Is there a way to rel = canonical only part of a page?
-
Hi guys:
I'm doing SEO for a boat accessories store, and for instance they have marine AC systems, many of them, and while the part number, number of BTUs, voltage, and accessories change on some models, the description stays exactly the same across the board on many of them...people often search on Google by model number, and I worry that if I put rel = canonical, then the result for that specific model they're looking for won't come up, just the one that everything is being redirected to. (and people do this much more than entering a site nowadays and searching by product model, it's easier).
Excuse my ignorance on this stuff, I'm good with link building and content creation, but the behind-the-scenes aspects... not so much:
-
Can I "rel=canonical" only part of the page of the repeat models (the long description)? so people can still search by model number, and reach the model they are looking for?
-
Am I misunderstanding something here about rel=canonical
(Interesting thing, I rank very high for these pages with tons of repeat descriptions, number one in many places... but wonder if google attributes a sort of "across the site" penalty for the repeated content... but wouldn't ranking number 1 for these pages mean nothing's wrong?. Thanks)
-
-
Is this still the best advice for this situation? My situation is different but this reply is stale by about three years.
-
Awesome, Dirk, thanks!! Best advice I could have heard
-
A canonical url always applies to a "full page" = content accessible under a specific url so it's not possible to apply the canonical url to only a part of the page.
Duplication of content is not always a reason for "punishment" by Google - check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en : "unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results" that you will get an action from Google. In most cases - "we (=Google) do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results".
You could consider to make one main page for each type of product and then list the specifics for each model number on the same page but it could lead to lower traffic.
You could also try to make for each detailed page a piece of "original" content, but in cases like yours I guess this would be virtually impossible.
Don't think everyone would agree on this advice - but given that your pages are currently ranking quite well and they are answering a certain customer need I wouldn't do touch them. The risk you run seems limited.
Dirk
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’s the best way to handle multiple website languages in terms of metatags that should be used and pages sent on our sitemap?
Hey everyone, Has anyone here worked with SEO + website translations? When should we use canonical or alternate tag if we want the user to find our page on the language he used on Google? Should we send all pages on all the different locales on the sitemap? Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allanformigoni0 -
Rel=“next” and rel=“prev” on category pages and galleries
Hi there, I am running an WordPress blog and i was looking a couple of days on the source code of the categories. From a SEO point of view would make sense to include into the header of the categories the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags ? Same question would be for the image galleries . Should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags on the image galleries ? So for example if i upload 10 images to a gallery, the user will check the post and see the gallery. It will click on an image and will redirected on the attachment page of that displays that image > from where he can click next to see the next image or prev for the previous image. Therefore should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags here too ? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MirceazetelSerafim1 -
Duplicate page title at bottom of page - ok, or bad?
Can I get you experts opinion? A few years ago, we customized our pages to repeat the page title at the bottom of the page. So the page title is in the breadcrumbs at the top, and then it's also at the bottom of the page under all the contents. Here is a sample page: bit.ly/1pYyrUl I attached a screen shot and highlighted the second occurence of the page title. Am worried that this might be keyword stuffing, or over optimizing? Thoughts or advice on this? Thank you so much! ron ZH8xQX6
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Canonicals for product pages - confused, anyone help?
I have an ecommerce website (built using Magento), and have just had the functionality extended to allow me to define my own canonical URLs. Currently the URLs are www. domainname.com/product-name.html but I can now change this to www.domainname. com/product-category/product-name.html. I was led to believe that this would be good for SEO. However, I have since had conflicting advice - it's been suggested that any links across the website that link to domain/category/sub-category/product will pass weight and authority through to the specified canonical anyway. Plus longer URLs are generally worse... I'm confused. Is it worth changing them? If so, would it be a bad thing to change all 700 canonical URLs at once?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Rel Canonical Link on the Canonical Page
Is there a problem with placing a rel=canonical link on the canonical page - in addition to the duplicate pages? For example, would that create create an endless loop where the canonical page keeps referring to itself? Two examples that are troubling me are: My home site is www.1099pro.com which is exactly the same as www.1099pro.com/index.asp (all updates to the home page are made by updating the index.asp page). I want www.1099pro.com/index.asp to have the rel=canonical link to point to my standard homepage www.1099pro.com but any update that I make on the index page is automatically incorporated into www.1099pro.com as well. I don't have access to my hosting web server and any updates I make have to be done to the specific landing pages/templates. I am also creating a new website that could possible have pages with duplicate content in the future. I would like to already include the rel=canonical link on the standard canonical page even though there is not duplicate content yet. Any help really would be appreciated. I've read a ton of articles on the subject but none really define whether or not it is ok to have the rel=canonical link on both the canonical page and the duplicate pages. The closest explanation was in a MOZ article that it was ok but the answer was fuzzy. -Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Does having multiple links to the same page influence the Link juice this page is able to pass
Say you have a page and it has 4 outgoing links to the same internal page. In the original Pagerank algo if these links were links to an page outside your own domain, this would mean that the linkjuice this page is able to pass would be devided by 4. The thing is i'm not sure if this is also the case when the outgoing link, is linking to a page on your own domain. I would say that outgoing links (whatever the destination) will use some of your link juice, so it would be better to have 1 outgoing link instead of 4 to the same destination, the the destination will profit more form that link. What are you're thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ0 -
1 of the sites i work on keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page
1 of the sites i work on (www.eva-alexander.com) keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page I have no idea why and have never experienced this before
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GMD10 -
Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
Currently in the process of redesigning a site. What i want to know, is what is the best way for me to restructure the url w/out it losing its value (page rank) other than a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marig0