Canonical tag used on several pages?
-
Is it a bad idea to use rel=canonical from several pages back to one (if you are planning on no-indexing them)? Does this concentrate the “link juice” from those several pages back to one?
-
Yes
From the Matt Cutts / Eric Enge Interview
Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?
Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.
Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.
For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.
-
Thank you for the quick reply. The noindex, follow, also passes link juice as well though, correct? To the pages it links to?
-
To clarify, canonical tags are designed for identifying the original version of a page. If you have a product page then it could be sorted in ascending or descending order based on price, size, color and numerous other fields. You could also vary the style of a page, offer a "print" version, etc.
All of these pages provide the exact same content but are formatted differently to provide a better user experience. That is the design of the canonical tag. You are telling a search engine "hey, don't get confused, the original version of the page that should be indexed is [canonical]."
The noindex tag tells a search engine "there is no content on this page which would be of value to include in SERPs".
The consequence of not using a canonical tag or noindex tag properly, is that pages can appear in SERPs that should not. You may do a search for "widgets" and instead of your main page appearing your "out of stock" or other page may appear.
For link juice, if you use the canonical tag any link juice will flow to the canonical page minus a tiny amount which is lost any time any form of redirect is used.
-
Regarding "link juice" between canonical and no-index--if all 100 pages are canonicalized to 1 url, that url will received "link juice" from all 100 pages, correct? And, if the noindex, follow tag is used, then the "link juice" will be distributed to all urls on each of the individual pages?
-
You are perfectly welcome to use the canonical tag on multiple pages.
If you use the canonical tag, I do not see any point in also adding noindex to these pages.
I will share that Lindsay made a blog entry on this specific topic. She hasn't been around lately but I would love to have clarification as she seems to recommend using noindex instead of the canonical tag. Please reference the following Q&A for more details: http://www.seomoz.org/q/canonical-noindex-use-together
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
-
Understanding Redirects and Canonical Tags in SEO: A Complex Case
Hi everyone, nothing serious here, i'm just playing around doing my experiments 🙂
Technical SEO | | chueneke
but if any1 of you guys understand this chaos and what was the issue here, i'd appreciate if you try to explain it to me. I had a page "Linkaufbau" on my website at https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau. My .htaccess file contains only basic SEO stuff: # removed ".html" using htaccess RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.html\ HTTP RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ $1 [R=301,L] # internally added .html if necessary RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$ RewriteRule (.*) $1\.html [L] # removed "index" from directory index pages RewriteRule (.*)/index$ $1/ [R=301,L] # removed trailing "/" if not a directory RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$ RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301,L] # Here’s the first redirect: RedirectPermanent /index / My first three questions: Why do I need this rule? Why must this rule be at the top? Why isn't this handled by mod_rewrite? Now to the interesting part: I moved the Linkaufbau page to the SEO folder: https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau and set up the redirect accordingly: RedirectPermanent /linkaufbau /seo/linkaufbau.html I deleted the old /linkaufbau page. I requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau in the Google Search Console. Once the page was indexed, I set a canonical to the old URL: <link rel="canonical" href="https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau"> Then I resubmitted the sitemap and requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau again, even though it was already indexed. Due to the canonical tag, the page quickly disappeared. I then requested indexing for /linkaufbau and /linkaufbau.html in GSC (the old, deleted page). After two days, both URLs were back in the serps:: https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau.html this is the new page /seo/linkaufbau
b14ee095-5c03-40d5-b7fc-57d47cf66e3b-grafik.png This is the old page /linkaufbau
242d5bfd-af7c-4bed-9887-c12a29837d77-grafik.png Both URLs are now in the search results and all rankings are significantly better than before for keywords like: organic linkbuilding linkaufbau kosten linkaufbau service natürlicher linkaufbau hochwertiger linkaufbau organische backlinks linkaufbau strategie linkaufbau agentur Interestingly, both URLs (with and without .html) redirect to the new URL https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau, which in turn has a canonical pointing to https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau (without .html). In the SERPs, when https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau is shown, my new, updated snippet is displayed. When /linkaufbau.html is shown, it displays the old, deleted page that had already disappeared from the index. I have now removed the canonical tag. I don't fully understand the process of what happened and why. If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful. Best regards,
Chris0 -
Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages
Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content. And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rignite0 -
Moving Some Content From Page A to Page B
Page A has written content, pictures, videos. The written content from Page A is being moved to Page B. When Google crawls the pages next time around will Page B receive the content credit? Will there not be any issues that this content originally belonged to Page A? Page A is not a page I want to rank for (just have great pictures and videos for users). Can I 301 redirect from Page A to B since the written content from A has been deleted or no need? Again, I intent to keep Page A live because good value for users to see pictures and videos.
Technical SEO | | khi50 -
Switchboard Tags - Multiple desktop pages pointing to one mobile page
I have recently started to implement switchboard tags to connect our mobile and desktop pages, and to ensure that our mobile pages show up in rankings for mobile users. Because our desktop site is much deeper in content than our mobile site, there are a number of desktop pages we would like to have point to one mobile page. However, with the switchboard tags, this poses a problem because it requires multiple rel=canonical tags to be placed on the one mobile page. I'm assuming this will either confuse the search engines, or they will choose to ignore the rel=canonical tag altogether. Any ideas on how to approach this situation other than creating an equivalent mobile version of every desktop page or implementing a user agent detection redirect?
Technical SEO | | JBlank0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical - Should I use it under the following circumstances?
I have a number of hyper local directories, where businesses get a page dedicated to them. They can add images and text, plus contact info, etc. Some businesses list on more than one of these directory sites, but use exactly the same description. I've tried asking businesses to use unique text when listing on more than one site to avoid duplication issues, but this is proving to be too much work for the business owner! Can I use a cross-domain canonical and point Google towards the strongest domain from the group of directories? What effects will this have? And is there an alternative way to deal with the duplicate content? Thanks - I look forward to hearing your ideas!
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0 -
On-Page Report Card & Rel Canonical
Hello, I ran one of our pages through the On-Page Report Card. Among the results we are getting a lower grade due to the following "critical factor" : Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Explanation 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. This is for an e-commerce site, and the canonical links are inserted automatically by the cart software. The cart is also creating the canonical url as a relative link, not an absolute URL. In this particular case it's a self-referential link. I've read a ton on this and it seems that this should be okay (I also read that Bing might have an issue with this). Is this really an issue? If so, what is the best practice to pass this critical factor? Thanks, Paul
Technical SEO | | rwilson-seo0 -
Should i use NoIndex, Follow & Rel=Canonical Tag In One Page?
I am having pagination problem with one of my clients site , So I am deciding to use noindex, follow tag for the Page 2,3,4 etc for not to have duplicated content issue, Because obviously SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics showing me lot of duplicate page contents. And past 2 days i was in constant battle whether to use noindex, follow tag or rel=canonical tag for the Page 2,3,4 and after going through all the Q&A,None of them gives me crystal clear answer. So i thought "Why can't i use 2 of them together in one page"? Because I think (correct me if i am wrong) 1.noindex, follow is old and traditional way to battle with dup contents
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle
2.rel=canonical is new way to battle with dup contents Reason to use 2 of them together is: Bot finds to the non-canonical page first and looks at the tag nofollow,index and he knows not to index that page,meantime he finds out that canonical url is something something according to the url given in the tag,NO? Help Please???0 -
Why am i still getting duplicate page title warnings after implementing canonical URLS?
Hi there, i'm having some trouble understanding why I'm still getting duplicate page title warnings on pages that have the rel=canonical attribute. For example: this page is the relative url http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/1 and http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/2 is the second page of this parsed list which is linking back to the first page using rel=canonical. i have over 300 pages like this!! what should i do SEOmoz GURUS? how do i remedy this problem? is it a problem?
Technical SEO | | fourthdimensioninc0