Wordpress Canonical Tag Pointing to Same Page
-
So I noticed on a few of my clients wordpress tags (via moz) that there are canonical tags on URLs, pointing to that same URL.
What is the point of that, and is it harming the website? Is this being done automatically via a plugin?
Should I remove the canonical tags or leave as is?
-
There may be a plug in to place rel=canonical tags on the page. Sometimes, when the plug in field is left blank, a self referencing rel=canonical tag is placed on the page. I wouldn't worry about it too much, it shouldn't harm your site.
From: http://moz.com/blog/dispelling-a-persistent-rel-canonical-myth
"Looking through Google's blog post on the subject, this isn't explicitly stated. However, you can see that even the example website, Wikia, employs this practice on the page Google points out. You can also see Googler Maile Ohyeanswering a comment on this:
@Wade: Yes, it's absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel="canonical". It won't harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you."
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
-
Can we ignore "broken links" without redirecting to "new pages"?
Let's say we have reaplced www.website.com/page1 with www.website.com/page2. Do we need to redirect page1 to page2 even page1 doesn't have any back-links? If it's not a replacement, can we ignore a "lost page"? Many websites loose hundreds of pages periodically. What's Google's stand on this. If a website has replaced or lost hundreds of links without reclaiming old links by redirection, will that hurts?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Reasons for a sharp decline in pages crawled
Hello! I have a site I've been tracking using Moz since July. The site is mainly stagnant with some on page content updates. Starting the first week of December, Moz crawler diagnostics showed that the number of pages crawled decreased from 300 to 100 in a week. So did the number of errors through. So crawler issues went from 275 to 50 and total pages crawled went from 190 to 125 in a week and this number has stayed the same for the last 5 weeks. Are the drops a red flag? Or is it ok since errors decreased also? Has anyone else experienced this and found an issue? FYI: sitemap exists and is submitted via webmaster tools. GWT shows no crawler errors nor blocked URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | Symmetri0 -
Drop in Page Indexing, Small rise in Search Queries
Hello, I have a news based website so i am creating multiple new posts daily. I changed a lot of the site and got rid of old potentially duplicate content back in feb and had a sharp drop in pages indexed. I know this was because I removed a lot of pages though. However I still have a good 20,000 + pages on my site and my indexing has dropped a further three times since then. From 9,000 to 2,000 a coupe of months ago and then slowly down since April to just 133. It doesn't seem to have affected my search queries yet but surely will if it continues. I am really confused as to how this might happen & how to turn it around. We dont use any dodgy SEO tricks either.
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
A Serious drop in Pages crawled per day
On 21st April ,I spotted a sudden decrease in pages crawled per day.Previously it was about 5,000 bust after the drop it reached to 225.From the crawl rate never spiked. Here is my website url - http://www.wpstuffs.com/ 8fQHW2G.png
Algorithm Updates | | vividvilla0 -
Why has my homepage been replaced in Google by my Facebook page?
Hi. I was wondering if others have had this happen to them. Lately, I've noticed that on a couple of my sites the homepage no longer appears in the Google SERP. Instead, a Facebook page I've created appears in the position the homepage used to get. My subpages still get listed in Google--just not the homepage. Obviously, I'd prefer that both the homepage and Facebook page appear. Any thoughts on what's going on? Thanks for your help!
Algorithm Updates | | TuxedoCat0 -
Google showing different pages for same search term in uk and usa
Hi Guys, I have an interesting question and think Google is being a bit strange.. Can anyone tell me why when I input the term design agency in Google.co.uk it shows one page, but when i tyupe in the same search term in Google.com (worldwide search) it shows another page.. Any ideas guys? Is this not bit strange?? Any help here be much appreciated.. Thanks Gareth
Algorithm Updates | | GAZ090 -
After on-page is perfect, then what?
I am working on a friend's site and I've optimized his on-page stuff. It's pretty much perfect from SEOMoz analysis. I reduced his Errors from 150+ to 3 and his warnings from 50+ to 0. Notices are at 5. Now, a month has gone by and I've added 3 backlinks in what appears to be reputable sites PR7, PR7, and PR3. His site has dropped from the 2nd listing on the 2nd page to the bottom of the 2nd page now. Now, I realize other sites may be doing seo as well and trying to move to the top, but, seems peculiar. I put in a bit of work to revamp 3 of his pages as well b/c each one had over 300 html validation errors and I reduced it down to 6 or so. The competitor I'm aiming for has these stats: DA: 16 MozRank 3.14 MozTrust: 2.73 My friend's site is: DA: 19 MozRank: 2.21 MozTrust: 2.64 Subdomain metrics is 0 for everything, whereas his competitors have good stats for subdomain metrics. What is that? And what can I do to improve his ranking in Google? Is it just more backlinks? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | webtarget0 -
Using ™ and ® in page titles
Is it bad to use registered trademark symbols in page titles? Does this somehow hurt in search rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner0