noindex in order to have Google favor all of our other URL parameter versions... but I'm guessing that's probably not a good solution for multiple reasons.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nitruc0 -
What would you do with this odd Blog configuration?
G'day fellow digital marketers! I'm analysing a new site in analytics. Having been hit by Panda, and being plagued with a variety of issues - one that's got me scratching my head is their blog configuration. Now, on most sites you'll have something like: www.clientsite.com/blog All blog posts would then sit under the blog page: www.clientsite.com/blog/this-is-a-blog-post Anyway, on this blog - when a new post has been created historically - they've all been placed directly under the homepage, so when you click a link on: www.clientsite.com/blog You instead arrive at: www.clientsite.com/this-is-a-blog-post So, we have 150+ posts equally sharing the hompage authority - detracting from their ability to rank for their core services pages. I'm thinking of going to town on the 301 re-direct wagon, changing: www.clientsite.com/this-is-a-blog-post to www.clientsite.com/blog/this-is-a-blog-post But I'd like to know your thoughts and experiences before I get to work! Thanks in advance guys and gals, John.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Does a non-canonical URL pass link juice?
Our site received a great link from URL A, which was syndicated to URL B. But URL B is canonicalized to URL A. Does the link on URL B pass juice to my site? (See image below for a visual representation of my question) zgbzqBy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice1 -
Use of Rel=Canonical
I have been pondering whether I am using this tag correctly or not. We have a custom solution which lays out products in the typical eCommerce style with plenty of tick box filters to further narrow down the view. When I last researched this it seemed like a good idea to implement rel=canonical to point all sub section pages at a 'view-all' page which returns all the products unfiltered for that given section. Normally pages are restricted down to 9 results per page with interface options to increase that. This combined with all the filters we offer creates many millions of possible page permutations and hence the need for the Canonical tag. I am concerned because our view-all pages get large, returning all of that section's product into one place.If I pointed the view-all page at say the first page of x results would that defeat the object of the view-all suggestion that Google made a few years back as it would require further crawling to get at all the data? Alternatively as these pages are just product listings, would NoIndex be a better route to go given that its unlikely they will get much love in Google anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | motiv80 -
Non-www URL showing in Blog
Thanks to Sanket Patel in an earlier query I've now got non-www pages showing as www. pages on my www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk website. But the Blog which is part of the site posts and pages still show as non-www pages. For example: http://nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/blog/makadi-palace-hotel-makadi-bay/ I wonder if anyone has come upon the same problem and what the solution might be? Thanks, Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises1 -
Company Blog Vs External Blog
Hi there, We write articles for our blog on a regular basis, maybe two times per week. One of those articles I usually place on an external blog first getting some external links pointing into my product pages and using a rel canonical on that article on my blog pointing to the external post, so that the external post get's all the credit. The reason I put this on my blog is I use this to point to from my email marketing activities. The question is, do you think this makes best practice? trying to get more out of this blog post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Canonical tag vs 301
What is the reason that 301 is preferred and not rel canonical tag when it comes to implementing redirect. Page rank will be lost in both cases. So, why prefer one over the other ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050