Yoast & rel canonical for paginated Wordpress URLs
-
Hello, our Wordpress blog at http://www.jobs.ca/career-resources has a rel canonical issue since we added pagination to the front page and category-pages. We're using Yoast and it's incorrectly applying a rel-canonical meta tag referencing page 1 on page 2, 3, etc. This is a known misuse of the rel-canonical tag (per Google's Webmaster Blog - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html, which says rel-canonical should be replaced with rel-prev and rel-next for page 2, 3, etc.).
We don't see a way to specify anywhere in Yoast's options to correct this behaviour for page 2, 3, etc. Yoast allows you to override a page's canonical URL, otherwise it automatically uses the Wordpress permalink.
My question is, does anyone know how to configure Yoast to properly replace rel-canonical tags with rel-prev and rel-next for paginated URLs, or do I need to look at another plugin or customize the behavior directly in my child theme code?
This issue was brought up here as well: http://moz.com/community/q/canonical-help, but the only response did not relate to Yoast.
(We're using Wordpress 3.6.1 and Yoast "Wordpress SEO" 1.4.18)
-
Thanks for posting this Shaun! People actually do come back and read these months to come and these Q&A's will return in search results, so you've made this a really valuable page for future readers - thanks!
-Dan
-
I've now fixed this issue by refactoring our child theme so the WP queries occur before the header (inserting the content later).
Because we're using a custom homepage template for the front page and a custom "category page" template, I've also had to modify Yoast's "canonical" and "adjacent_rel_links" functions to understand the pagination for those pages (otherwise Yoast simply detects these as "singular" pages and only applies the rel canonical pointing to page 1, regardless of the current page).
I used the following code to allow overriding Yoast in my child-theme's functions.php:
if (defined('WPSEO_VERSION')) {
function custom_wpseo_override() {global $wpseo_front;
remove_action('wpseo_head', array($wpseo_front, 'canonical'), 20);
add_action('wpseo_head', 'custom_wpseo_canonical', 20);
remove_action('wpseo_head', array($wpseo_front, 'adjacent_rel_links'), 21);
add_action('wpseo_head', 'custom_wpseo_adjacent_rel_links', 21);
}
add_action('init','custom_wpseo_override');
} -
Shaun
Great, thanks - happy to help!
-Dan
-
Hi Dan,
Yeah it must me some kind of conflict with the theme or another plugin... We're not using Thesis or Genesis but we have modified header.php in our child theme to replace the masthead markup (just stuff within the body tag). I just noticed the other day that both the theme (ExtraNews by ThemeForest) and Yoast are adding their own <title>tags, so there may be more conflicts than one.</p> <p>Marking your response as an answer because you proved that Yoast can insert the rel next & prev tags and you've helped me get to the point where I'm 80% sure it's a theme conflict. Thanks again!</p></title>
-
Hi Shaun
Yes in terms of keeping strictly to Google's guidelines, I agree that Yoast should in theory use either prev/next or canonical on subpages, but not both.
I am honestly not certain the settings it could be otherwise, as "subpages of archives" is the only one I know of that handles pagination.
Could there be another plugin or your theme (or custom coding in header.php) causing a conflict? One thing you can do is shut off other plugins one by one to diagnose. You can switch themes or switch to the default header.php file included with WordPress, but I (for obvious reasons) do NOT recommend doing that on a live website. I'm not sure if you have a testing environment.
Are you using a framework like Thesis or Genesis? Sometimes those can cause unexpected things to happen as well.
-Dan
-
Hi Dan, and thanks very much for your response.
Per your screenshot, I believe it's not ideal that there's a rel canonical meta-tag pointing to the current partial page (page 2).
From the Google blog link above: "In cases of paginated content, we recommend either a rel=canonical from component pages to a single-page version of the article, or to use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” pagination markup."
They mention here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en (2nd last point) that it's optional to include a rel canonical tag like yours, but without the "Noindex subpages of archives" option enabled, it would probably cause your separate post pages to be indexed, which may or may not be ideal for you depending on how authoritative/complete each individual page's content is.
Yoast is definitely adding the rel prev & next meta-tags for you though, which is exactly what I need (minus the rel canonical). I wonder which exact setting is enabling that for you... We have very few Yoast options enabled/configured at all currently, but I don't see any that are specific to the rel prev & next tags.
I've tried enabling the "Noindex subpages of archives" per your suggestion, but it didn't result in any change in the meta-tags for my site (verified after caches cleared too).
Any other suggestions you have would be great. My colleagues want to keep Yoast for it's other features, so I may go the route of forking/modifying the Yoast plugin code to fit our situation if needed.
Thanks for your time!
-
Hi Shaun
Dan here, one of the Moz Associates - we're very sorry for the delay!
I've attached a screenshot of my own personal company site which uses the Yoast Plugin - just want to verify the code as seen here is what I would consider "correct" and best practice for WordPress pagination.
That code has not require any custom coding or anything. So either we need to get the Yoast settings correct, or something else may be interfering with Yoast.
Please first try going to: Yoast SEO->Titles/Meta and select "Noindex subpages of archives". This to my knowledge is the only setting that needs to be made to handle pagination correctly.
Let us know if that works - and again, apologies for the delay. Sometimes we have quite a backlog and don't pick up right away if the community has not appropriately answered a question.
Thanks!
-Dan
-
Do the 30+ people who've viewed this question think it answered itself? I tried to be thorough, but was it too much to read? Or... Is this not a great place to ask such a question?
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 it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
Rel=“next” and rel=“prev” on category pages and galleries
Hi there, I am running an WordPress blog and i was looking a couple of days on the source code of the categories. From a SEO point of view would make sense to include into the header of the categories the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags ? Same question would be for the image galleries . Should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags on the image galleries ? So for example if i upload 10 images to a gallery, the user will check the post and see the gallery. It will click on an image and will redirected on the attachment page of that displays that image > from where he can click next to see the next image or prev for the previous image. Therefore should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags here too ? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MirceazetelSerafim1 -
Difference in Number of URLS in "Crawl, Sitemaps" & "Index Status" in Webmaster Tools, NORMAL?
Greetings MOZ Community: Webmaster Tools under "Index Status" shows 850 URLs indexed for our website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). The number of URLs indexed jumped by around 175 around June 10th, shortly after we launched a new version of our website. No new URLs were added to the site upgrade. Under Webmaster Tools under "Crawl, Site maps", it shows 637 pages submitted and 599 indexed. Prior to June 6th there was not a significant difference in the number of pages shown between the "Index Status" and "Crawl. Site Maps". Now there is a differential of 175. The 850 URLs in "Index Status" is equal to the number of URLs in the MOZ domain crawl report I ran yesterday. Since this differential developed, ranking has declined sharply. Perhaps I am hit by the new version of Panda, but Google indexing junk pages (if that is in fact happening) could have something to do with it. Is this differential between the number of URLs shown in "Index Status" and "Crawl, Sitemaps" normal? I am attaching Images of the two screens from Webmaster Tools as well as the MOZ crawl to illustrate what has occurred. My developer seems stumped by this. He has submitted a removal request for the 175 URLs to Google, but they remain in the index. Any suggestions? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Yoast Wordpress SEO premium
As anyone installed Yoast Wordpress SEO premium. Love to ear some feedbacks. I have some problems on installations that i am trying to solve as i am not an expert on SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Pagination, Canonical, Prev & Next
Hello All
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitalized
I have a question about my Magento setup. I have lots of categories which have many products so the categories paginate. I've seen info about making sure the Canonical tag doesn't simply send Search Engines back to the first page meaning the paginated pages won't get indexed. I've also seen info about using the rel=next & rel=prev to help Search Engines understand the category pages are paginated... Is it okay to use both? I've made sure that: category/?p=1 has a canonical of category/ to make sure there isn't duplicate content. Here's an example of category/?p=2 meta data:
http://website.com/category/?p=2" />
http://website.com/category/" />
http://website.com/category/?p=3" />0 -
Issue: Rel Canonical
seomoz give me notices about rel canonical issues, how can i resolve it. any one can help me, what is rel canonical and how can i remove it
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | learningall0 -
Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.
I'm trying to outrank a website with the following: Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand" Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old Has both the City & brand in the URL name. The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages. My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above. Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old Has only the CITY in the URL. Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page. My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained. Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out? Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Overly-Dynamic URL
Hi, We have over 5000 pages showing under Overly-Dynamic URL error Our ecommerce site uses Ajax and we have several different filters like, Size, Color, Brand and we therefor have many different urls like, http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all http://www.dellamoda.com/designer-handbags.html?use_selected_filter=Y&option=manufacturer%3A&page3 Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these from showing as duplicate content? and do we need to put the whole url in there? like: Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y if not how far into the url should be disallowed? So far we have added the following to our robots,txt Disallow: /?sort=title Disallow: /?use_selected_filter=Y Disallow: /?sort=price Disallow: /?clearall=Y Just not sure if they are correct. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,Kami
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dellamoda2