What is the recommended canonical variation for a website now migrated to Https:?
-
We recently migrated our site to HTTPS:? In the past, we went with http://www.
What is the recommended canonical variation corresponding to these changes?
- http://
- http://www.
- https://
- https://www.
Thank you!
Erin
-
Thank you so much for the response! That is very helpful.
Cheers,
Erin
-
If you did a 301 redirect, you do not need a canonical. If I were to use a canonical, I would use the https://www version, since you had the www before.
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
-
What is the best way to rank for variations of your business name?
Our business name is APVelocity. We are ranking when it is typed APVelocity, however we are finding many people are typing it AP Velocity. When it is typed with a space, we are not ranking. What is the best way to ensure we show up either way?
On-Page Optimization | | mbrowntci2 -
2 domain pointing to same website, how to resolve it?
My site customer has 2 domains pointing to the same site. So i have 2 domains with the same content, with problems about content duplication. How can i resolve this situation?
On-Page Optimization | | Maximilian210 -
Review my website and guide me what can do for top ranking.
Hi Guys, I really need your advice for my website (bmgapt dot com). I'm loosing ranking on (Buffalo Apartments) keyword. Two months ago my ranking number is 3 but now loosing to 15 number. What can I do for get again top ranking. Thanks in advance. John Smith
On-Page Optimization | | KLLC0 -
Replacing website, same URL, lose ranking
We had to do a rush job for a client and get a website up very quickly. We had to just replace the existing files on the server, but URL stayed the same. Now "teeth whitening glasgow" which they were number #1 for isn't coming up. Know there is still some on page work to be done - but the link profile should still remain the same? Just looking for some advice to get back to where they were - should we do a website change of address or just verify the site in Webmaster and get all the on page done? Thanks, Laura
On-Page Optimization | | lauratagdigital0 -
Website Speed Testing Tools
I have been experimenting with a number of plugins to speed up the loading of my wordpress site and find that website speed testing tools are all over the map when it comes to results. Even the same tool can produce vastly different results. Does anyone have experience with one that is both dependable and consistent?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
Duplicate Content- Best Practise Usage of the canonical url
Canonical urls stop self competition - from duplicate content. So instead of a 2 pages with a rank of 5 out of 10, it is one page with a rank of 7 out of 10.
On-Page Optimization | | WMA
However what disadvantages come from using canonical urls. For example am I excluding some products like green widet, blue widget. I have a customer with 2 e-commerce websites(selling different manufacturers of a type jewellery). Both websites have massive duplicate content issues.
It is a hosted CMS system with very little SEO functionality, no plugins etc. The crawling report- comes back with 1000 of pages that are duplicates. It seems that almost every page on the website has a duplicate partner or more. The problem starts in that they have 2 categorys for each product type, instead of one category for each product type.
A wholesale category and a small pack category. So I have considered using a canonical url or de-optimizing the small pack category as I believe it receives less traffic than the whole category. On the original website I tried de- optimizing one of the pages that gets less traffic. I did this by changing the order of the meta title(keyword at the back, not front- by using small to start of with). I also removed content from the page. This helped a bit. Or I was thinking about just using a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic.
However what are the implications of this? What happens if some one searches for "small packs" of the product- will this no longer be indexed as a page. The next problem I have is the other 1000s of pages that are showing as duplicates. These are all the different products within the categories. The CMS does not have a front office that allows for canonical urls to be inserted. Instead it would have to be done going into the html of the pages. This would take ages. Another issue is that these product pages are not actually duplicate, but I think it is because they have such little content- that the rodger(seo moz crawler, and probably googles one too) cant tell the difference.
Also even if I did use the canonical url - what happened if people searched for the product by attributes(the variations of each product type)- like blue widget, black widget, brown widget. Would these all be excluded from Googles index.
On the one hand I want to get rid of the duplicate content, but I also want to have these pages included in the search. Perhaps I am taking too idealistic approach- trying to optimize a website for too many keywords. Should I just focus on the category keywords, and forget about product variations. Perhaps I look into Google Analytics, to determine the top landing pages, and which ones should be applied with a canonical. Also this website(hosted CMS) seems to have more duplicate content issues than I have seen with other e-commerce sites that I have applied SEO MOZ to On final related question. The first website has 2 landing pages- I think this is a techical issue. For example www.test.com and www.test.com/index. I realise I should use a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic. How do I determine this? (or should I just use the SEO MOZ Page rank tool?)0 -
Is It better to have a blogroll style Homepage to your website? or one main post?
Does a site rank better or is it better to have a blogroll style homepage linking to all of your other post in your website. Or is it better to have one homepage post for the main keyword theme of the website, with the other post titles in a side column?
On-Page Optimization | | nyphenom0 -
Canonical URL problem
On page analysis wanted me to add a canonical url tag. However I added then re ran the on page analysis and it came up with an error. What is the proper way to add a canonical url tag in the head of an index page? ie. add a canonical tag to www.hompeage.com/index.html would it be ? Or should I ignore this for a home page? Because I add it then run the analysis again and get this? Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>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.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>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.</dd> <dd>So do I add it or not? If I don't I get a lower page rating if I take it off I get a higher page rating with room for improvement. </dd> </dl>
On-Page Optimization | | ENSO0