Should I add the canonical URL/homepage (http://www.domain.com) in the secured version of my home URL (https://www.domain.com)?
-
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for the help George!
-
Hi,
I understand the question as: In the SSL (HTTPS) version of my homepage, should I add a rel=canonical link to the markup which points to the non SSL version of my homepage?
If your SSL pages are only accessible to authenticated users (i.e. not crawlers) then I can't see that it would make much difference as you won't suffer from duplicate content. However, if your SSL page is accessible to crawlers (as is becoming more common recently) then adding the canonical tag to non SSL is a good idea. In addition to preventing duplicate content issues, there's a good chance that your SSL page might get linked to, and blocking crawlers to it (using noindex / robots etc) means you won't get the benefits of those links.
One thing to bear in mind first is that you should decide on whether the single canonical version for your site is your HTTP or HTTPS pages. Then canonicalise accordingly.
George
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
-
URL Shortners Question
Does anyone know if there are any URL shortners that track when googlebot visits them? I want to know when googlebot visits a shortened link that does NOT got to a URL I control. Any ideas would be much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Using a geolocation service to serve different banners in homepage. Dangers? Best Practices?
Hello, our website is used by customer in more than 100 countries. Becasuse the countries we serve are so many, we are using one single domain and homepage, without country specific content. Now, we are considering to use an geolocation service to identify the customer location and then to change the contents of one banner in the home page accordingly. Might this be dangerous from a SEO perspective? If yes, any suggesiton on how can we implement this to avoid troubles and penalties form the Search Engines? Thanks in advance for any help,Dario
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Darioz0 -
Do I need to undo a 301 redirect to dissavow links from the source domain?
A client came to me after being hit by Penguin and had already performed a 301 redirect from site A to Site B. Site B was subsequently hit by the penalty a number of weeks later and we are planing on performing link removal for Site A. Only the webmaster tools account for Site B exists, none is still available for site A. I assume that I cannot dissavow links to site A from Site B's webmaster tool account (even though website A's links show up in the GWT account). So do I need to undo the 301 and then create a new GWT account for site A in order to disavow the links pointing to site A, or can I submit from Site B's GWT account since they are 301'd to site B? Thanks! Chris [edited for formatting]
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOdub0 -
No Follows - Sister/manufacturer sites
What is the best practice nowadays for linking to sister sites? Should you do it, shouldn't you, and/or should you list them with no follows? What about the reverse - having them link to us. Is this bad for us in anyway? Should we have them no follow their link to us? We are a distributor so manufacturers link to us as well, should we have them no follow their links? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CHECOM0 -
Adding Domain Names
Hi all, I am pretty new to SEO but i wanted to check out an idea with you guys, I have a business that is called Totaldriveways and the URL is www.totaldrivewaysne.co.uk Although Driveways is a big part of what we do, we are also heavily involved in other services to do with landscaping. The idea ive got is to brand each service with the "Total" for eample Total Driveways is a reconisgened name in my area and i would like to expand that into Total Patios Total Artificial Grass Total Driveway cleaning so each page and service come under a similar brand, my question is is it worth buying these domains also and directing them at the specific pages that they are relevant to, these domains are obviously keyword rich and am guessing will create extra traffic, but will i be penalised at all by google etc. I know this is probably simple stuff to alot of you's but i have no idea Thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0 -
Is using twiends.com to get twitter followers considered black hatting?
Hi, I've been struggling to get followers on Google Plus and Twitter, and recently stumbled upon twiends.com. It offers an easy service that allows you to get twitter followers very quickly. Is this considered black hating? Even if Google doesn't consider the followers as valid, am I likely to be punished if using their service? Even if it doesn't help rankings, it is nice to have lots of followers so that they will see my tweets which has the potential to drive more traffic to my site, and give awareness to my business. What are your thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
750,000 pv/month due to webspam. What to do?
Let's say your user-generated content strategy is wildly successful, in a slightly twisted sense: webspammers fill it with online streaming sports teasers and the promise of "Weeds season 7 episode 11." As a result of hard SEO work done to build the profile of the domain, these webspam pages seem to rank well in Google, and deliver nearly 750k pageviews, and many many unique visitors, to the site every month. The ad-sales team loves the traffic boost. Overall traffic, uniques, and search numbers look rosy. What do you do? a) let it ride b) throw away roughly half your search traffic overnight by deleting all the spam and tightening the controls to prevent spammers from continuing to abuse the site There are middle-ground solutions, like using NOINDEX more liberally on UGC pages, but the end result is the same as option (b) even if it takes longer to get there.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mcglynn0 -
Is domain name or page title "safe" as anchor text?
I am aware of the dangers of excessively optimized anchor text I have seen some suggestions that as long as your anchor text is either the URL or the page title that this will be OK, no matter how many links come in with that anchor text. Does anyone have an opinion, or even any hard data on this? Thx Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0