Canonical redirects
-
Hello,
I have a quick question: I use wordpress for my website. I have a plugin for translating the website in other languages. Thus, I have 2 versions of urls, one with /en, one without (original languale). This has been seen as duplicate content.
I have been advised that the best to do is to use canonical redirect. Should I use it on the general header.php (the only header I can find in the CMS), or should I redirect each page singularly? I believe the second is the best way, but I can't find headers and txt documents for each page in my FTP.
As well I have seen this post, in which is explained that canonical redirects can be done directly in the general header.php http://www.bin-co.com/blog/2009/02/avoid-duplicate-content-use-canonical-url-in-wordpress-fix-plugin/
Is it true? You have any suggestion?
Thanks!Eugenio
-
Thank you Adam,
Very good answer, thats what I needed
Please let me know if I understood good:
Should I replace the /contact.php in the example to my real address /en/contact?
And basically I should put the below condition. Should I write this code for each url i want to redirect? so that it would be like
if /en/contact, then rel="canonical" /contact
else /contact
if /en/about-us, then rel="canonical" /about-us
else /about-us
etc?
-
Since you are using wordpress you won't have individual pages in your FTP. The only way you could edit something into the individual pages would be each posts edit page on the CMS. However, I don't know if doing that would work since its technically beneath the head.
And yes the canonical redirect can be done in the general header, although personally I would load it as a php IF criteria. In other words you add it to the general header but tell it only to load that if i t is on one of these /en pages. That way you don't have the canonical applied to other pages you actually want, or the main page that it is directing too as that would cause an odd loop for the spiders that I doubt they would respond positively too.
Here you can find a quick sample of working with the PHP if page criteria: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7997016/if-this-page-show-this-else-show-this
Good luck!
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
-
Redirection chain and Javascript Redirect
Hi, A redirection chain is usually defined as a page redirecting to another page which itself is another redirection. URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(301/302)---> URL3 But what about Javascript redirect? They seem to be a different beast: URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(200 then Javascript redirect)---> URL3 From what I know if the javascript redirect is instant Google counts it as a 301 permanent redirection, but I'm still not sure about if this counts as a redirection chain. Most of the tools (such as moz) only see the first redirection. So is that scenario a redirection chain or no?
Technical SEO | | LouisPortier0 -
Problems with canonical urls / redirect (magento webshop)
Hi all, We're running a Magento webshop and we discover some strangs things regarding canonical urls and redirects after using the Amasty improved navigation extension. To clarify, please check these four urls. They contain the same content (the same product page). https://www.afwerkingshop.be/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/standaard/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html All these four pages have different canoncials (the page url). Obviously, that's not good. However, in Google (site:...) url (1) is the only one that's indexed. Thereby, if I visit the productpage by first going to a category page (fe. www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden.html), I'm redirected to url (1), but the canonical url is www.afwerkingshop.be/last_visited_category_name/product. So, the canonical seems dynamic depending on the last visited category. And still, only url (1) is indexed. Additionally, all aforementioned pages contain . Is anyone familiar with this issue? And more important, will it cause problems in future? Thanks in advance. Kind regards, Chendon
Technical SEO | | RBijsterveld0 -
Change URL or use Canonicals and Redirects?
We just completed a conclusive a/b test on a client's landing page. The new page saw a 30% bump in conversions, yay! Now what? Option 1: Change the url of the new page to that of the old page, retire the old page. Option 2: Redirect the old page and anything that was pointing to it to the new page, make the new page the canonical. I'm afraid of option 1 because I think Google's WTF penalty will be a bit harsher than option 2, but I wanted to sanity check that here. Any thoughts or experienced advice would be very appreciated!
Technical SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
URL Redirect
Hi All, So we have employees who can own their own domains for business, however, one employee has a domain that links back to our main site, but when it does, the URL and Page title of our main site, still say his own domain. IE: www.johndoe.com links to www.mysite.com except the url and itle still say www.johndoe.com What are the implications of this? Thank you
Technical SEO | | PeteEllard0 -
301 Redirect
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding 301 redirecting a new domain that contains keywords relevant to my website. However, I do NOT want to change my current domain. My main question is, by just redirecting this new domain to my current website, will those keywords in the new domain help with ranking in anyway? Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | WyzeOwl0 -
Redirecting over-optimised pages
Hi One of my clients websites was affected by Penguin and due to no 'bad link' messages, and nothing really obvious from the backlink profile, I put it down to over-optimisation on the site. I noticed a lot of spammy pages and duplicate content, and submitted recommendations to have these fixed. They dragged their heels for a while and eventually put in plans for a new site (which was happening anyway), but its taken quite a while and is only just going live in a couple of weeks. My question is, should I redirect the URLs of the previously over-optimised pages? Obviously the new pages are nice and clean and from what I can tell there are no bad links pointing to the URLs, so is this an acceptable practice? Will Google notice this and remove the penalty? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Setup 301 Redirects
I have been asked to transfer a clients old domain over to a new domain with a new site. All of the inbound links basically go to the homepage, and the few links that dont go to the homepage on the old site, might as well be redirected to the homepage on the new site. I'm wondering is there a "catch all" sort of redirect such as www.oldsite.com/* redirects to newsite.com. So any redirects we havent set up will automatically go to the new site homepage? And secondly, whats the easiest way to the redirects up? Can I just add it as a parked domain or addon domain in cpanel, and do the redirects in there? Or does it needs its own hosting for the old domain with its own htaccess file? Any help appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | timscullin0 -
Someone is redirecting their url to mine
Hello, I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Many Thanks Rob Martin
Technical SEO | | brightonseorob0