How to use canonical with mobile site to main site

[cbielich]

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?

[giddygrafix]

That's all this information i needed, on one easy read guide... thank you

[cbielich]

Now that was a good answer

[MikeTek]

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

[cbielich]

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.

[MikeTek]

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.

[cbielich]

You have a source that supports the 301 over canonical as the preferred method?

[MikeTek]

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

[FedeEinhorn]

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.

[MikeTek]

Hi Cesar,

1. 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.

2. 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

[FedeEinhorn]

I guess not. What do you mean by "indexed differently"?

[cbielich]

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?

[FedeEinhorn]

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:

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mY9h3G8Lv4k