Rel-canonical and meta data
-
Hey Mozzers,
Help please. I am migrating content for a new website (1000's of pages) and am using the canonical tag on a number of pages.
For the pages which I am asking Google not to recognise / index as the master version, and in the interests of time do I need to take the time to fill in the meta <title><description> etc each time?</p> <p>Ben</p></title>
-
No problem at all Ben. Good luck with the work - been there many times
-Andy
-
Thanks for the response and I think I knew your suggestion to be best SEO practice, but am guess looking to save time.
Thank you, decision made
-
In the interest of best practice, this is still something I would do. Remember that a rel=canonical is only a suggestion to Google. Even though they say they will do their best to follow the recommendation, this isn't a guarantee like a 301.
I would pay attention to the page title as well because even if someone doesn't arrive at a page via Google, presumably they can browse to it? If they do, they will want to look at the browser tab and see something in there.
It isn't a question I have been asked before, so never tested it - gut feeling is telling me to do the work I'm afraid.
-Andy
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
-
Issues with structured data on angular pages.
I am having an issue with Structured Data. I have added the structured data to angular pages of my site but when I run the test from the testing tool it doesn't detect the same. Although when I cut and paste the code (from inspect element) it detects the structured data. But in my webmaster tools, those pages don't show up under structured data. I am unsure if my structured data is being picked up by google. What should be done here? Should I provide pre-rendered pages to google?
Technical SEO | | Lybrate06060 -
Duplication in Meta Titles
Hi,
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate
In order to appease the Moz crawler we recently changed over 10,000 URL's in order to make our Meta Page Title less than 55 characters as it suggested. Unfortunately our rankings dropped dramatically pretty much overnight so I am getting the feeling that perhaps our titles are now just a little too concise and need elaborating on just a touch. Our competitors that rank well seem to use a small amount of keyword repetition. For example, whereas we may have:
Brother DCP-197C Inkjet Cartridges They will have:
Brother DCP-197C Inkjet Cartridges. Cheap Brother DCP-197C Ink. What are your opinions of the fact that: a) Their Title is over the 55 character figure that is suggested for displaying correctly in the SERPs.
b) The words Brother and DCP-197C are repeated in the title. The fact their title appears to be working better is almost enough to sway me but the competitors title just looks a little too spammy for me to make a sitewide change without asking some second opinions first. Cheers all!0 -
Content Duplication and Canonical Tag settings
Hi all, I have a question regarding content duplication.My site has posted one fresh content in the article section and set canonical in the same page for avoiding content duplication._But another webmaster has taken my post and posted the same in his site with canonical as his site url. They have not given to original source as well._May I know how Google will consider these two pages. Which site will be affected with content duplication by Google and how can I solve this issue?If two sites put canonical tags in there own pages for the same content how the search engine will find the original site which posted fresh content. How can we avoid content duplication in this case?
Technical SEO | | zco_seo0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Rel Canonical
Hi, The diagnostics shows me that I have 590 Duplicate Page Content , but when it shows the Rel Canonical I have over 1000, so dose that mean I have no Duplicate Page Content problem? Please help.
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
What is "canonical." And what do I need to do to fix it?
I'm seeing about 450 warnings on this. What is "Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical." And what do I need to do to fix it?
Technical SEO | | KimCalvert0 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0 -
Canonicals for Real Estate
A real estate site has a landing page for a particular zip code: site.com/zip/99999 On this page, there are links which add arguments to the URL, resulting in structures like this: site.com/zip/99999?maxprice=1000000&maxbeds=3 My question is on using a canonical URL for the pages with arguments. These pages may have lots of duplicate content, so should I direct search engines back to the base URL for the search? (site.com/zip/99999) A side note is that these pages with arguments could have no listings returned (no listings found) or could come back with listings (then it wouldn't be duplicate), but that can change on a day to day basis.
Technical SEO | | SteveCastaneda0 -
How does a sitemap affect the definition of canonical URLs?
We are having some difficulty generating a sitemap that includes our SEO-friendly URLs (the ones we want to set as canonical), and I was wondering if we might be able to simply use the non-SEO-friendly, non-canonical URLs that the sitemap generator has been producing and then use 301 redirects to send them to the canonical. Is there a reason why we should not be doing this? We don't want search engines to think that the sitemap URLs are more important than the pages to which they redirect. How important is it that the sitemap URLs match the canonical URLs? We would like to find a solution outside of the generation of the sitemap itself as we are locked into using a vendor’s product in order to generate the sitemap. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | emilyburns0
