Appropriate Use of Canonical Tag

[stageagent]

Hello,

I am creating study guides for books with tabbed elements for each study guide.

For example, for Othello, I'd have 3 tabs like so:

1. Overview page = xyz.com/othello

2. Context = xyz.com/othello/context

3. Characters = xyz.com/othello/characters

I noticed that YouTube channels have tabbed elements and use the canonical. For example, all of the tabbed sections on https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdist/channels have this canonical http://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdist">

In my case, would it be a correct use of the canonical tag to include rel="canonical" href = http://xyz.com/othello on each of the tabbed pages?

Also, where exactly in the header should the canonical be placed? Before or after open graph / twitter cards?

[JaneCopland]

Hi Jason,

I would definitely not canonicalise between the three+ URLs about one text unless those URLs contain identical information. Since they won't be identical (one will be plot, one characters, etc. as you say earlier in the thread), I would not canonicalise. You will result in content such as that on characters not being indexed or crawled. The site is therefore probably less likely to rank for queries like [othello characters] if the characters page has a canonical tag on it, pointing to the plot summary page.

Without having seen the site or mock-ups, I believe you would be safe to use separate URLs for each area of study surrounding one topic.

However, you could indeed put all this content on one page and use tabs to switch between the content, given that it is too long to fit nicely on one page. The tabs should be operated by CSS, and all the text (plot summary, characters, context) would be in the source code upon page load. People would click between tabs to read it. This is not considered cloaking or hiding content, although I would avoid doing this if the content for each section is particularly lengthy. I doubt it would get you in trouble, but if you are creating substantial content for each area of study, this would work well on separate URLs _without _canonicalising to one particular page, as per your original structure.

Cheers,

Jane

[DonnaDuncan]

I'd recommend using pagination over canonicals.

Refer to this post to learn how to implement them.

http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html

[DonnaDuncan]

Again, if the content is all on one page, partitioned into separate tabs, then there's no need for canonicals or anything else for that matter. You can configure your tabs so the overview is the default tab, the one that displays on entry to the page.

If the page becomes too lengthy or takes to long to load, then another option is to split it onto separate URLs and use page (rel=next and rel=prev) tags to relate them.

[stageagent]

There is way too much content to fit onto one page - that is why I am using the tabular format. The question is should the content in all tabs be on the same URL or different URLs? And if different URLs should I use the canonical?

[DonnaDuncan]

In my opinion, the content would ideally be located on the same page.

You have to balance that with the length of the content and the ability of the page to load quickly. Assuming you can get it all on one page, then you don't need canonical tags.

[stageagent]

So I am laying the content out in tabular format. This actually leads to another question - should each tab be a separate URL or all on the same URL? Perhaps by keeping everything on the same URL this would also solve my canonical issue?

[stageagent]

So the issue is that the content within each tab is definitely not duplicate but related. Ie one tab might be the plot summary while another tab consists of character descriptions. Ideally, I think the best user experience would be for all users to start on the overview though.  So given that the content in each tab is NOT duplicate but it would be a better user experience to start at the overview, should I use canonical or is it safer to just leave it out?

[DonnaDuncan]

I think I'm not understanding something. Why do you want to partition the content onto three pages? Why not just lay out the content so it displays in a tabular format? That way you don't have to worry about canonicalizing or paginating the content at all.

if you are concerned about page load tomes, then if would consider pagination instead. This post is an excellent resource for how (and when) to do that.

http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html

[alrockn]

The example you stated would prevent context and character tabs from being indexed in search engines.  If these are unique content, you should reconsider because canonical was originally created for multiple urls with identical information.  Place the tag anywhere in the header.

[john4math]

If those pages are essentially duplicate content, then you should use a canonical.  If you Google to index each of those pages separately, and return each one in search results, then you should not use one.  Do you want people who search for text that matches your context and character tabs closely to be linked directly into those tabs, or should they always start at the overview page?  If they should always start at the overview, you can try the canonical tags.  Be aware that if the page contents aren't very similar, Google may ignore these.

Anywhere in the is fine, it doesn't matter where you place it.