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
-
SEO audit on a beta site
HI there, Is there much point conducting an SEO site audit on a site that has not yet launched and is protected behind a login? Presumably none of the usual SEO tools (Moz, Screaming Frog etc) can crawl this site becuase it is all locked behind a login. Would it be better to launch it and then do a site audit? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
What does Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical mean?
I'm a newb and see this on my report and I don't understand what it means. Any help?
On-Page Optimization | | smartapps0 -
Redirect closing established site to another established site.
We have 2 ecommerce websites with duplicate product/category content that have been around for years. "Site A" since 2004 and "Site B" since 2011. "Site B" doesn't generate many sells and we want to close the site in fear that it may look spammy to google and since we don't want to upkeep the site. Couple questions:
On-Page Optimization | | Tuurbo
1. Is it possible that "Site B" has damaged "Site A" with google since they are so similar?
2. Can i 301 redirect all of "Site B" to "Site A" without hurting "Site A"?
3. If question 2 is ok, should i use the "Change of Address" tool in google webmaster tools to point "Site B" to "Site A"? Thanks!0 -
To change or not to change site URL structure?
I am learning my way around SEO, having always used professionals for it in the past on previous businesses i have decided to do it myself and learn more about it. Now the dilemma i am up against is i recently changed some of my permalinks on quite a few main pages throughout the site. The site launched in April this year so we're quite new. The problem is since my last change i have not seen any increase...a decrease which in fact hasn't recovered at all. Having now analysed them in more depth and read up more on the whole subject of SEO, (which is endless) i have put together a complete new strategy; with this increased understanding of what i am doing (but by no means conclusive) i want to complete a full overhaul on all SEO (via Wordpress which i use along with YOAST SEO tools), ensuring i have all my keywords, permalinks and descriptions spot on throughout every page, post and picture. I spent a lot of time mapping these out, ensuring there is no Focus keyword duplication, and that the site is relatively flat in terms of its layout. What i am unsure about now is whether changing my permalinks again is a bad thing to do?
On-Page Optimization | | MrCostello
Could it permanently damage my rep going forward?
Should i just focus on my content and keywords/descriptions? I am at a loss as i don't want to do irreparable damage to our reputation. The site is still reasonable easy to manage so changing now is the best time to do it, but if changing the URLs is a waste of time then i may just forget that and just work on the keywords, descriptions and content. Advice is 'oh so welcome' 🙂0 -
Main Page Gone For Main Keyword
For the past 5-6 months I have consistenly ranked at positions #14-16 for snow guards on snoshield.com. The past 3 days I cannot find the home page anywhere in Google for that keyword. The only thing that has really changed over the past two months is I placed 3 guest blog posts on pretty highly trusted sites that are industry related and created links to the site using suggestions from getlisted. I've read other reports of others seeing similar things happen recently. I don't think this is a penguin thing, because I can still find the site by searching for the company name, I just can't find it when searching the keyword. I did notice that a different page on the site is now ranking in position #21 for this keyword, but this page is optimized for a different keyword phrase. Is it possible that even though the sub page is optimized for a different keyword phrase, I am cannibalizing the site?
On-Page Optimization | | kadesmith0 -
Using Iframes for Affiliate Ads
Hey all, I got a question: is it Ok to use an Iframe for example to list some Vacation Houses in my Travel Website? This is an Affiliate kind of Program Iframe Link. I did write unique Content about 400 Words and put this Text below the Affiliate Iframe, is this good or not?
On-Page Optimization | | myrtus190 -
Altering site structure
I work for a business that operates several sites that were developed a very long time ago. We've been making many different changes over the past 12-18 months to improve these sites in several different ways. One area that we've never discussed or attempted is general site structure. Its pretty obvious that when the business was started they had never heard of information architecture or usability design. To make matters worse, the internal linking strategy appears to have been link everything to everything. Well after being told that it couldn't be done - I'm getting our team to say we must focus on this, if for no other reason that to help consumers figure out how to navigate through our site. Today we essentially have a series of category / information pages. In some cases, we hang more detailed topical content related to a category /informational page in a hub and spoke manner. Although remember what I said about linking everything to everything. In reality there are a series of subtopics that should been designed for every category / informational area. Instead, what happened is in some cases the subtopic is integrated into the hub or category page, in other situations is hung off the page as a spoke page and in others the subtopic isn't even covered. The plan is to standardize - each category will have 'n' subtopics (~10-12, we're still working this out). From a navigational standpoint users will be able to easily navigate both across categories as well as subtopics within a category as well as between categories within adjacent/similar subtopics. This is essentially a grid if that makes sense. The question is this - we have some keywords that do well in SEO and many many more that do not and the trend has not been our friend. We're considering keeping the URLs of the pages associated with strong keywords the same within the nav structure, even though this might mean the URL for a spoke page will be inconsistent with the spoke page name from a different category. I don't see any real danger for pages that either are not associated with any ranking keywords or only very weak keywords. Maybe I'm wrong. What things should we consider in this change? We believe that this standardization should help consumers find the information they are looking for in a much more efficient manner, so page views/visit should go up. Additionally, this prepares us for category and subtopic comparison pages and other added functionality being added in a logical manner. We also think that as we add depth about a subtopic, it will be easier for us to acquire links to our site because the subtopics within a category will appeal to different websites. This is by no means a small project. We have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Do folks think this is a worthwhile endeavor? We've spent a lot of time cleaning up H1 tags, structure of our pages, anchor tags, page load order and speed, image caching, etc. Site structure, URL length and internal link structure are essentially what is left. Once these are done we intend to really get going on better and more organized content on our site. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Allstar1 -
On-page optimisation for CMS based sites
With so many sites being based on a CMS, and with so many hundreds of different CMS out there, as SEO consultants how do you recommend dealing with on-page optimisation for a client where you discover their site is built with a CMS you have not previously used (or even heard of!)
On-Page Optimization | | bjalc20110