Can someone help with Canonical?
-
I have a wordpress site that On-Page Grader is saying I don't have Canonical done correctly. Here is the comment.
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.
I have quite a few sites and have never had an issue with this. Can anyone help? I tried installing a plugin but that seems to have made it worse. This is the front page of the site btw.
-
Thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize that would make much of a difference but I corrected the problem. Also, without me doing anything, the Canonical Error is fixed...
-
I'm not sure what's tripping our warning (although that can occasionally be hyperactive), but I do see one problem. You're using the non-www version (which is fine, in theory), but your "Home" link goes to the "www..." version. You're sending Google a mixed signal with this. It doesn't seem to be causing major problems (no "www..." pages are in Google's index for your site), but I'd change the internal link to conform to the non-www default.
The basic problem is that Google and other crawlers (including ours) will keep visiting that "www..." and then get redirects and/or hit the canonical. It creates an odd loop that could waste crawler bandwidth and sends a mixed signal about your intent.
-
I agree with Chris and I would ignore the error/warning. The canonical does not hurt being there on the homepage but in any case it is set correctly.
-
Are you trying to set up canonical for the htttp version and www. version of your site ?
You don't need to set up canonical for your homepage especially if its poinitng towards the page your on.
You can always ignore that point of the on page grader if you feel its not relevant, its a guide not a guarantee.
-
The link is a front page of a website though.
I understand what Canonical is for, but this isn't a duplicated page, its the front page. Im not sure why I would get the above error in On-Page grading. Basically saying the page is grading a B instead of an A because of the above error.
-
More information can be found here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394
Rel=canonical should be in the it should then point to the "original page"
lets use it in an exsample
two pages about a product (lets say a book)
www.exsample.com/book/thisawesomebook
www.exsample.com/book/author/thisawesomebook
Now we don't want duplicate content so we would put a link in the second page as its a bit further from the main page (though you can do it which ever way you like)
so in the head of www.exsample.com/book/author/thisawesomebook we would have
Give Moz some time to re-crawl the page and pick up any changes. I hope that helps clear it up, you can get plugins but its simple enough to do it by hand. Best of luck.
-
What is the URL and what is the canonical tag in your head section?
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
-
Are Pages that have High Traffic and High Bounce Rates helpful?
I work as a marketing director for a small law firm. I had some basic SEO experience prior to joining the firm but I'm still building my knowledge base. I'm working to take over where the previous web developer left off and improve the site. The previous firm had developed pages for the law firm featuring yearly car crash statistics, statistics for bike crashes, etc. These pages get a good amount of hits but people quickly jump off the pages, and most are not even located in a region where they could potentially become a client. I feel like they added the pages to show the client that there was an increase in search traffic. However, 100% of the traffic bounces quickly after viewing the statistics pages. Does a page that has a decent amount of hits, but doesn't lead to conversions and has a nearly 100% bounce rate worth keeping around? My thought is, I would like to remove these pages that do not actually attract potential clients and reduce the overall bounce rate of the site. I don't want to take actions to remove the page without throwing this question out to more experienced people.
On-Page Optimization | | Champlain_Valley_Law1 -
Can we use internal no-follow links without negatively affecting rankings
we are creating a site structure for a travel website. the site homepage has a top navigation bar with 8 top level links and a total link count of 33 links in this (within menus). There are also 10 footer and ad-hoc links As this top navigation bar is a site-wide navigation, when entering s specific "travel destination" page, the "travel destination" page has its own contextual links and reference links, making the total inks on the destination page approx 107. do you think its ok to make all links in the top navigation bar no follow on all pages except the homepage? how would you approach this to create less links to maintain effective link-juice flow to required pages
On-Page Optimization | | Direct_Ram0 -
Can I add multi location business cities to homepage meta title or desc.?
I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info. Currently I have geo info: -In footer
On-Page Optimization | | beehiive
-Contact Page -On local page It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL. I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?0 -
Page Titles For Local - Help on URL Structure
Trying to figure out the best way to construct localized urls for the dental website. For example, If I have the URL:
On-Page Optimization | | Czubmeister
http://www.kooskidental.com/services/cosmetic-dentistry/
and If I want to make it local to the city I would use: http://www.kooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/ But what happens is that I have other options off the menu like: http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/teeth-whitening/ But if I am trying to rank for richardson tx teeth whitening, I would have to do http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/richardson-tx-teeth-whitening/ But that's pretty long and ugly and I don't think I need richardson-tx in their twice. If I am trying to rank for richardson tx cosmetic dentistry and richardson tx teeth whitening, what would be the best structure for the url's?0 -
Can you help with quality and interesting content ideas?
Hi I'm ranking for "online biology degree" and "online wildlife biology degree" but I have bad content and I receive almost 100% bounce rate. Can you help me with ideas on good content and interesting information I can provide for people looking for "online wildlife biology degree" and "online biology courses" "biology degree online" Every idea would be appreciated. Yoseph
On-Page Optimization | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
E commerce Website canonical and duplicate content isssue
i have a ecomerce site , i am just wondering if any one could help me answer this the more info page can be access will google consider it as duplicate and if it does then how to best use the canonical tag http://domain.com/product-page http://domain.com/product-page/ http://domain.com/product-Page http://domain.com/product-Page/ also in zencart when link product it create duplicate page content how to tackle it? many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | conversiontactics0 -
Canonical URL Tag
Hi, I have two pages that are identical on my site: http://www.absolutepower.nl/creatine-monohydraat and http://www.absolutepower.nl/CREATINE/creatine-monohydraat Should I use the canonical URL tag in this case? Thanks, Jasper
On-Page Optimization | | Japking0 -
Does it matter if a rel = "canonical" element is added to the beginning or the end of a URL?
I am curious to know if adding a rel = "canonical" tag to the end of a link element will affect its purpose?
On-Page Optimization | | Sharecare0