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
-
Www. or naked url?
Hi everyone, I am about to start a new WordPress site and debating whether to use www or naked URL for the URL structure. Using naked URL makes sense from a branding and minimalistic perspective but I am reading that using naked URL might have some technical deficiencies. Specifically, cookie issues and DNS can't be cname. Are these technical deficiencies still valid when using naked url? Would appreciate any feedback on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nsereke1 -
Is it best to have products and reviews on the same URL?
Hi Moz, Is it better to have products and reviews on the same or different URLs? I suspect that combining these into one page will help with rankings overall even though some ranking for product review terms may suffer. This is for a hair products company with tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of reviews. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Duplicate Titles caused by blog
Hey I've done some research and understand the canonical tags and rel prev and rel next, but I wanted to get someones opinion on if we needed it since the articles are somewhat independent of each in content (there's a focus on both banks and accountants) We have over 68 pages of blog materials http://www.sageworks.com/blog/default.aspx?page=7 through http://www.sageworks.com/blog/default.aspx?page=68 Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
HTTPS in Rel Canonical
Hi, Should I, or do I need to, use HTTPS (note the "S") in my canonical tags? Thanks Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Overly-Dynamic URL
Hi, We have over 5000 pages showing under Overly-Dynamic URL error Our ecommerce site uses Ajax and we have several different filters like, Size, Color, Brand and we therefor have many different urls like, http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all http://www.dellamoda.com/designer-handbags.html?use_selected_filter=Y&option=manufacturer%3A&page3 Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these from showing as duplicate content? and do we need to put the whole url in there? like: Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y if not how far into the url should be disallowed? So far we have added the following to our robots,txt Disallow: /?sort=title Disallow: /?use_selected_filter=Y Disallow: /?sort=price Disallow: /?clearall=Y Just not sure if they are correct. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,Kami
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dellamoda2 -
Purpose of a Blog in a website
How internal blog or external blog is helpful in SEO?why it is good to have a site with blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Renaming a URL
Hi, If we rename a URL (below) http://www.opentext.com/2/global/company/company-ecm-positioning.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pstables
to http://www.opentext.com/2/global/products/enterprise-content-management.htm (or something similar) Would search engines recognize that as a new page altogether? I know they would need to reindex it accordingly, so in theory it is kind of a "new" page. But the reason for doing this is to maintain the page's metrics (inbound links, authority, social activity, etc) instead of creating a new page from scratch. The page has been indexed highly in the past, so we want to keep it active but optimize it better and redirect other internal content (that's being phased out) to it to juice it up even more. Thanks in advance!
Greg0 -
My URLs are a mess!
Hi all, I am having some SEO done on my website and I have been asked to tidy up my URLs. They show the word 'brand' or 'item' and an ID number in every one. http://www.societyboardshop.co.uk/brand/Girl-Skateboards/153/ http://www.societyboardshop.co.uk/item/Girl%20Skateboards%20Guy%20Mariano%20OG%20Guy%20Skateboards/898/ My developer says that we cannot remove these words as they 'form part of a routing table' for each url. How do I fix these URLs? Many thanks in advance. Paul.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul530