Appropriate use of rel canonical

[StoryScout]

Hey Guys,I'm a bit stuck. My on-page grade indicated the following two issues and I need to find how how to fix both issues.If you have a solution, could you please let me know how to address these issues? It's all a bit intimidating at the moment!!Thank you so much..****************************************************************************************************************************************Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical

If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.

Recommendation: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.

No More Than One Canonical URL Tag

The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag.

Recommendation: Remove all but a single canonical URL tag

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, I'd really tackle this error first, as the other one could be a false alarm. It sounds like you've got multiple canonical tags on a single page, which Google can't interpret very well (and that might just ignore it or use the wrong one). This often indicates that your CMS is double-placing tags and could signal broader problems.

[Linda-Vassily]

Since the error message you get is "no more than one canonical URL tag," I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the affected pages have more than one canonical.

You can check this by looking at the source code of the page (which you can do by going into the menu of whatever browser you are using and choosing "page source" or "view source"- it is different in different browsers- look around or use the browser's help feature) and doing a search for rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>"; this should only appear once. If it appears more than once, remove the ones you don't want.

The canonical should be the URL of the page that you want Google to see as the one to index and return in results. For example, if you are using canonicals because you have tracking codes appended to a URL and that creates the appearance of duplicate content, use the URL without the codes as the canonical one.

Just remember that when you put a canonical URL on a page, you are telling Google to ignore the actual URL of that page and consider it to be the canonical URL instead.

[StoryScout]

I will try and find out all of this information... Just give me a bit of time to figure it out. Thanks for being helpful.. I'm loving moz to death! It's a great community

[ColinWhite]

First don't worry we are here for you! Second to me "Rel=" is one of the more misunderstood tools and there are a lot of questions surrounding it's implementation. Here are a few reference points to learn from as well.

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
• http://moz.com/community/q/fixing-appropriate-use-of-rel-canonical
• http://www.webceo.com/blog/how-to-use-relcanonical-properly/
• Is there an Advantage of using Rel=”canonical” over 301 redirect? By Matt Cutts

Ok so  first how are you currently using the tag? Could you post a screenshot or code example as well as a link to the site? Basically you want to make sure that you are using the Tag as a way to deal with duplicate or similar pages as a way to tell Search Engines what the master version of the page is. In my opinion I would try very hard to avoid dupes and normalize URLs in the first place,  meaning the tag is more of a last resort option after you have exhausted other methods. Also there are so many ways a Rel="canonical" can go wrong so seeing how your implementing it would help. So try to let us see how your using it as that would help me give a more targeted solution.