How to use canonical with mobile site to main site
-
I am pretty sure that the mobile version of the main site needs to be the same canonical link from what I understand. I am trying to find good docuementation that supports this. Even better if its from Google or Matt Cutts.
I have a main domain like http://www.mydomain.com
the mobile version of this is http://www.mydomain.com/m/
Should my canonical be
rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com"/>
for both these pages?
-
That's all this information i needed, on one easy read guide... thank you
-
Now that was a good answer
-
Sorry, Cesar - you're right, this thread went way off course.
My notes on 301 as preferred vs rel=canonical were strictly focused on potential "duplication issues" brought up by Federico as related to Desktop URLs. The 301, you're right, is the wrong tool for the job when it comes to Desktop/Mobile.
The page I linked to originally - here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details#separateurls - has the instructions you'd want to follow under "separate URLs."
To clarify with Google which page should be served to which search users (Desktop vs Mobile), you need 1) a rel=alternate tag pointing from Desktop to Mobile and 2) a rel=canonical tag pointing from Mobile to Desktop.
Effectively if you will have the same canonical for both versions - the Desktop home page. Whether or not you have rel=canonicaled the Desktop back to itself (again this doesn't accomplish much but it won't hurt you), the Mobile home page (following the instructions from Google) will be rel=canonicaled back to the Desktop home page.
And yes, if your Mobile home page has a lot of links pointing to it, using this setup should increase the overall authority and ability to rank of your Desktop home page. It will consolidate that link equity at the Desktop home page URL.
Both pages will remain indexed, but Google (learning from the rel=alternate tag) will serve up the Mobile home page only for mobile search users.
Hope that clarifies a bit. Disregard the discussion between Federico and I on the correct use of 301s in this thread, as it was off topic. In short, a 301 will not serve you well in this case. You want one of the three implementations recommended by Google on the page I linked to above (and in your case, the third option for separate URLs sounds best to me).
Best,
Mike -
I marked this as answered but as I read through it I realize that I am more confused.
As I understand a 301 is geared towards telling Google that a page has moved to the new URL permanently.
In my understanding if I were to 301 a mobile user to my mobile version of my homepage as a 301 then I am telling Google this has moved here permanently. Which technically is true for a mobile user but can this have an effect on ranking on the mobile side?
Since there is way less content on the mobile site I am afraid this can impact me on the desktop side.
To me is makes more sense to just redirect a user to the mobile version without a 301 so Google knows that this is simply a redirect and not a 301
Now along with that my original question was more of increasing ranking for my homepage site.
Since I have a separate canonical for both the desktop page as well as the mobile page, my original question was asking whether I should make the canonical on the desktop homepage the exact same as the mobile homepage. I noticed in Google that both desktop and mobile versions of my homepage are indexed. Is this normal?
If I had the same canonical for both pages would that potentially increase the ranking overall for my homepage, since my mobile version is more popular than my desktop version?
Hope that makes sense.
-
This video from Matt Cutts has some good points on that.
Granted we can't always run to the bank with Matt's advice. Google and Bing both handle rel=canonical pretty well these days, and most SEO/related tools have caught up and handle it properly as well. I've even heard some anecdotes from other SEOs that rel=canonical can work "even faster than a 301" in terms of passing page equity and getting alternate URLs dropped from the index.
But a 301 is the established, recognized method for redirection - not just for search engines, but users as well. It's a web standard, whereas rel=canonical is just approaching that status. You'll still find some tools/scrapers that don't yet handle a rel=canonical properly, which can cause some confusion.
Another potential though perhaps not terribly pervasive issue: for multiple home page URLs, for example, a canonical will mean users can still see/interact with the alternate versions, and therefor they can mistakenly link to those alternate versions. A rel=canonical, similar to a 301, loses a bit of PageRank/link equity in the pass. I'd prefer users see and link to one core version of my home page rather than rely on rel=canonical to pass the link value along.
-
You have a source that supports the 301 over canonical as the preferred method?
-
Hi Federico,
A 301 is still the preferred/recommended method to point alternative URLs with exactly the same content back to the core version.
A canonical can achieve this as well, but it's not the preferred, most foolproof method to consolidate link equity and avoid duplication.
A canonical of a URL to the exact URL itself, again, achieves nothing. I'm not suggesting it'll cause some kind of problem (Google/Bing have been able to handle this from the beginning without any "infinite loop" issues), just that this in itself doesn't solve anything.
What you'd want is a canonical tag on those other URLs pointing back to the preferred URL. If you have no way of serving up unique source code per URL variation, then a self-referential canonical would be acceptable. But a 301 would be my first choice.
Maybe splitting hairs a bit.
In the example here, we're talking about desktop vs mobile URLs and how to handle canonical/alternate tags between the two, so duplication issues are a bit off-topic.
Best,
Mike -
Hey Mike,
So basically if the page is unique and there's no other copy with another URL you shouldn't use the canonical tag in that unique page pointing to itself?
I know it's like saying "the original copy of this page is here" while "here" is the same page, but that solves lots of duplicate content issues that might arise while using URL rewrite.
-
Hi Cesar,
-
Adding a canonical tag to the home page pointing to itself does nothing. It can help if someone scrapes your site and republishes it (they will probably scrape the canonical tag too, rendering their scraped/published URL unable to rank and effectively passing any link juice back to you). Otherwise, no need to canonical a page to itself.
-
The best method to send Google the proper signals about the corresponding link between desktop and mobile versions of your pages is to do the following:
- Add a rel="alternate" tag on the desktop version that points to the mobile version
- Add a rel="canonical" to the mobile version that points to the desktop version
Google uses rel="alternate" to serve up pages uniquely suited to particular users. It's used for language/regional specific pages as well as mobile.
Documentation is here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
Best,
Mike -
-
I guess not. What do you mean by "indexed differently"?
-
What happens to ranking in the aspect by placing the canonical to both pages does that potentially boost my ranking for my main site if my mobile site was indexed differently this whole time?
-
If the content is the same, within the desktop and mobile version yes. The rel=canonical only points the search engine about which page should be indexed. As the content is the same, indexing the main (desktop) page should do it, as you would need to redirect mobile traffic to the mobile version once they click in the result.
Hope that helps!
Here's a video from Matt Cutts about mobile content:
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
-
Is there a way to find out who is trying to damage my site
Hi, to cut the story short, i hired a seo guy to do work on my site, paid a lot of money, but then when he was let go all the links to the site were stripped and other work had vanished. I want to know if there is a way to prove this and to also check on any other damage that he could be doing at the moment to my site. The site was running high in the search engines and then dropped a short while after he was let go.
On-Page Optimization | | in2townpublicrelations0 -
Do sites with more pages rank better?
If a site has more pages and also has good internal linking, then logically it would rank better. Is this the case? Should I be building big (but high quality) sites?
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Query string parameters and canonical links
Hello everyone, My site uses query string parameters in a few places to manage tasks like pagination of lists. Eg: http://www.example.com/destinations/somewhere?page=2 I have set a canonical link with the href of the page without the query string but still getting thousands of duplicate title/meta description reports from these pages. Is there something I can do to change this? Do search engines actually penalise for use of query string parameters like this? They seem so commonplace, even for sites which use an absolute URI with no query string to serve content. Thanks 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | JHWXS0 -
Good Site Navigation verses Success
I have been experimenting with the number of links on our pages verses the number of hits we get. Success seems to be tied to having hundreds of links on a page verses ease of navigation. We have a research company that sells research on educational topics. Last November I decided to divide our category of literature research topics into 10 different subtopics and redistribute the links to the subtopic pages. The main literature research page had over 800 links on it. It was one of our top performing pages. I was hoping that by spreading the links out in logical categories i could distribute the wealth and have better navigation for the user. Now after 6 months the traffic to that page has dropped 800% and the sub-pages have only gained a very minimal percentage. Overall, the hits in the literature genre have dropped from 560 per month to around 80. Ouch! I thought Google would love this strategy, as it reduced page load time, links on a page and made the navigation logical and easier to see all available options. Not the case. Question is: Should I keep the subpages but go back and put all the links back on the main literature page, putting it back up to 800 links? Should I get rid of the subpages, because the links will all be on the main literature page if I move them? Any advice is appreciated! Karen
On-Page Optimization | | eworld0 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
My client has an ecommerce site with over 1,000 products. We have a ton of duplicates because of how their ecommerce system handles product pages. Each time a new product is added, there is a default product page created (/product/12345-product-name.aspx). Each time that product is added to a specific product category, another, separate URL is created (/product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx). The site has over 1,000 duplicates (at least one for each product) because of how the ecommerce system structures URLs. We are unable to have unique content on /products/12345-product-name.aspx and /product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx because both pages pull from the same database. Their webteam informed me that they can't implement canonical tags on individual pages, they must be dynamically added to the site all at once. Thus forcing me to choose all of the default product pages as primary URLs. Both types of URLs are getting indexed and the product URLs that were added to the categories are SEO friendly so I'm leary to eliminate one or the other with a canonical tag or a no index. Suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0 -
ECommerce Site Breadcrumbs Best Practice
I'm working on an Ecom website and I was wondering - For breadcrumbs - is there an SEO and/or UEx preference when it comes to taking them back to the homepage? I have the option of going CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY or HOME > CATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY Each example is hyperlinked except for the lowest level. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Using Transcriptions
Hi everyone, I've spent a long time trying to figure this one out, so I'm looking forward to your insights. I've recently started having our videos transcribed and keyworded. The videos are hosted on youtube and already embedded on our website. Each embedded video is accompanied by an existing keyword-rich article that covers pretty much the same content of the video, but in a little more detail. I'm now going back and having these videos transcribed. The reason I started doing this was to essentially lengthen the article and get more keywords on the page. Question A. My concern is that the transcription covers the same content as the article, so doesn't add that much for the reader. That's why when I post the transcription (below the embedded video), I use a little javascript link for people to click if they want to read it. Then it becomes visible. Otherwise it's not visible. Note that I am NOT trying to hide it from google by doing this - and it will still show up for people who don't have javascript on - so I'm not trying to cheat google at all and I think I'm doing it based on how they want it done. You can see an example here: http://www.healthyeatingstartshere.com/nutrition/healthy-diet-plan-mistakes So my first question is: do you think the javascript method is a good way of doing it? Question B. Does anyone have any insight on whether it would be better to put the transcription:
On-Page Optimization | | philraymond
1. On the same page as the embedded video/article (which I am doing now), or
2. On a different page, linked to from the above page, or
3. On various other websites (wordpress, blogspot, web2.0 sites) that link back to the video/article on our site. I know it's usually best practice to put it on the same page as the video, but I'm wondering from an <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> point of view if I'm wasting a 500 word transcription by posting it on the same page as a 500 article that covers the same topic and uses the same keywords, and I wonder if it would be better to use the transcription elsewhere. Do you have any thoughts on which of the above methods would be best? Thanks so much for reading and any advice you may have.0 -
Three Sites or One?
I have a client who provides three distinct, although related, services. Some of his competitors only provide one of those services, and thus their sites are more saturated with that particular service. Would it be best to develop three different sites optimized for each particular service, or could I achieve the same effect by optimizing different sections of one site for each service?
On-Page Optimization | | kscotbarr0