Set Canonical for Paginated Content
-
Hi Guys,
This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors#
I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible.To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website.Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help!Joost
-
Joost - that's correct! Yes, I assume woocommerce, since they are product pages.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the explanation.
Ok so I block 24 and 48 for Google but users can still use them to navigate through the site.
I assume this is woocommerce related because Woocommerce creates the output for the productpages right?Thanks again!
Joost
-
Joost
I think you'll need to get a developer or someone involved to help execute, but here's the ideal scenerio:
- Add meta "noindex" tags to ?show_products=24 and 48
- Make your 'view all' URL ideally just /product-category/t-shirts/ - with no parameter - or if you have to, maybe /t-shirts/all/ - your goal here is to keep it consistent and NOT the same parameter as the other pages
- Then, whatever consistent URL you have for the 'all' - don't add "noindex" to that (keep it indexable).
- Wait for Google to remove 24/48 URLs from the index (you have to just check every week or two with site: searches)
- Once they are noindexed, block crawling with robots.txt with this line:
Disallow: /?show_products= <---but ONLY use that if you've changed your 'view all' URLs to something else! You ideally want a different URL structure for 'view all' vs. not view all to control crawling and indexation more easily.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your reply.
For the category t-shirt I've got this:/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=24 (24)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=48 (48)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=41 (when All selected)Let me know! And thanks again for your time! Really apreciate it!Joost
-
Hi Joost
Can you provide examples of how all your URLs are setup? What does the URL look like for view all, 24 items etc etc?
-
Wow Dan!
Thanks for looking in to this!
I assume you are totally right but have no idea how I should implement this strategy on my site. It just a plain wordpress install with woocommerce. I use Yoast (ofcourse) but never went in-depth with robot.txt.
How can I provide you with more info? Or better; myself
Thanks again,
Joost
-
Hi Joost
It would be better to just "noindex" anything except view all. Then once they are gone from the index, set a block in robots.txt so they can't be crawled anymore. That fixes the issue at the source, the canonical is more of a bandaid. So:
1. Add a meta "noindex" tag to everything except view all (I am not 100% sure how in your wordpress setup - there's no one way, it depends on your setup).
2. Monitor the indexation of these pages in Google and wait for them to be removed (you can check with just searching for the URL in the search bar).
3. Once they are all gone from the index, block crawlers from accessing them by adding a line to your robots.txt file blocking the 24/48 URLs - again, I don't know the exact code for your robots.txt because I am unsure of your URL setup, but a dev or someone can help - or feel free to write back with these details and I'll try to help further.
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for helping out. I've read a lot about the theory behind View All and why & when it's better to set canonicals on page 2 and 3 to View All.
But I can't seem to find any information how to implement the rel canonical in wordpress/woocommerce.I know that Google will try to sort it out by itself (if View All) is available but helping them with a canonical will solve a lot of 404 crawls on our site.
Any ideas?Joost
-
Hi Joost
Did you happen to take a look at SEO Guide to Google Webmaster Recommendations for Pagination? There are some great tips in there that can help you implement this.
Also, View-all in search results & 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical from Google also has some tips.
Hope these help a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Setting up hreflang tags
Hi everyone, A quick question about setting up your Hreflang tags. Here you can see 2 examples: As you can see, the order of the elements is different. Be aware, there is a tiny difference between the 2: the first Hreflang is written for a specific language in a specific country, the second one only contains a language code. Is this the reason why the order is different or is this just a coincidence and doesn't the order of the elements matter at all? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
How to set up redirects with a company takeover
Hi there, We are about to take over a player in the market with some good DA en PA's. We choose to redirect all the pages from the domain we take over to our main domain for now, later we want to redirect all categories to relevant and similar categories on our own domain. The company we take over is using a server which will be cancelled in a while. For now we set up the 301 redirect(s) on their server we take over. Because of the extra costs we will cancel the server in a few weeks/months. What is a common way to keep 301 redirects alive after cancelling the server of company we take over? I hope someone can give me the help I need in this one. Thanks in advance! Cheers,
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
Marcel0 -
Canonicals being ignored
Hi, I've got a site that I'm working with that has 2 ways of viewing the same page - a property details page. Basically one version if the long version: /property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V and the other just the short version with the code only on the end: /6cn99v There is a canonical in place from the short version to the long version, and the sitemap.xml only lists the long version HOWEVER - Google is indexing the short version in the majority of cases (not all but the majority). http://www.website.com/property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V"> Obviously "www.website.com" contains the URL of the site itself. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | squarecat.ben0 -
Showing duplicate content when I have canonical url set, why?
Just inspecting my sites report and I see that I have a lot of duplicate content issues, not sure why these two pages here http://www.thecheapplace.com/wholesale-products/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch http://www.thecheapplace.com/wholesale-products/small-wholesale-patches-1/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch are showing as duplicate content when both pages have a clearly defined canonical url of http://www.thecheapplace.com/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch Any answer would be appreciated, thank you
Technical SEO | | erhansimavi0 -
Content and url duplication?
One of the campaign tools flags one of my clients sites as having lots of duplicates. This is true in the sense the content is sort of boiler plate but with the different countries wording changed. The is same with the urls but they are different in the sense a couple of words have changed in the url`s. So its not the case of a cms or server issue as this seomoz advises. It doesnt need 301`s! Thing is in the niche, freight, transport operators, shipping, I can see many other sites doing the same thing and those sites have lots of similar pages ranking very well. In fact one site has over 300 keywords ranked on page 1-2, but it is a large site with an 12yo domain, which clearly helps. Of course having every page content unique is important, however, i suppose it is better than copy n paste from other sites. So its unique in that sense. Im hoping to convince the site owner to change the content over time for every country. A long process. My biggest problem for understanding duplication issues is that every tabloid or broadsheet media website would be canned from google as quite often they scrape Reuters or re-publish standard press releases on their sites as newsworthy content. So i have great doubt that there is a penalty for it. You only have to look and you can see media sites duplication everywhere, everyday, but they get ranked. I just think that google dont rank the worst cases of spammy duplication. They still index though I notice. So considering the business niche has very much the same content layout replicated content, which rank well, is this duplicate flag such a great worry? Many businesses sell the same service to many locations and its virtually impossible to re write the services in a dozen or so different ways.
Technical SEO | | xtopher660 -
Pagination or View All
Right now our site is using ajax and we need to change it so all 200+ products will get crawled not just the first 52 on page first page. We are looking at doing the rel=next/ rel=previous or doing it so we have a link going to the View all product page. Or maybe doing the rel=next/ previous and using the canonical to point to the view all etc. I have read http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 and http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html about it. Now we are trying to figure out what is the best option. Thought. Here is our site. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/750/Motorcycle-Tires-All Also if we do not do the rel=next just make the view all items as a link that google can crawl is there a way to still have our current url be the one for view all items but only show 52 item unless the click view all items and not have it look like cloaking? Hope this made sense.
Technical SEO | | DoRM1 -
Help with Rel Canonical on Wordpress?
Crawl Diagnostics is showing a lot of Rel Canonical warnings, I've installed Wordpress SEO by Joose De Valk and Home Canonical URL plugins without success. Any ideas? I'm getting a lot of URL's that I thought I blocked from being indexed, such as author pages, category pages, etc. I'm also getting stuff like "recessionitis.com/?homeq=recent" and "recessionitis.com/page/2/", those pages are similar to my homepage. I thought those plugins were suppose to automatically clean things up.. anyone use these plugins that have any helpful hints?
Technical SEO | | 10JQKAs0 -
Subdomain Setting in MozBar
I'm using the MozBar on FF6 and have a question about the selector next to "Root Domain" When I set it to "Subdomain", I notice that DmR and DmT are different from the root domain. Am I looking at DmR and DmT for all subdomains (www included)?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0