What is better? No canonical or two canonicals to different pages?
-
I have a blogger site that is adding parameters and causing duplicate content. For example:
I decided to implement a canonical tag on these pages pointing to the correct version of the page. However, for the parameter ?m=0, the canonical keeps pointing to itself.
Ex: www.mysite.com/?m=0 The canonical = www.mysite.com/?m=0
So now I have two canonicals for the same page. My question is if I should leave it, and let Google decide, or completely remove the canonicals from all pages?
-
When Google sees more than one canonical reference on a page, they will more than likely ignore all canonical hints that page has. Keep that in mind when you make your decision. If the canonical tags are working on most pages, but not on that one specific page with ?m=0, you might want to keep them implemented. If the issue is larger than that and you're seeing it effect your site in a negative way, remove them and see how Google responds.
Here's a link to canonical information I refer to: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
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
-
Different snippet in Google for same page
Hello, I have a question regarding the snippet of a specific case: When i search the homepage by searching the business name, i find the correct snippet of the homepage (with the meta description that was entered). If i search it via site:www. it still show the default meta description. Has anybody had experience with this? Is there a way to change the snippet of site:www.? Does it influence SEO? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
How does Googlebot evaluate performance/page speed on Isomorphic/Single Page Applications?
I'm curious how Google evaluates pagespeed for SPAs. Initial payloads are inherently large (resulting in 5+ second load times), but subsequent requests are lightning fast, as these requests are handled by JS fetching data from the backend. Does Google evaluate pages on a URL-by-URL basis, looking at the initial payload (and "slow"-ish load time) for each? Or do they load the initial JS+HTML and then continue to crawl from there? Another way of putting it: is Googlebot essentially "refreshing" for each page and therefore associating each URL with a higher load time? Or will pages that are crawled after the initial payload benefit from the speedier load time? Any insight (or speculation) would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner1 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
Targeting two search terms with same intent - one or more pages for SEO benefits?
I'd like some professional opinions on this topic. I'm looking after the SEO for my friends site, and there are two main search terms we are looking to boost in search engines. The company sells Billboard advertising space to businesses in the UK. Here are the two search terms we're looking to target: Billboard Advertising - 880 searches P/M Outdoor Advertising - 720 searches P/M It would usually make sense to make a separate page to target the keyword "billboard advertising" on its own fully optimised landing page with more information on the topic and with a targeted URL: www.website.com/billboard-advertising/ and the homepage to target "outdoor advertising" as it's an outdoor advertising agency. But there's a problem, as both search terms are highly related and have the same intent, I'm worried that if we create a separate page to target the billboard advertising, it will conflict with the homepage targeting outdoor advertising. Also, the main competitors who are currently ranked position 1-3, are ranking with their home pages and not optimised landing pages to target the exact search term "billboard advertising". Any advice on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Many pages small unique content vs 1 page with big content
Dear all, I am redesigning some areas of our website, eurasmus.com and we do not have clear what is the best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
option to follow. In our site, we have a city area i.e: www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla which we are going
to redesign and a guide area where we explain about the city, etc...http://eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla/guide/
all with unique content. The thing is that at this point due to lack of resources, our guide is not really deep and we believe like this it does not
add extra value for users creating a page with 500 characters text for every area (transport...). It is not also really user friendly.
On the other hand, this pages, in long tail are getting some results though is not our keyword target (i.e. transport in sevilla)
our keyword target would be (erasmus sevilla). When redesigning the city, we have to choose between:
a)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> with all the content one one page about 2500 characters unique.
b)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> With better amount of content and a nice redesign but keeping
the guide pages. What would you choose? Let me know what you think. Thanks!0 -
Should I use a rel=canonical to the home page
Hi guys, I have a site where the homepage is ranking for the term 'industrial flooring' around position 30 and the actual level 2 industrial flooring page is ranking well below at around position 60. I'm happy for the homepage to rank for this term and would like to see it improve, so here are my questions: 1: Is the existence of the level 2 page preventing the homepage from ranking higher due to keyword cannibalization etc.? 2: Would the use of the rel=canonical tag pointing from the level 2 page to the home page have a positive or negative impact on the homepage's rankings for 'industrial flooring'? 3: Is there anything else I'm missing? Greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
My landing page changed in google's serp. I used to have a product page now I have a pdf?
I have been optimizing this page for a few weeks now and and have seen our page for up from 23rd to 11th on the serp's. I come to work today and not only have I dropped to 15 but I've also had my relevant product page replaced by this page . Not to mention the second page is a pdf! I am not sure what happened here but any advice on how I could fix this would be great. My site is www.mynaturalmarket.com and the keyword I'm working on is Zyflamend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenyonManu3-SEOSEM0 -
Links to Facebook pages
I would like to ask if anyone has any knowledge regarding linking to a company's facebook page. I have built a few links to a client's facebook page in an effort to have it rank better in SERPs. I just learned that unlike twitter and linkedin, it is apparently not possibly to directly link to facebook pages. At least it is not possible from a search engine's perspective. If you follow any facebook page link while you are not logged into facebook, you are redirected to the facebook home page. I can't think of any way around this obstacle. I'd love some clever solution such as providing a URL which includes a basic dummy facebook login but there is nothing I am aware of to achieve this result. Does anyone have any ideas on this topic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0