Is it important to have a Rel-Canonical tag on every webpage?
-
Our website just had its first crawl test and about 90% of the pages have the tag.
-
Sean
It's not really necessary to use canonical url's. If you are sure that every piece of content on your site is available on a unique url you don't need to implement them.
It doesn't hurt having them either. Using canonical url's (if implemented properly) can help to avoid duplicate content issues. Like Patrick mentioned, having canonicals doesn't imply that no duplicate content issues exist (I've seen sites where the canonical url is always equal to the url - which renders them completely useless)
Crawl tools like Screaming Frog are the best option to check if you need canonicals, and if you have them, to check if they are properly implemented.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Sean
Yes, this is important, but make sure the canonical tags are implemented correctly and pointing to the right page. Just because pages have canonical tags, doesn't mean they are correct.
You can use tools like Moz or ScreamingFrog to check.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Yes, important. Any reason you wouldn't? Which pages don't?
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
-
Unsolved Why doesn't moz notify me of missing image alt tags
We had a client come to us and let us know another vendor had notified them that many of the images on their site are missing alt tags / text. I know this was a big deal back in the day, but I haven't heard much about it lately. I am assuming if it doesn't even show up in the Moz site crawl, it must not be a big deal any more, but I would love to have more info about how important image alt tags are and if they are important, why Moz does not report them.
Moz Pro | | CaliberMG1 -
Source page showsI have 2 h1 tags on my page. I can only find one.
When I grade my page it says I have more than one h1 tag. I view the source page and it shows there are two h1 headings with the same wording. If I delete the one h1 heading I can find, the page source shows I have deleted both of them. I don't know how to get to the other heading to delete it. And I'm off page one of google! Can anybody help? Clay Stephens
Moz Pro | | Coot0 -
Canonical tag on webstore products to avoid Duplicate Page Content ?
Hi, I would like to have an opinion on what how we are planning to solve the issue with Duplicate Page Contents that MOZ PRO is showing us. MOZ Pro is showing us a lot of pages with duplicate content as High Priority Issue. Mainly the problem is with products which have very few differences between them, e.g. pink bike model X and red bike model X. So we decided to implement a canonical tag on these products, and the pink bike model X will now have a canonical pointing to the red bike model X. So hopefully we will be ranking higher with our red bike model X and our pink bike model X will disapear from the index. Am I right ? Is it a good practice, since we will loose long tails indexes? I check each canonical in the Search Console, and we have extremely few searched for "pink bike model X" most of searches are "bike model X". Thank you in advance for your opinion. Isabelle
Moz Pro | | isabelledylag0 -
Duplicate Page Content, Indexing and Rel Canonical Just DOUBLED! Need Advice to Fix
Last Friday (Penguin 5/2.1) my website shot way off the grid and I noticed in my MOZ PRO Campaign dashboard that all of the following just doubled in numbers on my website: duplicate page content, Google indexing, and rel canonicals. I also noticed that some of my pages, images, tags and categories now added a /page/2/ or a -2. I just changed noindex for tags, but indexing for media, pages, posts, and categories. I'm currently using All In One SEO for a plugin. Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm stuck on the issue. relconical.png Duplicate-Page-Content.png [Duplicate Content II](Duplicate Content II) index1.png
Moz Pro | | CelebrityPersonalTrainer0 -
What is more important, page authority or linking root domains?
I have 2 pages in my report that are identical: www.ferringway.com (more page authority......21 vs. 1) www.ferringway.com/index.php (more linking root domains...... 40 vs. 21) Which one should I delete or should I do something like a 301 redirect? Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl
Moz Pro | | TOMMarketingLtd.0 -
Canonical Confusion
Hey guys, I'm having a hard time grasping canonical links and the warnings I'm getting on my report card. I'm using Yoast SEO Plug-In and can see that every page on my site has a canonical reference to the URL of the page I'm at. Can someone please enlighten me on this subject. I'm reading everything I can about Canonicalization (honestly...an easier word please) but I does not make sense yet. Thanks! I added the notice I'm getting on my report card. This is my domain http://bbguard.com.ve swG7x.png
Moz Pro | | FDSConsulting0 -
Will canonical tag get rid of duplicate page title errors?
I have a directory on my website, paginated in groups of 10. On page 2 of the results, the title tag is the same as the first page, as it is on the 3rd page and so on. This is giving me duplicate page title errors. If i use rel=canonical tags on the subsequent pages and href the first page of my results, will my duplicate page title warnings go away? thanks.
Moz Pro | | fourthdimensioninc0