Rel="canonical" Wordpress 2015 Best Practice
-
There are forum posts about how to insert rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress, but I've read about lots of changes in this space recently (updates to Yoast, for example).
I'm having a problem with duplicate content on one of my sites, and it seems to be coming from multiple indexes of the same pages. I'll have a blog post show up under the posts, then the archives, then the tags.
So, my question is, in early 2015, what are the current best practices for adding rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress?
Thanks!
Tim
-
Lynn,
Thanks so much for the response, I really appreciate you taking the time!
Tim
-
Hi Tim,
Are you using the Yoast Seo plugin? If so a lot of things including canonical tag settings can be sorted out there. I don't think much has changed in terms of wp optimisation in 2015 - best practices from the past continue to be best practices now. From your description it sounds like maybe the problem isn't the canonical tag so much as your url (permalink) structure and/or the indexing of your archive and tag pages. Yoast has a good rundown on best practices in regards permalinks and general wp seo here and Dan Shure wrote a good blog post here on Moz which includes a good explanation of why and how to noindex certain pages (like archives and tags). The blog post is from a few years back, but all of the best practices he mentions remain valid.
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
-
Should you do on-page optimization for a page with rel=canonical tag?
If you ad a rel=canonical tag to a page, should you still optimize that page? I'm talking meta description, page title, etc.
On-Page Optimization | | marynau0 -
What are the Best On-Site SEO Practices before an E-commerce Site Goes Live?
Hello, I’m working on a client’s E-commerce website. This website is not live yet. Before the site goes live, I am curious to know what the best practices of On-site SEO are. Please let me know from which factor should I start analyze? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | TopLeagueTechnologies0 -
Best Way To Pass Rank To Follow Up Article?
What is the best way to pass rank to a follow-up article? For example, we write an article "Product A Rumors" that ends up ranking #1. When Product A is released, we write an article called "Product A Review". What is the best way to pass rank from the first pre-release article to the second post-release article? We don't want to do a simple 301 redirect as we want readers to be able to go back to the first article to see the progression of the Product A life-cycle. Also, should we go back and edit the old article to add a link to the new? Should we add a link in the new article to the old? Thanks in advance 😉
On-Page Optimization | | Humanovation0 -
SEO Title Tag Best Practice?
Hi, I would like to know if appending site name at the end of page title ( page title -_ Site Name/Site URL_ ) is a good/bad practice in reference to SEO? If a good practice which is better ( Site Name or Site URL )? Example: 20 Things you didn't know about zombies - coed.com Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
301, Canonical, and Page Authority
I have been trying to find an answer to this question for awhile now but I am having trouble. I have a clients site that I need to redirect and Canonical the pages to correct duplicate content issues and title tags however, the issue with this client is that some of the www. pages have a higher PA than non-www and the reverse is true. I am wondering if there is an issue with chasing the PA to get the highest PA per page (even if this means the site is going to be a mix of www. and non-www. pages)? I am extremely new to SEO so I apologize ahead of time if I missed this in the forum.
On-Page Optimization | | Highline_Ideas0 -
The "100 links/page recommendation" - Do Duplicate Links Count?
We have way too many links on our homepage. The PageRank Link Juice Calculator (www.ecreativeim.com/pagerank-link-juice-calculator.php) counts them to 300. But all of them are not unique, that is some links point to the same URL. So my question: does the "100 links/page recommendation" refer to all anchors on the page or only to unique link target URLs? I know "100" is just a standard recommendation.
On-Page Optimization | | TalkInThePark0 -
Rel Canonical - Could someone please help confirm something?
Morning Mozzers, I'm looking at a site (www.zitan.co.uk) and making a few recommendations for SEO, one of the things I've spotted is something weird with rel canonical. It looks (to me) as if they've got almost every single page set with this tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.zitan.co.uk" /> I'm 99% certain that this means that every page on the site (that has this tag) is pointing all link juice / authority back to the homepage? If someone could please check and just confirm that, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance, James
On-Page Optimization | | JamesMio0 -
What is the best out-of-the-box optimized WordPress Theme?
I've reviewed other answers on this forum and searched the web. Still looking for a good answer that's actually specific and can explain why. I've looked at studiopress.com themes, pagelines.com which I love but doesn't appear to have much optimization out of the box, http://themeforest.net/item/udesign-wordpress-theme/253220 http://www.vklabx.com/wordpress-themes/wordpress-theme-ad-flex-niche.php PS - not looking for answers that involve the use of SEO plugins, but if there's a theme you know of that takes minimal editing to improve optimization I'd be interested as well. Thanks in advance, hope this can help someone else as well
On-Page Optimization | | Aqua0